Yellow River Piano Concerto

The Yellow River Piano Concerto (simplified Chinese: 黄河协奏曲; traditional Chinese: 黃河協奏曲; pinyin: Huáng Hé xiézòuqǔ) is a piano concerto arranged by a collaboration between musicians including Yin Chengzong and Chu Wanghua, and based on the Yellow River Cantata by composer Xian Xinghai. Since its politicised premiere in 1969 during the Cultural Revolution, the Concerto has become popular in China and amongst overseas Chinese nationalists. It is noted for a difficult solo part. This piano concerto and the Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto, which tells the story of the Butterfly Lovers, are two internationally known Chinese works that combine Western music methodology with Chinese source materials.

Xian Xinghai wrote the Yellow River Cantata at Yan'an in 1939, allegedly in a cave in just six days, during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). It is an eight-movement piece in which he used traditional folk-melodies and evoked the image of the Yellow River as a symbol of Chinese defiance against the Japanese invaders. During his stay in Russia, he edited and re-orchestrated the work, which was later modified by Li Huanzhi, Qu Wei, Yan Liangkun. This edition aimed at furthering the energy and momentum of the music, and in this light, the rearrangement of the Yellow River Piano Concerto thirty years later is merely a continuation of that same practice.

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