It sometimes seems as if there’s nothing Taiwan’s classical music audiences love so much as paying good money to see international celebrities in the flesh.
The next 10 days will witness the Croatian pianist Ivo Pogorelich giving concerts in Taipei and Kaohsiung, with Jose Carreras and Kiri Te Kanawa hard on his heels in joint recitals in the same cities. While Pogorelich will play in concert halls (the National Concert Hall in Taipei and the Chih-teh Hall in Kaohsiung), the two singers, accompanied by Taiwan’s Evergreen Symphony Orchestra under David Gimenez, are likely to all but fill the two cities’ giant arenas. What, then, is going on?
Pogorelich, a hugely talented artist at the height of his powers, will play a program of serious items chosen, one imagines, to please himself rather than to conform with any perceived taste out there in the stalls. Carreras and Te Kanawa, by contrast, appear to be doing everything in their power to attract mass audiences. The second half of their program consists of unchallenging items (Gershwin, Man of La Mancha), and they will wind up proceedings by singing together a Chinese folk song, A Place Far, Far Away (在那遙遠的地方).
It is always nice to hear the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra, but it’s nevertheless tempting to say that when once-powerful vocalists are in the twilight years of their careers, they routinely embark on tours of Asia. This is perfectly legitimate — what is surprising, though, is that audiences appear so willing to pay to go and hear them. There must be a thousand better working singers in the operatic field, youthfully vibrant and lacking only celebrity names. But here in the far-flung corners of Asia we seem to prefer to pay to hear the celebrities, whatever their age, in far-too-large auditoriums in which generous amplification is of course a necessity.
But the huge arenas are justified because the ticket-buying demand is there. It’s only possible to conclude that what
people really want is to be seen to be connected to some kudos-bearing name. They don’t want a musical experience but a status-enhancing one.
Pogorelich is another matter. He’s part of the ongoing, if rather drawn-out, Chopin International Festival (this year being the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth) and he’ll play, among other things, Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58, not greatly popular but something serious pianists love to get their teeth into. Good luck to him! He’s not one for throwing sops to the masses, and if you judge any of these three visitors to our shores to be worthy of your support, then Pogorelich is undoubtedly the one to go for.
The fact that he’s also giving a free concert in Taichung tomorrow night testifies again to his good, and strictly non-commercial, intentions. The contrast with what’s happening in the Kaohsiung stadium and Taipei arena could hardly be more marked.
The small platform at Duoliang Train Station in Taitung County’s Taimali Township (太麻里) served villagers from 1992 to 2006, but was eventually shut down due to lack of use. Just 10 years later, the abandoned train station had become widely known as the most beautiful station in Taiwan, and visitors were so frequent that the village had to start restricting traffic. Nowadays, Duoliang Village (多良) is known as a bit of a tourist trap, with a mandatory, albeit modest, admission fee of NT$10 giving access to a crowded lane of vendors with a mediocre view of the ocean and the trains
For many people, Bilingual Nation 2030 begins and ends in the classroom. Since the policy was launched in 2018, the debate has centered on students, teachers and the pressure placed on schools. Yet the policy was never solely about English education. The government’s official plan also calls for bilingualization in Taiwan’s government services, laws and regulations, and living environment. The goal is to make Taiwan more inclusive and accessible to international enterprises and talent and better prepared for global economic and trade conditions. After eight years, that grand vision is due for a pulse check. RULES THAT CAN BE READ For Harper Chen (陳虹宇), an adviser
Traditionally, indigenous people in Taiwan’s mountains practice swidden cultivation, or “slash and burn” agriculture, a practice common in human history. According to a 2016 research article in the International Journal of Environmental Sustainability, among the Atayal people, this began with a search for suitable forested slopeland. The trees are burnt for fertilizer and the land cleared of stones. The stones and wood are then piled up to make fences, while both dead and standing trees are retained on the plot. The fences are used to grow climbing crops like squash and beans. The plot itself supports farming for three years.
President William Lai (賴清德) on Nov. 25 last year announced in a Washington Post op-ed that “my government will introduce a historic US$40 billion supplementary defense budget, an investment that underscores our commitment to defending Taiwan’s democracy.” Lai promised “significant new arms acquisitions from the United States” and to “invest in cutting-edge technologies and expand Taiwan’s defense industrial base,” to “bolster deterrence by inserting greater costs and uncertainties into Beijing’s decision-making on the use of force.” Announcing it in the Washington Post was a strategic gamble, both geopolitically and domestically, with Taiwan’s international credibility at stake. But Lai’s message was exactly
RSS