The ‘Butterfly Lovers Concerto’ Musical Score Available from naxos.com
April 13, 2010
Music of The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto, arguably the most widely known classical piece in the history of China, is available from HNH International Limited—the parent company of Naxos.
Full score and parts are available for hire. Please contact nds@naxos.com. The instrumentation for this 28-minute work is: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, 3 percussion (Gu Ban, Cymbal, Tam-tam), harp, piano and strings with solo violin.
A violin and piano version, full score, and a concerto reduction version for 11 instruments and solo violin are available for sale. For inquiries, please contact nds@naxos.com.
On its Marco Polo label Naxos presents a 50th Anniversary box set devoted to The Butterfly Lovers Concerto, performed by violinist Takako Nishizaki, the Shanghai Conservatory Symphony Orchestra, and conducted by Fan Chengwu.
As a child, Takako Nishizaki studied with her father, Shinji, and with Shinichi Suzuki himself. Her father was active in the early stages of the development of the Suzuki Method and for many years taught at the Matsumoto summer school and organized the Suzuki activities in the Nagoya area after Shinichi Suzuki had moved to Matsumoto. Takako was the first student to complete the now famous Suzuki course and was awarded a teacher’s diploma at the age of nine. She started performing in public at age 5 and, before she was 10, had already played for artists such as Isaac Stern and Sir Malcolm Sargent.
Subsequently, she studied with Broadus Erle and Hideo Saito at Toho Conservatory in Tokyo. In 1962 she went to the United States and studied with Erle at Yale and with Joseph Fuchs at Juilliard. While at Juilliard, Takako Nishizaki was awarded the Fritz Kreisler Scholarship, established by the great violinist himself. Among her sponsors was Alice Tully. Other teachers included Louis Persinger (sonata classes) and Aldo Parisot (chamber music).
Takako Nishizaki has performed as a soloist with many international orchestras, among them the Sydney Symphony, the Melbourne Symphony, the New Zealand Symphony, the Central Philharmonic in Beijing, the Shanghai Symphony, the Polish National Radio Symphony, the Moscow Symphony, the Ukraine State Symphony, the Slovak Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de Lille, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Singapore Symphony, the China Philharmonic and many orchestras in the United States and her native Japan.
Ms Nishizaki is one of the most frequently recorded and among the best-selling violinists of all time. She is one of only 20 classical artists to have sold more than 1 million copies of a recording, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Her recording of the Butterfly Lovers Concerto sold more than three million copies in the People’s Republic of China and throughout South-East Asia.