Composer Tan Dun reveres natural elements in his Water Concerto

Composer-conductor Tan Dun has written works that employ natural elements such as stone and paper. But his three-movement Water Concerto takes this aspect to the ultimate degree; it uses the sound of splashes and flows of water as a solo musical instrument.

The work will be on the program next season when Tan Dan leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in three concerts May 20-22, 2027.

He won a Grawemeyer Award for his opera Marco Polo (1996) and Oscar and Grammy honors for his score to Ang Lee’s film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000). Also on this CSO program will be his Concerto for Orchestra from Marco Polo and Passacaglia: Secret of Wind and Birds.

“Water is an element you can’t block. You can block land, you can say this is China and this is Russia, but water has no such frontiers,” he has said of his 1998 work, originally commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. “What I want to present is music that is for listening to in a visual way, and watching in an audio way. I want it to be intoxicating. And I hope some people will listen and rediscover life’s elements, things that are around us, but we don’t notice."

Tan Dun points out that his fascination with watery textures goes back to his childhood in Hunan, China, where he lived with his grandmother after his parents were sent away during the Cultural Revolution. The composer recalls the central role that the river played in everyday life and uses this elemental sound throughout his work.

“In Hunan, water was a daily thing with our life. Every day we washed everything with the river,” Tan Dun said in an interview with the site Classic FM. “All the old women, they always went to river for laundry, making a beautiful sound, very rhythmic. So I transpose those memories of beautiful laundry sounds and swimming sounds, body-popping sounds, water-dancing sounds, water-teasing sounds, water-popping sound, into my orchestrations.”

Tan Dun became an American citizen after moving to New York City in ’90s for his musical studies. Once in New York, he became immersed in the works of  Philip Glass, Steve Reich and John Cage, with whom he studied.

Tan Dun remains based in Manhattan and is often asked if it’s difficult for someone so inspired by the natural world to live there. “I always look at the sky; I never get bored of it,” he said. “My teacher [Cage] lived on one of the noisiest spots in New York, Sixth Avenue on 26th Street.”

For the concerto, several percussionists play basins and other objects filled with water, and create gliding, rippling, surging, dripping and other sounds not routinely noted in a score.

Christopher Lamb, principal percussionist of the New York Philharmonic, performed in the work’s premiere and has gone on to play it with other orchestras worldwide: "In this piece, Tan Dun conceived of different percussion instruments affected by the water. Pitches blending, colors changing, distortions. Now that’s how I heard it. But he heard it many times as vocal things, and as pitch bends, and that’s his language." 

Tan Dun dedicated this concerto to the great Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996), who died two years before the work’s premiere. Tan Dun continued the water theme in his Five Souls (2023), written for water percussion, harp, brass, strings and digeridoo. The piece, which includes a movement called “H2O Tempo,” has been recorded by the West East Orchestra, conducted by Tan Dun, and released via Decca.