Ensemble gives cellists an intimate voice

Chu Yi-bing founded the Chu Yi-bing Cello Ensemble in Beijing in 2004. [Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]

Before Chu Yi-bing led his cello ensemble in a concert on a recent rainy night in Beijing to celebrate the emsemble's 10th anniversary, he presented a bowl of soup to each member of the audience first.

The soup was made of red bean and dried tangerine peel, simmered for over two hours. While ladling out soup for everyone, Chu, the 48-year-old former principal cellist in the Basel Symphony Orchestra and now head of the Central Conservatory of Music's cello department, says that the music of his ensemble - Chu Yi-bing Cello Ensemble - is just like soup.

"It must be cooking day and night, whether guests are coming or not," he says.

The concert also witnessed the release of the ensemble's third album, The Bicentenary of Richard Wagner, in which Chu offers what he hopes is a different interpretation of the German composer's works.

"We spent 13 hours finishing the recording in a small studio in Beijing on the last day of 2013, when his 200th birth anniversary was celebrated," recalls Chu.

Compared with grand orchestras and star-like soloists, chamber music in China has long been considered a barren land in classical music. However, since Chu returned to China in 2004 after decades of study in Europe, he gathered his students to establish the cello ensemble and has since been dedicated to chamber music education in China.

"Ten years ago, China didn't know anything about cello ensembles and there were no chamber music faculties," Chu says. "No one understood why I was doing the ensemble."

He describes the members of his ensemble as soldiers, who brave through the tough environment and stick to their mission. The depiction is also captured in a photo, which has become the concert poster and shows all the members in Chinese military clothing, carrying their instruments and standing on a rocky loess slope.