Pandas and Wagner inspire orchestral work

Wagner had giants. China has pandas. Chinese composer Yao Chen saw no reason the two worlds could not meet.

The unlikely encounter has resulted in Waltz of the Rolling Giants, a new five-minute orchestral work commissioned by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.

Inspired by the rolling, waddling movements of China's most famous animal and shaped by musical echoes that stretch from Chinese folk traditions to Wagner, the new piece received its world premiere in Hong Kong on Wednesday, before traveling with the orchestra to Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Saturday, and later, Europe.

Eric Lu, who won the first prize at the 19th International Chopin Piano Competition 2025 in Warsaw, made his Hong Kong Philharmonic debut performing Chopin's Piano Concerto No 1 under the orchestra's resident conductor Lio Kuokman. The concert in Chengdu is featured as part of "Hong Kong Week 2026@Chengdu", a major cultural extravaganza promoting artistic collaboration across regions.

New music director Tarmo Peltokoski will lead the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra on its tour in Europe from Nov 23 to Dec 6, performing eight concerts across eight cities in four countries, including Vienna, Munich, and Berlin. The new commission will be performed at five of the concerts.

According to Patrick Ren Xiaolong, deputy chief executive of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the orchestra wanted a new work that could bring elements of Chinese culture into its touring repertoire.

The original idea also came with an unlikely source of inspiration: pandas.

With Saint-Saens' humorous musical suite The Carnival of the Animals forming part of the planned program during the European tour, Ren says that the idea emerged of commissioning a short work around China's most internationally recognizable animal.

For Yao, however, the panda could not simply be cute.

The commission came with two challenges, he recalls. The piece had to work as an opening number for an international tour, while also finding a musical relationship with the works surrounding it.

"Pandas are giant animals too," Yao says, "and they are so cute. I thought: could I transform something and turn it into a composition with the character of a panda?"

He found unexpected inspiration in Wagner.

Yao was intrigued by the musical motifs Wagner created for the two giants, important characters in the monumental cycle of four operas Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). Could those imposing musical figures, he wondered, somehow be transformed into something more playful?

"I designed a panda figure that is a little like Wagner's giant motif, but not the same," the composer says.

The result is a musical giant of a very different kind.

The panda Yao imagines eats bamboo, lazily rolls on the ground and then suddenly jumps, bounces and springs into action. Those contrasting movements became the basis for the piece's musical personality.

Its English title, Waltz of the Rolling Giants, points directly to its central rhythmic idea.

"I thought it was interesting," Yao says. "So I created the work around this three-beat rhythm."

The music moves between energetic and languid sections, reflecting the panda's alternately playful and sleepy character.

"The middle section is relatively lazy," he says. "The beginning and the end are more lively."

But Waltz of the Rolling Giants is also designed as a musical meeting point. Yao transformed fragments of regional folk music from Sichuan province. He also drew on Sibuzheng, a classic tune in Cantonese Opera. Originally used as music to bridge scenes, it was later adapted with lyrics and became a melody that performers could sing.

All of this is filtered through the rhythm and shape of the European waltz.

"The work brings together many cultural elements," Yao says. "There is the urban cultural imprint of Hong Kong, the imprint of Sichuan folk songs, and the waltz."

None of these materials appears as a straightforward quotation. One melody originally in four beats, for example, was reshaped into triple time to fit the waltz. Familiar musical material becomes something slightly unfamiliar — recognizable in spirit, perhaps, but transformed by its new surroundings.

"I don't simply quote," Yao says. "I let the material grow inside the work."

That process of transformation also helps the new commission connect with the rest of the concert.

For Ren, one of the challenges was finding a place for a five-minute opening work between large and familiar masterpieces. The new piece needed to stand independently while creating subtle connections with the music that followed.

Yao's answer was to plant musical references beneath the surface rather than announce them directly.

Wagnerian motifs and material from Chinese folk songs are woven into the score, creating a bridge between the Western symphonic tradition and Chinese musical memory — and between the different works on the program.

The panda itself, meanwhile, is more than an adorable mascot.

According to Ren, the work aims to move beyond the animal's familiar image of clumsy charm and explore another set of qualities: optimism, confidence and a certain calmness in the face of difficulty. That, he suggests, is also a distinctly Chinese expression.

The Chinese title, Tuantuan Zhuan, carries another layer of meaning. Drawing on a Cantonese saying, it evokes a busy, bustling and prosperous life — a sense of things moving energetically and happily together.

There are no traditional Chinese instruments in Yao's orchestration. Instead, he uses the colors of the Western orchestra to suggest his musical landscape. For example, percussion instruments evoke bamboo and, at moments, the sensation of wind moving through a bamboo forest.

For the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the commission also continues a much longer history of introducing Chinese music to international audiences.

Since becoming a fully professional orchestra in 1974, the ensemble has maintained a commitment to performing and recording Chinese works. During the recording boom of the 1980s, it produced versions of works including The Butterfly Lovers violin concerto and the Spring Festival Overture that remain widely available on international digital platforms.

The new commission takes that tradition into a different era: not simply presenting established Chinese repertoire, but creating new music designed to travel with the orchestra.

For Yao, who received his training in music composition at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and obtained his PhD in music composition from the University of Chicago in the United States, writing such a piece was both a creative challenge and a deeply personal experience.

He began thinking about the commission months before putting notes on paper. The actual composition lasted only a matter of weeks, but every note, he says, felt precious.

"I wrote every note with enormous feeling," says Yao, who is currently a professor of composition at the Central Conservatory of Music. "It felt precious to me — that I can still write music like this today, and that someone still asks me to write it."

You can hear Wagner in the background, along with echoes of Chinese folk songs. The music also draws on sounds from Sichuan and Hong Kong, as well as Vienna and the waltz. At the heart of it all is an animal that serves as a national symbol, a cultural ambassador and a character in the music.

But Yao does not expect listeners to solve the puzzle.

"Program notes are a kind of bait," he says. "Maybe you'll hear it, maybe you won't, but honestly, that's not the point."