2. Chen Gang and He Zhanhao, students at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, composed this violin concerto in the winter of 1958. It was premiered to great acclaim in Shanghai in May of the following year, with Yu Lina as the violin soloist. The concerto is based on the well-known folk tale "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai", with tunes from Yueju Opera as its source material, synthesizing symphonic music and Chinese folk opera music expression methods, and carefully conceived and laid out in accordance with the plot's development, adopting a sonata-style structure, with a single movement, and sub-titles for each chapter.
The piece recounts the theme of Liang Zhu's love in musical language, with chapters such as "Knotting at the Grass Bridge", "Yingtai's Resistance to Marriage", "Butterfly at the Grave", etc., which depicts the happy school life, the reluctance to leave each other when they parted, Zhu Yingtai's resistance to marriage and the meeting of the two of them on the platform of the building, and their weeping at the grave, and the last section is "Butterfly".
"Butterfly" is the reappearance of the main theme. The flute plays a soft and colorful melody, and the harp's glissando mirrors each other, leading people to a mythical fairyland. The solo violin plays the love theme again, showing Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai dying under the oppression of the feudal forces, turning into a pair of butterflies fluttering joyfully and freely in the flowers.