Los Angeles Times: 23rd Beijing Music Festival to Kick Off in October Featuring Virtual Performances

Los Angeles Times

The 23rd Beijing Music Festival is scheduled to kick off in October this year, back with a bang as it features a mix of physical, virtual performances and more than 240 hours of uninterrupted audio-visual performances for music lovers.

Read more here.

Classical Voice North America: Beijing Music Festival is Innovative

Classical Voice North America
Thomas May

“Golden Week” is the name for the national holiday period held in the People’s Republic of China at the beginning of October. This year, it also signaled an earlier-than-usual start to the annual Beijing Music Festival (BMF) — the country’s largest and most extensive festival devoted to classical music.

BMF, which unfolds over the course of the month, is also spread out spatially. This year, in its 22^nd edition, BMF took place in venues dispersed across this vast, sprawling, restlessly energetic city: from the Poly Theatre and the Forbidden City Concert Hall to an exhibition space in the lively nightlife district of Sanlitun and the enormous, egg-shaped National Centre for the Performing Arts (where the grand opening was held on October 9 for the first time in BMF history). It even extended to the Great Wall north of Beijing (specifically, the Wall’s Shuiguan section).

To read more, click here.

The Beijinger: Beijing Music Festival Returns Oct. 4-28

The Beijinger
Will Griffith

One of the world’s leading music festivals since 1998, the Beijing Music Festival returns this month with operas, symphony concerts, recitals, chamber concerts, and more. To read more about the festival of 22 shows, click here.

OperaWire: The Beijing Music Festival As A Microcosm For The Great Chinese City

OperaWire
Francisco Salazar

The Beijing Music Festival is celebrating its 21st anniversary by bringing a diverse array of repertoire intent on exploring its innovative and boundary-crossing initiatives.

This year alone, the festival is showcasing a half-dozen diverse works of music drama and theatre.

Read more here.

South China Morning Post: Passing the baton: Chinese conductors finally get their chance on the big stage

South China Morning Post (via AFP)
Julien Girault (AFP)

After years of relying on Westerners, symphony orchestras across China are turning to a fresh generation of Chinese musical directors.

Jing Huan, one of a new generation of Chinese conductors, performing in Beijing (AFP Photo/WANG Zhao)

Jing Huan twirls her conductor's baton nervously in the wings while the brass and string sections of China's Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra tune their instruments.

Aged 36, Jing is part of a new breed of foreign-trained conductors, as China hopes to gain recognition in the field after winning global fame for its soloists, including piano and string virtuosos...

Last year her orchestra performed on a prestigious Beijing stage as part of a "musical marathon" that saw nine ensembles play one after another to mark the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Music Festival...

China has come a long way however, said Long Yu, 54, artistic director of the Shanghai and Guangzhou symphony orchestras, and founder of the Beijing Music Festival.

"I grew up in Shanghai in the midst of the Cultural Revolution," a period of political turmoil from 1966-1976 during which Western music was banned, the maestro told AFP.

Long secretly learned the piano from his grandfather, a renowned composer, and in the 1980s became one of the first Chinese musicians to study abroad as the Communist government started to open up to the rest of the world.

Read more here and read the original AFP article here.

BBC Music: An interview with conductor Long Yu

BBC Music magazine
Freya Parr

Conductor Long Yu is at the forefront of today's classical music scene in China, where he holds major posts with the China Philharmonic Orchestra, Shanghai and Guangzhou Symphony Orchestras, and the MISA Shanghai Summer Festival. He also conducts orchestras around the globe, from New York to London.

It’s been a month of big changes for Long Yu. He has signed to Deutsche Grammophon with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and has announced that he will be stepping down from his role as artistic director of the prestigious Beijing Music Festival, which he founded in 1998.

Over the years, the festival has hosted artists including pianists Martha Argerich, Murray Perahia and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, violinist Maxim Vengerov and conductor Valery Gergiev. Shuang Zou, who was been the festival's assistant programming director for several years, will take over as the festival's new artistic director.

Read more here.

TimeOut Beijing: The best of Beijing Music Festival 2017

TimeOut Beijing

Beijing's premier music festival turns 20 this year.

The very definition of a Beijing institution, this year the Beijing Music Festival (BMF) celebrates two decades and counting. Beijingers have grown accustomed to top music talent trolling through the city, but it was the BMF that first catapulted China onto the world stage. This year, the creative programming continues apace with an evening of Welsh music, a celebration of Chinese contemporary composers, Beijing’s first Beethoven symphonic cycle, a 12-hour musical marathon and opera events ranging from a single cast member to full-stage Wagner. With opening and closing concerts featuring Frank Peter and Serge Zimmerman (pictured top right), and Maxim Vengerov respectively, Beijing is where you want to be this month.

Orchestral marathon

Wear comfy clothes, bring energy bars and settle in for a long but exhilarating day – even buying one half-day ticket gets you into five concerts. The marathon’s part one (10am-3pm) is a collection of lighter global favourites, such as the always popular Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No 5, Elgar’s Liebesgruss, Bizet’s Carmen Prelude, Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, Lu and Mao’s Dance of the Yao People, Hua and Wu’s The Moon Over a Fountain, Wang Xilin’s (known as China’s Shostakovich) triumphant Torch Festival, and the like. Part two (5pm-10pm) takes on some weight in the form of composer, conductor and China favourite Krzysztof Penderecki’s Chinese Songs, featuring baritone Yuan Chenye (the 'B' cast for Placido Domingo’s 'A' when in China). We’ll also see China’s cello luminary Wang Jian playing Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, and He Ziyu perform the rarely-heard Glazunov’s Violin Concerto in A minor. Other pieces include Stravinsky’s The Firebird (1919 Version) and Smetana’s Die Moldau. Something for everyone – especially those with stamina.

BMF opera

For a while, the BMF was Beijing’s only opera game in town, and even today its programming stands out. This year offers three vastly different performances, from the minimalist to the complex, from the mundane to the fantastic. Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine (Thu 19-Sat 21) (the human voice) is a heart-wrenching and deeply personal look at a solitary woman whose former boyfriend is getting married the following day. In the days before drunk texting, an ill-advised phone call was a spurned lover’s only option, and this lonely soprano makes that final call. (Although most versions are sung in monologue, this one incorporates a dancer for mood – a risky call, since this story stands on its own). Continuing its experiments with digital opera, the BMF also presents the Immersive Opera Vixen (Mon 9-Wed 11). This is a 360-degree take on Leos Janacek’s Cunning Little Vixen, his unusual work drawn from a serialised novel that traces the lifecycles of a wily fox, her animal counterparts, and some hapless humans. In this case, the vixen (Rosie Lomas) is a street urchin, and the live singers mix with pre-recorded music audiences hear on headphones as they immerse themselves by promenading through various rooms. As for Wagner, we’re immersed whether we like it or not. This year, BMF delivers part two of the famous (or infamous, in terms of length) Ring Cycle. Die Walkure (Tue 24, Fri 27) continues where Das Rheingold left off, and sees the warrior Siegmund falling in love with his estranged sister Sieglinde – the result is Siegfried, which takes us to part three. Another time. This is a co-production with Salzburg Easter Festival and makes its Asian premiere at the BMF. If you see one Ring Cycle work, see the one with the Ride of Valkyries, and channel your inner helicopter.

Beethoven cycle

Speaking of massive works, the BMF hosts Paavo Jarvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen in the city’s first Beethoven symphonic cycle. Beethoven’s symphonies literally changed music forever; they were so intimidating to his contemporaries – not to mention his musical descendants –that the number nine became a curse. Now you can see why, in four easy concerts. Eroica (Sun 22) takes on the first, second and third symphonies; Destiny (Mon 23) covers the fourth and the fifth, Pastoral (Wed 25) is for numbers six and seven, and Choral (Thu 26) concludes brilliantly with symphonies eight and nine.

Traditional meets contemporary

These back-to-back concerts combine BMF’s love of folk music with its championing of modern composers. Thriving Artistry of Contemporary China (Mon 16) features Zhang Qianyi’s Yunnan Capriccio Orchestral Suite, Guo Wenjing’s Lotus (Lianhua) Overture for Symphony Orchestra and Zhou Long’s Beijing Rhyme: Symphonic Suite For Orchestra. Zhou and Guo were part of the now legendary 'first class' of Central Conservatory of Music composition students after the schools were reopened in 1977, a group that also included Tan Dun, Ye Xiaogang and Chen Yi. But if the contemporary proves to be too much, relax with some trad music in Walking Around The World (Tue 17). Breathing fire into earthy tradition is the Welsh group Calan, which includes the multi-talented Bethan Williams-Jones, a singer-dancer-pianist- accordion player, as well as harpist Alice French, guitarist Sam Humphreys and fiddlers Patrick Rimes and Angharad Jenkins. Expect to tap your toes.

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.

Beijing Music Festival Pays Tribute to William Shakespeare

The Beijing Music Festival (BMF), having opened to record crowds this season, will kick off a series of events honoring the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. The highlight of this homage will be a production of Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, directed by Robert Carsen in collaboration with the Festival d’Aix en Provence. Not only has this 1991 production never been seen outside of Europe--this will be the first-ever performance of Britten’s 20th century masterpiece in China.

A “Cross-Over Celebration”
The BMF is will commemorate William Shakespeare with a selection of musical works related to and inspired by his plays. Highlights include Mendelssohn’s Overture from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream (October 10th) performed by the West Australian Symphony, as well as Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” Overture-Fantasy, Richard Strauss’ “Macbeth”, William Walton’s “As you Like It”, and Vaughn Williams’ “Serenade to Music”, performed by the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra and Guangzhou Youth Orchestra. But BMF director Tu Song highlights Britten’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” as the main event: “We have invited world famous drama director Robert Carsen…to make something new under an old title”. Carsen is noted in China for his highly successful 2010 staging of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” in Shanghai. The opera will be accompanied by the China Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Stuart Bedford.

The BMF has a tradition of celebrating anniversaries with musical tributes. In 2006 the festival paid homage to Mozart and Shostakovich for their 250th and 100th birthday’s respectively. Other anniversaries have included Wagner, Verdi, Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Chopin.  

About the Beijing Music Festival
Held over 4 weeks every October, BMF is the most important cultural event in China. The Festival and its Founder and Artistic Director, Maestro Long Yu, pioneer China’s unique musical voice. The festival has presented numerous historical performances such as the China premiere of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 (2002), the Asian premiere of Alban Berg's opera, “Lulu” (2002); Guo Wenjing's operas, “Ye Yan” (2003) and “Wolf Club Village” (2003); and the China premiere of Richard Wagner's complete Ring Cycle (2005). BMF’s co-commission with Opera Boston, “Madame White Snake,” was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize.

Newly Appointed NY Phil Conductor to Lead Closing Concert in Beijing

The Beijing Music Festival (BMF) will culminate this Saturday, October 29, in a closing concert by the Hong Kong Philharmonic under the baton of famed Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden. The soon-to-be Maestro of the New York Philharmonic, van Zweden comes to Beijing as the final of three city appearances in mainland China this week, returning to the country after a highly acclaimed tour in 2014 with the Hong Kong Philharmonic. The program will feature a solo performance by Chinese violinist Tianwa Yang, recent winner of the prestigious ECHO Klassik Instrumentalist of the Year Award. 

A New Commission and a Star Violinist
The eclectic program will open with “Quintessence”, a new worked by Hong Kong composer Fung Lam, commissioned by the Hong Kong Philharmonic with the generous support of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation.  Next will be Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 in D, K218, featuring virtuoso Tianwa Yang. Closing the evening will be Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 (“Titan”).

The program makes its way around mainland China this week in Shanghai and Tianjin before coming to Beijing.

The closing concert will mark the end of a highly successful three-week music festival with a record turnout and many spectacular firsts, including a 3D mini-opera production and a brand new Don Giovanni featuring state-of-the-art theatrical effects. President and Artistic Director Long Yu said of this bitter-sweet close: “We’ve come a long way and there’s still a long way to go. So I’d like to say thanks to all the people who have supported us for so many years.”

Currently Jaap van Zweden is Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and has been Music Director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra since 2012. In that year he was named Musical America's Conductor of the Year.

The HK Philharmonic is recognized as Asia’s premiere classical orchestra, performing over 150 concerts per year. Recent guest artists have included Vladimir Ashkenazy, Ning Feng, Matthias Goerne, Lang Lang, Yu Long, Yundi Li, the late Lorin Maazel, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Yuja Wang.

About the Beijing Music Festival
Held over 4 weeks every October, BMF is the most important cultural event in China. The Festival and its Founder and Artistic Director, Maestro Long Yu, pioneer China’s unique musical voice. The festival has presented numerous historical performances such as the China premiere of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 (2002), the Asian premiere of Alban Berg's opera, “Lulu” (2002); Guo Wenjing's operas, “Ye Yan” (2003) and “Wolf Club Village” (2003); and the China premiere of Richard Wagner's complete Ring Cycle (2005). BMF’s co-commission with Opera Boston, “Madame White Snake,” was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize.