OperaWire: Yannick Nézet-Séguin To Lead Staged ‘Tosca’ At Bravo! Vail Music Festival In 2019

OperaWire
David Salazar

The Philadelphia Orchestra will be back in 2019 to showcase Puccini’s “Tosca” as Bravo! Vail Music Festival’s debut opera production. Performances are set for July 11 and 13, 2019 at the outdoor Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater.

The announcement was made by Bravo! Vail’s Music Festival’s Artistic Director Anne-Marie McDermott during a concert by the ensemble, as led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Nézet-Séguin will conduct with director James Alexander leading production company Symphony V in the rendition of the famed Puccini opera. The production will be set in the 1800s and the opera will showcase an all-star cast that will be revealed at a later date.

Read more here.

The Atlantic: What Classical Music Can Learn From Kanye West

The Atlantic
Spencer Kornhaber

The conversation around Kanye West lately has focused on politics, stunts, and the phrase scoopity-poop. It can be easy to forget that it was his musicianship, not provocations, that built up enough goodwill for him to go on a five-week spree of releasing one album a week (at least one of which, apparently, was put out in unfinished, soon-to-be-revised form).

Some of those albums—Nas’s Nasir and Teyana Taylor’s KTSE, both produced by West—feature string arrangements and vocals by the Yale-trained composer and pop artist Stephen “Johan ” Feigenbaum. He had, in a way, gotten West’s attention by drawing attention away from the noise around West and back to his music. Since 2016, Feigenbaum and the conductor Yuga Cohler have periodically put on performances they call “Yeethoven,” including two in Los Angeles and one at New York City’s Lincoln Center. With a contingent of classical instrumentalists, they trace the similarities between the works of a 21st-century rapper/producer and a 18th- to 19th-century composer.

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.

Classical Post: Shanghai Orchestra Academy Students Gain Invaluable Experience in NYC

Classical Post

(L to R) Sihong Zhao, Yanru Chiu, Fangyu Huang, Joshua Bell, Renchao Yu, and Kuan Liu \ Credit: Chris Lee

Five Shanghai Orchestra Academy students spent more than eight action-packed days in New York City last month participating in both musical and cultural exchange. In addition to performing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade in four concerts with the New York Philharmonic as part of its annual Concerts in the Parks, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer, the students – called Zarin Mehta Fellows – enjoyed tours of the New York Philharmonic Archives, David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and important cultural sites including the 9/11 Memorial and Freedom Tower, Statue of Liberty, and Brooklyn Bridge.

The four Concerts in the Parks performances attained resounding success with the Fellows. The students – Renchao Yu, violin; Kuan Liu, viola; Fangyu Huang, flute; Yanru Chiu, clarinet; and Sihong Zhao, bassoon – met superstar violinist Joshua Bell in addition to working one-on-one with New York Philharmonic Concertmaster Frank Huang, Principal Associate Concertmaster Sheryl Staples, and other Philharmonic Principals.

Read more here.

Gramophone: The Listening Room

Gramophone
James Jolly

James Jolly's weekly selection includes Bach from Daniel Lozakovich, Mark-Anthony Turnage from Marc-André Hamelin and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Bach for the lute played by Thomas Dunford, and a reprise for Jakub Józef Orlinski's Vivaldi.

A work I’m really glad to have discovered is the Piano Concerto by Mark-Anthony Turnage, a work from 2013 and premiered by Marc-André Hamelin with the Rotterdam Phil and Yannick Nézet-Séguin (and the recording here is, I assume, of that first performance). It’s a highly energetic piece and Hamelin is a magnificent soloist. The central movement is an elegy to Hans Werner Henze but the composer I keep getting little hints of is Leonard Bernstein. 

Read more 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.

Strings: Cellist Julian Schwarz on Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1

Strings
Laurence Vittes

Photo Credit: Matt Dine

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 107, was composed in 1959 for his friend Mstislav Rostropovich, who committed it to memory in four days and gave the premiere with Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra in the Large Hall of the Leningrad Conservatory.

It has attained mainstream popularity—more than 60 recordings fill the catalogue including five different performances by Rostropovich himself. Julian Schwarz has not recorded the concerto—yet—but he performed it with the Tucson Symphony in January, and will play it twice this fall, in Lake Forest, Illinois, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In other words, he’s all pumped up for Shostakovich.

In addition to being a virtuoso cellist, Schwarz likes to interact with his audiences—to find out what they feel, what captures their attention, what stands out as “formidable.” After he finished a 30-minute Shostakovich workout in Tucson, Arizona, he returned to the stage and recounted a master class he had led at the University of Arizona earlier in the day, then played five minutes of Bach for an encore.

Click here to read the interview.

Forbes: Isaac Stern's Pioneering Spirit Lives On Via Shanghai Event, $100,000 Prize

Forbes
Russell Flannery

American violinist Isaac Stern found friends and fans in China when he made pioneering visits to the country in its early reform days in the 1970s and 1980s. Though he died at age 81 in 2001, his spirit lives on in the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition, a bi-annual international violin competition to be held starting Aug. 10 with winners to be announced on Sept. 1. The $100,000 first prize is the largest in the world for a violin competition.

The event, which is being organized by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, will be held against a backdrop of growing interest in classical music in China, according to Long Yu, the event president and a top China maestro.

Read more here.

China Daily: Young Virtuosos from Shanghai Orchestra Academy to Play in Parks

China Daily
Hong Xiao

Yu Renchao (third from left), from Shanghai, at a rehearsal with the New York Philharmonic on Monday at Lincoln Center. [Photo by Hong Xiao/CHINA DAILY]

Five young musicians from the Shanghai Orchestra Academy (SOA) are taking part in a special residency with the New York Philharmonic preparing for the philharmonic's concerts in the parks this week.

The five musicians - violinist Yu Renchao, violist Liu Kuan, flautist Huang Fangyu, clarinetist Chiu Yanru and bassoonist Zhao Sihong - were selected from about 20 candidates after rounds of auditions by a panel of New York Philharmonic musicians held at the SOA in March.

The finalists are Zarin Mehta Fellows, who won the chance to participate in the New York Philharmonic Global Academy Fellowship Program, where they take lessons with philharmonic musicians and perform with the orchestra.

Yu, who is not a stranger to the NY Philharmonic, sat for an interview during a break in rehearsals at Lincoln Center on Monday. They were preparing for the four upcoming big events - performing Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade under the baton of James Gaffigan in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx on Tuesday, in Central Park on Wednesday Cunningham Park in Queens on Thursday and Prospect Park in Brooklyn on Friday.

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.