Jimmy Lin Cho-liang (
Ever since he was asked to mastermind the first triennial festival six years ago, this has been, over and above everything else, Jimmy Lin's occasion. And he has other ambitions for it too -- notably to extend the festival to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore.
"This is very much on my mind," he said in Taipei yesterday. "In fact we were going to go to Shanghai this year, but the venue became available rather late and in the event we couldn't fit it in. As it is, we have artists going on to Korea straight after appearing here.
PHOTO COURTESY MNA
"But I still hope to do it, both Shanghai and the Hong Kong Arts Festival.
"And we won't wait three years. I hope we can make this event happen every two years from now on."
This is very much a virtuoso-centered festival, with concertos dominating the program and famous soloists appearing side by side in chamber works. There's not a symphony in sight during the entire eight days.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MNA
"It's fast becoming one of the world's great music festivals," said renowned violinist Gil Shaham in Taipei earlier this week. "I grew up in Israel and there's something about Taiwan that reminds me of there -- the warmth of the people, and perhaps the climate. Anyway, I love coming back."
Shaham is one of several famous soloists performing in the International Music Festival which opens today and runs until next Saturday.
Among the others are cellists Lynn Harrell and Jian Wang, pianists Barry Douglas and Helen Huang, and violinists Amy Iwazumi and Frank Huang.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MNA
Best known of all, of course, is master violinist Lin Cho-liang. In all Lin will be playing in six of the festival's seven concerts, the only exception being the first Taipei concert on 17 March.
Lin opens the festival tonight with a chamber music concert in Hsinchu, to be repeated tomorrow in Kaohsiung. A change from the published program brings Lin and Shaham, both violinists, together for the only time in the festival in Prokofiev's Sonata for Two Violins.
Lin has long been seen as a keen advocate of Prokofiev's music. He's said he finds the combination of his two sides, the motor-driven percussive dissonance on the one hand, and the sensuous, elegant lyricism on the other, fascinating.
"Yes, I wanted something that Gil Shaham and I could play together," said Lin. "And we both love Prokofiev and this work."
The first Taipei concert is on Monday, with Shaham in the National Concert Hall. He will play Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 and, with Wang Jian
Lin, who was born in Taiwan, is a great enthusiast for the music of Prokofiev, and has said finds his first violin concerto especially engaging.
"The violin part is really more a part of the overall orchestral color and texture than a part that stands out from the orchestra. It's such a beautiful work, full of fairytale-like colors and characters."
He will no doubt be a keen and appreciative critic in the audience in Taipei's National Concert Hall next Monday evening.
"I've known Wang for 20 years," said Shaham. "Brahms's double concerto is very much about friendship. He wrote it for his old friend [the famous Hungarian violinist Joseph] Joachim. But prior to this they hadn't spoken for 20 years! They'd fallen out, and were brought back together by this concerto in which Joachim played the violin part for the opening performance.
"It's possible, as a result, to hear Brahms as the cello and Joachim as the violin in this, Brahms's last orchestral work," Shaham said, before playing both the violin's and the cello's opening bars on his violin.
"There is much conflict between the two instruments, with resolution and happiness only coming about at the end of the last movement.
"And this concerto also has something of the old pre-Romantic concerto grosso style about it, with the two soloists interacting with each other in the older style, rather than striking out on their own in the Romantic way."
Then there are nights of Lin with Douglas (Wednesday 19 March in Taichung), and Lin with Harrell (Thursday 20 March in Miaoli, repeated the following evening in Taipei).
The program for these three concerts will be largely the same, only with Mozart's Piano Concerto in A, K.414 with Barry Douglas in Taichung, and Haydn's Cello Concerto No:1 with Lynn Harrell in Miaoli and Taipei. For the rest, they both feature Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No.3, concertos for two violins by Bach and Vivaldi, Grieg's Holberg Suite and Gordon Chin's Formosa Seasons.
In the festival's closing concert, in Taipei on Saturday March 22, many of the stars will be appearing together. Helen Huang will play Mozart's Piano Concerto in D Minor, K.466, his most ambitious and mysterious contribution to the genre, and Douglas will close the event with Rachmaninov's titanic and exceptionally difficult Piano Concerto No.3 straight after playing Beethoven's Triple Concerto for violin, cello and piano with Harrell and Lin.
"Yes, the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.3 has got a lot of notes," said Douglas in Taipei this week. "It's said to have a quarter of a million. Difficult? perhaps -- but to play anything well is difficult. It's not only a matter of how many note it contains.
"I'm very excited by this festival," he added. "It's friends playing music together, and as such goes back to the `mix-and-match' kind of concerts they used to have in the 18th century." In this he refers to the small- and large-scale works being programmed side by side that characterizes some of the coming concerts.
Douglas, who hails from Ireland, has been living in Paris for the last 14 years. This is his first visit to Taiwan, he said, since he played two concerts here some 13 years ago.
Violinist Shaham was also voluble on his recording commitments. A recently released CD from Deutsche Grammophon of Schubert items for violin and guitar -- some original dances and some arrangements -- would probably be the last he would doing with the company, he said. He went on to express the sense of liberation he felt to be free of this contract, and his pleasure in being able in future to choose for himself what he wanted to record, and with whom.
Another important feature of the festival is the appearance of the celebrated Beijing conducterTang Muhai (
Tang parted company with the China National Symphony Orchestra last autumn.
Since January he has been Chief Conductor of the Finnish National Opera, and before that spent time with the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon. He won a Grammy with them for the best performance of a classical contemporary composition.
Like Lin, Tang was an exceptional musician from the start. Herbert von Karajan picked him out as someone to watch in 1983 when he graduated from Munich's Academy of Music, and invited him to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, considered by many to be the world's finest orchestra, the following autumn.
This festival has always been something rather special. In bringing together a number of internationally famous soloists, and having them play together, it has an informal touch to it, as Gil Shahan was quick to appreciate.
"An important part of this festival is simply making music with friends," he said. "I'm so happy to be back."
But it's Lin Cho-liang who will continue to hold most of the public attention. "As young musicians we all worshipped him," said Shaham. "He was our hero. Now we are old friends. My wife and I have just had a baby boy, our first. He's had one too, and our wives even shared the same New York doctor."
Detailed program information can be obtained from the Management of New Arts Web site at http://www.mna.com.tw/. Taipei tickets range from NT$1,200 to NT$3,600 with cheaper prices available for the Taichung and Miaoli shows.
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