When Chen Yi immigrated from China to the United States in the early 1980s, she was already an accomplished musician in both the Chinese and the Western traditions.  A violinist by training, she is also profoundly versed in the musical culture of her homeland, which makes her the perfect ambassador between these two worlds.  A longtime professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Chen is a prolific composer of works in all genres, writing for both Western and Chinese instruments.

Introduction, Andante and Allegro is one of Chen’s major bridge-building compositions from recent years.  You don’t get much more Western than her title, which echoes many prominent European works from the past.  Yet the music builds on Chinese traditional melodies.  In her comments on the piece, Chen singled out a particular motif from a piece known as “Old Eight Beat” in the first movement, and called attention to the influence of the style of Peking Opera in general.  She described the Introduction as progressing “from tranquil to vivid and energetic,” the second movement as “dark” and “mysterious,” and the third as “dramatic” and “powerful, with a developing ostinato that keeps growing towards a brilliant finale.”

Commissioned by the Seattle Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Introduction, Andante and Allegro premiered in Seattle, under Ludovic Morlot’s direction, on February 6, 2019.