Chamber Music America Magazine: Bridge Builders

Chamber Music America Magazine
Claire Sykes

It was the last thing they ever expected. When the foursome first teamed up more than 35 years ago, they didn’t think their string quartet would continue for long, let alone become one of the most successful in the world.

The 35-year-old Shanghai Quartet travels as seamlessly between hemispheres as it does between traditional and new music. To read more of the quartet’s feature in Chamber Music America Magazine, click here.

The Strad: Shanghai Quartet – May 2019 Cover

The Strad

Keep an eye out for the Shanghai Quartet on the cover of the May 2019 issue. What a celebration of their 35th anniversary this season!

The issue is available for purchase online here.

Excerpt:

‘When we formed the Shanghai Quartet in 1983 chamber music in China was almost non-existent,’ says the ensemble’s first violinist Weigang Li. ‘Western music had been introduced to the country in the 1920s and 30s, and the first generation of classical musicians included my grandfather, a violinist, who played in a quartet with Yo-Yo Ma’s father (also a violinist) before the latter moved to Paris. But most Chinese musicians, even by the 1980s, simply weren’t aware of the scope and depth of this fantastic repertoire.’

Li is speaking to me at the 2018 Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition, where he is serving as a jury member. His fellow quartet members are here too, providing the professional element for the chamber music round. The significance of the Stern name is not lost on Li, who in 1979, at the age of 15, was featured in the Oscar-winning documentary From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China.

Read more here.

Pizzicato: 35 Years of Shanghai Quartet: Beethoven forever

Pizzicato
Remy Franck

35 years ago, one of today's foremost chamber ensembles, the Shanghai Quartet, was formed at the Shanghai Conservatory. Since that year they have played around 3000 concerts and recorded 35 albums. Remy Franck met First violinist and founding member Weigang Li in his native Shanghai.

As many Chinese and, more generally, Asian violinists, you studied in the United States….

Yes, but I made the major part of my studies in China, if you don’t consider the fact that studying does never stop. I was born into a family of well-known musicians in Shanghai. Both of my parents were professional violinists and my maternal grand-father was also a violinist. He was born in 1908 and was one of the earliest professional classical violinists in China. I began studying the violin with my parents when I was five and went on to attend the Shanghai Conservatory at 14. Three years later, in 1981, when I was seventeen, I was chosen to go to study for one year at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music through a cultural exchange program between the sister cities of Shanghai and San Francisco. In 1985, I graduated from the Shanghai Conservatory and went on studying again – for my finishing touch – in the United States. But by then, we had already created the Quartet.

Your quartet played in the Stern competition, you having been replaced by a candidate. Was this important for your ensemble?

It is very important for the competition to have this chamber music round. For us it was enriching too. We had interesting ideas which were brought in by the contestants. For me, obviously, it was strange to sit in the Jury and not be part of the ensemble. It was even more astonishing, how flexible my colleagues were when one of the young candidates asked for something very unusual for us. I told myself: ‘Oh, they can do that’. And I am not sure, my colleagues would have agreed if I proposed such a point (laughs).

Read more here.

Strings Magazine: Tour Diary – Shanghai Quartet Brings Beethoven to China for 35th Anniversary Season

Strings

Tour Diary: Shanghai Quartet Brings Beethoven to China for 35^th Anniversary Season

June 11, 2018

April 9, 2018: Weigang (first violin), showing us the lounge life, getting ready for our 35th anniversary Beethoven Quartet Cycle in Beijing, Tianjin, Wuhan, and Changsha. Scotch is the quartet’s drink of choice when traveling, as you can see here with soda water.

April 11, 2018: We had a lovely dinner upon our arrival to Beijing for our 35th anniversary Beethoven Cycle tour with maestro Long Yu, David Stern, and Cheng Zen, concertmaster of the China Philharmonic. Such good friends always meet over great food and, thanks to classmate and Shanghai neighbor maestro Long Yu, good wine, too!

April 12, 2018: The 35th anniversary Beethoven Cycle began with Op. 127 at the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. This was the first of 24 concerts performing the 4 cycles across China. The excitement in the hall was palpable on the stage and in the house for opening night.

April 13, 2018: Second violinist Yi-Wen with Steven Smith, director of J & A Beare, after our second Beethoven cycle performance in Beijing. Beare’s International Violin Society graciously loaned the Shanghai Quartet four instruments for our 35th anniversary season, including two Stradivari, one Guarneri del Gesù, and a Goffriller. We are so grateful for the generosity of the violin society, and for the loans of these truly spectacular instruments.

April 13, 2018: Often our tours have CD signing sessions directly following performances. In Tianjin following the first of two concerts at the Grand Theatre—we sold quite a few CDs to even the youngest of our audience members! And what is nice is that audience members are actually buying physical CDs. It’s also super helpful that we are selling recordings of the very pieces that we played that evening. (We’ve recorded the entire Beethoven quartet cycle on the Japanese label Camerata.)

April 14, 2018: Sometimes things get out of control on empty buses when going to and from the airports and train stations. We try to keep it civil, but all too often things get out of hand and someone gets hurt either physically or emotionally. Yi-Wen had just listened to our playback from the last night’s concert and let us know how he felt about the recording. We thought he was kidding, but he was not and it was emotionally hurting. Not to worry however, we hugged it out at the airport later that afternoon.

April 15, 2018: We were invited to appear on the CCTV show Life in Music, a one-hour long show that will air in August and be seen by more than 10 million viewers. We did our best not to look too stiff, but kept it string-quartet stylish with our signature bow ties!

For the full tour diary, click here.

Playbill: Shanghai Quartet Performs in Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society's Winter Festival

Playbill
Gail Wein

Finckel is especially excited about the Shanghai Quartet, which performs in the final concert of the festival, the program originally played on March 26, 1827 (March 27). “The Shanghai really is as fine a string quartet as one can hear. I’m very gratified that they’re coming to do this,” he says. There’s another notable aspect of this particular program: Beethoven died the same day.

The last piece on the program is Beethoven’s Piano Trio in G major, Op. 1, No. 2. “This was one of the works that Beethoven officially introduced himself to Vienna, his first published work,” says Finckel. “He decided to make a go of chamber music as his way to put his foot forward.”

Read more here.