PENG XIUWEN AND HIS CONCEPT OF NATIONAL ORCHESTRA REPERTOIRE

Abstract

Composer and conductor Peng Xiuwen (1931-1996) went down in the history of musical art of the 20th century not only as one of the organisers of the national orchestra model, but also as a founder of Chinese orchestral music, a creator of the main directions of its repertoire. Building and developing the repertoire for a barely formed young orchestra was a matter of paramount importance for the musician. Peng Xiuwen was aware of the fundamental importance of the artistic content of the works that would form the basis of national orchestral performance. He understood that with arrangements of the available opuses of Western music or simple adaptations of folk songs, the orchestra, consisting of Chinese traditional instruments, would remain an instrumental collective “for internal use”. At the same time, as a sensitive and gifted musician, he felt an enormous aesthetic potential of this collection of Chinese instruments organised into an orchestra, which was unlike any other in the history of music. The article is devoted to famous compositions for orchestra of national instruments by Peng Xiuwen, which he created in the process of developing repertoire directions of orchestral music.