ANGELA HEWITT
To play Chopin, you have to try to be a poet like him. You can be as clever or passionate as you like, but if you don’t make the piano sing, you’re not playing Chopin. That doesn’t mean being sentimental. There’s no image less helpful than that of the Romantic consumptive, eating himself up at the piano with the rain hammering against the windows. You only need to hear his music to be in touch with his immense inner strength and sense of discipline and craftsmanship.
PETER DONOHOE
I learned to play Chopin early, but avoided performing his music until about 20 years ago. I was wary of the Romantics as a young pianist, but listening to older recordings taught me how classical Chopin is in his clarity of form. The key to playing his work is a restraint that only comes after years of playing it. I’d held back performing the Piano Concerto No 1 in E minor until the other day, when I did it for the first time. I suddenly felt young and vulnerable again. After all, his music is partly why we become pianists.
EMANUEL AX
I’m from a Polish family, so playing Chopin was unavoidable. Although he’s a national hero, his real value is universal. His connection with the piano is so complete, it feels almost as if the instrument was created to allow his music to come into the world. I have to work hard to get it right, but the notes fall under the hands so beautifully that playing him is overwhelmingly pleasurable.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby