Finnish Music Quarterly: Grappling with Sibelius in China

Finnish Music Quarterly
Andrew Mellor

“Could a certain distance from Western symphonic thought have contributed to the surprising qualities of the performances I heard in China?” Andrew Mellor reviews performances of Sibelius’s Symphonies Nos 2 and 5 in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra – 140 years old this season – presented Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 at a concert on 13 January conducted by Li Xincao. Sibelius is not a regular part of the SSO’s diet, I was told by Doug He, the orchestra’s Vice President. Sometimes the Violin Concerto crops up in a season. There might even be, as in this season, a symphony included. But there was zero Sibelius in the season before. Like the Orchestre de Paris, however, this is a flexible modern symphony orchestra with strength in all sections and high levels of discipline.

Li Xincao and the SSO’s Sibelius was exceptional, perhaps because it grasped some of the basic principles mentioned above. It appeared to take rhythm as a starting point, understanding that a focus on the rhythmic devices presented from the very start of the score will allow those devices to take on the kinetic significance they need. Intentionally or otherwise, the orchestra spoke relatively plainly but still with a sure sense of colour (the solo trumpet playing was deliciously peaty). The performance acknowledged the strain in the music, as in the final movement when building disquiet metamorphoses into natural release.

Read more here.

Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra Hosts Two-Day China Orchestra Administration & Management Forum

The two-day China Orchestra Administration & Management Forum was held in Guangzhou on September 25th and 26th September 2017. From Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Shandong, Zhejiang, Fujian, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hubei and Hong Kong and Macao Taiwan's nearly 30 orchestras and art institutions attended the 3rd annual forum organized by the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra and YL Consulting. The China Orchestra Administration & Management Forum was launched by Maestro Yu Long in 2015 to create a platform for Chinese orchestras to explore and to discuss future development and best-practices for Chinese orchestras. Previously held in 2015 and 2016 in Shanghai, the Forum is jointly produced by the "China Art Development Program (AEP-China)" and Volkswagen Group (China).

For the first time, the Forum arranged the keynote speeches on four main topics: orchestra management, copyright issues, cooperation and positioning of concert halls / theaters and orchestras, and educational programs.

The Council of the Forum decided that the 4th China Orchestra Administration & Management Forum will be hosted by the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra in 2018.

Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra Celebrates 60th Anniversary with World Premiere of Penderecki’s Symphony No. 6

In celebration of the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra’s 60 th anniversary, the GSO launched its opening program of the 2017/18 season on September 24 with the world premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Symphony No. 6 (“Chinese Poems”) featuring celebrated baritone Chen-Ye Yuan. The Polish master Penderecki, praised for decades as the Beethoven of our time, remains an eminence in contemporary music. His Symphony No. 6, co-commissioned by the GSO and the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, is inspired by Chinese literary culture, with German translations of Tang Dynasty poetry.

The sold-out season-opening celebratory program at the Xinghai Concert Hall was led by GSO Music Director Maestro Long Yu and featured such frequent internationally-renowned collaborators as cellist Jian Wang, baritone Chen-Ye Yuan, pianist Haochen Zhang and violinist Gao Can. The evening also included the Guangzhou Symphony Youth Orchestra (GSYO) appearing on stage.

The September 24th concert opened with a work by one of the 20th century’s most iconic composers, Shostakovich’s Festive Overture, followed by well-loved works “Song to the Moon” (from Dvorak’s Rusalka) and Sarasate’s Ziguenerweisen, Chopin’s Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante (featuring GSYO), and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

GSO60—Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra: The Archive Recordings was released on
September 15 at the 2017 Guangzhou AV Fair. On the occasion of its 60th anniversary,
the GSO has selected 60 works from its recording archive of the past two decades,
covering such genres and styles as operas, symphonies, Chinese compositions
(including GSO commissions and premieres), concertos, song cycles, suites, overtures
and symphonic poems, spanning such diverse styles as European baroque and Chinese
contemporary. GSO60 has already been considered for the GRAMMYs in the “Best
Boxed or Special Limited-Edition Package” and “Best Orchestral Performance” categories.

About the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra (GSO)
Since its founding in 1957, the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra (GSO) has
developed into one of China’s most prestigious orchestras in its breadth of
organization and standard in performance. It is the first and only Chinese symphony
orchestra to have toured and performed on five continents. The GSO is also one of the
very first orchestras in China to institute a professional concert season. 2017/18
season marks the GSO’s 21st season.

For more information, please visit: http://www.gso.org.cn

The Spectator: Mao's Music

The Spectator
By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

Smog is making me cough and I feel my eyelids smart and redden. High-rises are swaddled in a soupy haze and locals scuttle about their day, huddled against the cold, faces down. Has Beijing done nothing to improve pollution since I last lived there three years ago? This is a city that changes fast. There are the same old scruffy nail bars and lamb hot pot restaurants, the windows smudged with steam from boiling vats of oil and meat. But in the ancient hutongs or alleyways there is also a smattering of Scandinavian-style design stores. Hidden around the back of one is a tranquil café, at odds with the dirt and dust outside, classical music wafting into chilly air. Here are the locals you never see on the street: men in elegant cashmere coats, scarfs slung around their necks; women propping Louis Vuitton bags against long, poised legs. I stop for a hot chocolate and avocado cheese cake; it costs nearly twenty dollars.

‘There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake,’ Mao Zedong said. Under the ‘Great Leader’, during the tumultuous tragic years of the Cultural Revolution, classical Western music was particularly despised as ‘bourgeois’. Instruments were smashed, concertos ripped up, and conductors punished, sometimes with death. When facing execution for tearing up Mao’s Little Red Book, Lu Hongen, conductor of the Shanghai Symphony, said to his cellmate. ‘Visit Austria, home of music. Go to Beethoven’s tomb and lay a bouquet of flowers. Tell him his disciple is in China.’ Would Lu laugh or cry if he went to Guangzhou now? I’ve taken the long train ride south to see the very first Youth Music Culture Guangdong (YMCG) in action, the pet project of Chinese-American superstar Yo-Yo Ma and the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. It’s early in the year but there is unseasonal heat as hundreds of earnest young musicians gather to learn from artists of the Silk Road Ensemble. Among the educators is symphony conductor Michael Stern. When his father, violinist Isaac Stern, made history by touring China in 1979, just three years after Mao’s death, he found not one playable piano left in Shanghai. His son has arrived in a new era: China is now the largest piano producer in the world, and the largest consumer too with some forty million students learning to play. Beethoven, it seems, is not short of disciples.

Yo-Yo Ma, a believer in art for art’s sake, relishes the redemptive qualities of creation. I ask him why here, why now? Why China? ‘When the flood gates open there’s this moment of receptivity. There’s a small window in this society where you can do so much,’ he says. He looks down at his hands, adjusts his shirtsleeves rolled half way up his arms. ‘I think if that window closes it’s going to be harder to start things, to create habits, cultural habits. For me, it’s planting seeds that we may not see the resultsof for twenty, thirty years.’

‘I want you to have enough courage to stand up,’ Yo-Yo Ma later tells a room of shy young musicians, bent over their instruments, anxious to do well and to please. ‘Who’ll be the first victim?’

Fostering innovation in China, a country hindered by an educational system that encourages rote learning and discourages asking questions, is not always easy. Some classical musicians have broken through: concert pianist and child prodigy Lang Lang is a celebrity here, commanding sell-out concerts and legions of fans. But Long Yu, the man who has helped spearhead China’s classical music renaissance (he is artistic director and chief conductor of the China Philharmonic Orchestra and music director of the Shanghai Symphony) wants more. ‘Asian parents, they force the kids to learn instruments not to introduce arts to them but they want to train them to become a star, the next Lang Lang, or to add some points when they apply to university. But this is totally wrong,’ he insists. ‘We don’t need only one or two champions. We need a new generation to understand creativity.’ Some are rising to the challenge. Back in an improvisation workshop, under the cold glare of classroom lamps, a plump girl in a yellow frilly dress shakes her hips, forgetting the glasses that fall down her nose, while a percussionist taps out an addictive beat. Yo-Yo Ma is happy. His charges are starting to stand up, no longer victims. As he confides with a grin, there is a little known secret: ‘You can practise imagination’.

Global Times: Tan Dun and Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra perform at The Orange

A part of the ongoing Beijing Music Festival (BMF), Chinese conductor Tan Dun presented a concert on Saturday at The Orange in Beijing with the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. 

The one-hour mini concert, which marked the 15th anniversary of Tan and the BMF's collaboration, included two pieces from Tan: Secret of Wind and Birds and Farewell My Concubine. 

According to the conductor, Secret of Wind and Birds was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America. Before the concert, Tan uploaded recordings of bird sounds made using musical instruments that audiences could download to their smartphones. During the performance, Tan gave cues to the audience to play the recordings, so they could become part of the orchestra themselves.  

Farewell My Concubine combines Peking Opera with piano to tell the life story of Yu Ji, a concubine that lived during the 3rd century BC.