Ask any astute Taiwanese observer of the local classical music scene why all the tickets are sold for Yundi Li's Taipei concert on Sunday and you will get the reply: "Because he's Chinese."
Yundi Li, still only 20, rocketed to the attention of audiences and CD buyers in Europe and Asia following his sensational winning of Warsaw's Chopin Competition, the first time its top prize had been awarded to anyone in 15 years. His first CD Yundi Li: Chopin sold exceptionally well, and has been followed by Yundi Li: Liszt and two others, one issued in Japan. And he has still to make his debut, live or on disc, in the US.
The fact that he's Chinese may influence some ticket-buyers, overjoyed to see someone of his ethnicity beat the foreigners at what could be perceived as their own game. Nevertheless, there have been many before him, and in every department of classical virtuosity. This week alone has seen several such in Taipei for Lin Cho-liang's International Music Festival, but the loudest applause at last Monday's concert was for Gil Shaham and Lynn Harrell, notably non-Chinese musical stars.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MNA
Another element in Yundi Li's phenomenal success may be his youthful good looks, plus the way these have been used by Deutsche Grammophon in promoting his recordings.
Nevertheless, the heart of the matter is that Yundi Li is an outstanding artist in his own right. His Liszt CD is brilliant in every way, combining the utmost delicacy with total interpretative authority and, where necessary, power. All the indications are that here is a major international pianist, supremely talented by any standards, with a long career ahead of him.
His three Taiwan concerts will feature Chopin's four Scherzos, followed by the arduous Sonata in B Minor of Liszt which opens his Yundi Li: Liszt CD.
This is a rather uncompromising program, to put it mildly. Chopin's scherzos (he only wrote these four) are not like what most listeners will expect from this composer. And the Liszt sonata is bravura stuff, but hardly familiar to non-specialists.
Yundi Li, in other words, is making no allowances for popular taste, but instead assaulting some very difficult music head-on. There can be little doubt, however, that there will be encore items at the end, and these are likely to be of more familiar material.
Sunday's concert in Taipei is sold out, but tickets from NT$800 to NT$1,500 were available for Tuesday's concert in Kaohsiung and Thursday's in Taichung as of press time.
Yundi Li will perform at the National Concert Hall, Taipei on Sunday at 7.45pm; at Chihte Hall, Kaohsiung, 25 March, 7.30pm, and at Chunghsing Hall, Taichung, 27 March, 7.30pm. Tickets are available through ERA ticketing.
“China wants to unify with Taiwan at the lowest possible cost, and it currently believes that unification will become easier and less costly as time passes,” wrote Amanda Hsiao (蕭嫣然) and Bonnie Glaser in Foreign Affairs (“Why China Waits”) this month, describing how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is playing the long game in its quest to seize Taiwan. This has been a favorite claim of many writers over the years, easy to argue because it is so trite. Very obviously, if the PRC isn’t attacking Taiwan, it is waiting. But for what? Hsiao and Glaser’s main point is trivial,
May 18 to May 24 Gathered on Yangtou Mountain (羊頭山) on Dec. 5, 1972, Taiwan’s hiking enthusiasts formally declared the formation of the “100 Peaks Club” (百岳俱樂部) and unveiled the final list of mountains. Famed mountaineer Lin Wen-an (林文安) led this effort for the Chinese Alpine Association (中華山岳協會). Working with other experienced climbers, he chose 100 peaks above 10,000 feet (3,048m) that featured triangulation points and varied in difficulty and character. The list sparked an alpine hiking craze, inspiring many to take up mountaineering and competing to “conquer” the summits. A common misconception is that the 100 Peaks represent Taiwan’s 100 tallest
Yesterday, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nominated legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋) as their Taipei mayoral candidate, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) put their stamp of approval on Wei Ping-cheng (魏平政) as their candidate for Changhua County commissioner and former legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has begun the process to also run in Changhua, though she has not yet been formally nominated. All three news items are bizarre. The DPP has struggled with settling on a Taipei nominee. The only candidate who declared interest was Enoch Wu (吳怡農), but the party seemed determined to nominate anyone
In a sudden move last week, opposition lawmakers of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) passed a NT$780 billion special defense budget as a preemptive measure to stop either Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平) or US President Donald Trump from blocking US arms sales to Taiwan at their summit in Beijing, said KMT heavyweight Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), speaking to the Taipei Foreign Correspondents Club on Wednesday night in Taipei. The 76-year-old Jaw, a political talk show host who ran as the KMT’s vice presidential candidate in 2024, says that he personally brokered the deal to resolve
RSS