Maestro Henry Mazer doesn't talk when he's conducting. And he doesn't stop the flow of music for anything. He is nicknamed "cobra eyes" for his intense, sharp gaze that fixes on any musician who plays an errant note during rehearsal.
Intimidating? Not at all. For musicians at the Taipei Sinfonietta & Philharmonic Orchestra, music director and conductor Mazer is why they enjoy playing music so much. He doesn't impose his own standards. He doesn't put the musicians down. He doesn't create tension or stress.
"I believe in making them play. I don't like to force anything. They know what I want and I know what they can do," says Mazer, the music director and conductor of Taiwan's most successful orchestra.
A music critic once described Mazer as "an amusingly crusty character," which in some way is similar to the conductor's favorite cartoon character, Garfield. Anecdotes abound about the man, with a particular favorite being one about when Mazer first came to Taiwan in 1975. Living in Kaohsiung, he first led the city's orchestra. Whenever his musicians played badly during rehearsals, he would turn and bow to a picture of Sun Yat-sen or Chiang Kai-shek and humorously lament: "I am sorry to let you listen to this, sir."
At the age of 80, and after a lifetime of conducting, he says he feels like the luckiest man in the world. "I have had the most successful career here," says Mazer, who for a long time assisted American conductors William Steinberg and Georg Solti before taking the helm here.
The group Mazer leads is something to be proud of. It is by far the only private orchestra that usually packs the concert hall and it has enjoyed generous praise from international critics when on tour.
After a Boston performance in 1995, The Boston Globe recognized the orchestra as "extremely well trained by Mazer," and said the musicians "play with glowing sound, precision of intonation, absolute unanimity of impulse and rare commitment."
These days the humorous conductor is in an agile mood, which shows in the music he chose for Sunday's concert. It's all Beethoven, but Beethoven in happier times. "An evening of Beethoven" will highlight the composer's Symphony No 7 in A Major and Concerto for Piano No 4 in G Major. Both the conductor's favorite pieces, the symphony is happy, light and fun, and the piano concerto is easy-going and lovely.
Pianist Chen Pi-shien (陳必先) is another catch of the concert. She is very familiar to local classical music fans as an extremely hardworking and talented musician. Having been a resident of Germany for 41 years, Chen always appears quite nostalgic when she's back in town. She is contemporary in many ways, in terms of technique and spirit, and she is devoted to giving classical music a new life by imbuing it with modern interpretation.
As the biggest private orchestra in Taiwan, the Taipei orchestra is a major task for anyone to try to keep alive.
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Perched on Thailand’s border with Myanmar, Arunothai is a dusty crossroads town, a nowheresville that could be the setting of some Southeast Asian spaghetti Western. Its main street is the final, dead-end section of the two-lane highway from Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city 120kms south, and the heart of the kingdom’s mountainous north. At the town boundary, a Chinese-style arch capped with dragons also bears Thai script declaring fealty to Bangkok’s royal family: “Long live the King!” Further on, Chinese lanterns line the main street, and on the hillsides, courtyard homes sit among warrens of narrow, winding alleyways and
RSS