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.
By global standards, the traffic congestion that afflicts Taiwan’s urban areas isn’t horrific. But nor is it something the country can be proud of. According to TomTom, a Dutch developer of location and navigation technologies, last year Taiwan was the sixth most congested country in Asia. Of the 492 towns and cities included in its rankings last year, Taipei was the 74th most congested. Taoyuan ranked 105th, while Hsinchu County (121st), Taichung (142nd), Tainan (173rd), New Taipei City (227th), Kaohsiung (241st) and Keelung (302nd) also featured on the list. Four Japanese cities have slower traffic than Taipei. (Seoul, which has some
Michael slides a sequin glove over the pop star’s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson’s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great. Antoine Fuqua’s movie is sanctioned by Jackson’s estate and its producers include the estate’s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film ends before the flood of allegations of sexual abuse of children, or Jackson’s own acknowledgment of sleeping alongside kids. Jackson and his estate have long maintained his innocence. In his only criminal trial, in 2005, Jackson was acquitted. Michael doesn’t even subtly nod to these facts.
Writing of the finds at the ancient iron-working site of Shihsanhang (十 三行) in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里), archaeologist Tsang Cheng-hwa (臧振華) of the Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology observes: “One bronze bowl gilded with gold, together with copper coins and fragments of Tang and Song ceramics, were also found. These provide evidence for early contact between Taiwan aborigines and Chinese.” The Shihsanhang Web site from the Ministry of Culture says of the finds: “They were evidence that the residents of the area had a close trading relation with Chinese civilians, as the coins can be
During her 2015 trip to Taiwan, Sophia J. Chang (張詠慧) got fewer answers than she’d hoped for, but more revelations than she could have imagined. “That was the year I last saw my grandmother. She was in hospice care in Tainan, and it was painful to see her in bed, barely able to open her eyes,” says Los Angeles-born Chang. “The grandma I’d known, a fantastic cook and incredibly kind, was already gone.” After their visit, Chang and her grandfather went back to his apartment. There she asked him how he’d met her grandmother. “He hesitated, then started talking a bit.
RSS