Corner of a Foreign Field - Raymond Yiu (2019)
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Corner of a Foreign Field (2019) is a piece for flute, percussion, yangqin, and piano composed by Raymond Yiu and premiered by Yi-Hsuan Chen, Angela Wai Nok Hui, Reylon Yount, and Jessica Zhu.
The piece was commissioned for Tangram's 1-year anniversary and Lunar New Year concert on 25 January 2020 at LSO St. Luke's. -- The Chinese Labour Corps was a force of approximately 140,000 Chinese workers recruited by the British and French governments between 1917-19. They performed manual labour and support work for the purpose of freeing up troops of these countries for front line duty during the later part of World War I. |
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Its existence has been one of the most forgotten pieces of the Great War. Until as recently as the Remembrance Sunday 2017, these men’s contribution to the Allies’ victory remained officially unacknowledged in England (although it happened a bit earlier in Scotland, in 2014).
Corner of a Foreign Field is a sonic monument commemorating the lives of these men. Its five movements are played without a pause, with Movement III and V being two halves of the same music interrupted by Movement IV. The basic material is a folk song called Swinging (打鞦韆) from the Shandong province, the area from which the majority of the members of the Chinese Labour Corps were recruited. The title of the work is a re-interpretation of Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier from the point of view of the 2,000 members of the workforce who lost their lives in Europe: ‘That there’s some corner of foreign field that is for ever China’. Notes by Raymond Yiu |
By Ernest Brooks - This is photograph Q 2700 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain.
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Winner of a BASCA British Composer Award in 2010, and nominated for the same award in 2004, 2012, 2013 and 2018, Raymond Yiu (姚恩豪, b.1973) is a Hong-Kong born, London-based composer, jazz pianist, conductor and writer on music. He has worked with ensembles and artists including Lukas Foss, BBC Singers, Chroma, Ensemble 10/10, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, London Sinfonietta and Lontano.
The Original Chinese Conjuror was commissioned for the 2006 Aldeburgh Almeida Opera, and Maomao Yü was commissioned by LSO for Lang Lang and the Silk String Quartet. His ‘hugely impressive’ (The Guardian) Symphony was commissioned by the BBC, and premiered during Proms 2015 by Andrew Watts, BBCSO and Edward Gardner. First performed at Manchester International Festival 2017 (with BBC Philharmonic), and given its London premiere by Roderick Williams, BBCSO and Sir Andrew Davis in April 2018, The World Was Once All Miracle was nominated in the large-scale composition category of 2018 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards.
www.raymondyiu.com/
The Original Chinese Conjuror was commissioned for the 2006 Aldeburgh Almeida Opera, and Maomao Yü was commissioned by LSO for Lang Lang and the Silk String Quartet. His ‘hugely impressive’ (The Guardian) Symphony was commissioned by the BBC, and premiered during Proms 2015 by Andrew Watts, BBCSO and Edward Gardner. First performed at Manchester International Festival 2017 (with BBC Philharmonic), and given its London premiere by Roderick Williams, BBCSO and Sir Andrew Davis in April 2018, The World Was Once All Miracle was nominated in the large-scale composition category of 2018 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards.
www.raymondyiu.com/