The National Symphony Orchestra opens its 2010-2011 season on Sept. 17 with a concert combining the highly traditional with the totally new.
The connection between music and painting has always been strong, though more often implied than openly expressed. The terms impressionism, post-impressionism, modernism and post-modernism, though originating in the visual arts, have been applied equally to both mediums. I even attended a jazz concert in Taipei a couple of years ago where a painter completed an entire new picture during one improvised item.
But the link is rarely as explicit as in next Friday’s concert at the National Concert Hall where the 22-minute Diptych of Taiwan by Taiwanese artist and composer I-Uen Wang Hwang (王怡雯) will form the main item in the first half of the evening.
In the European Middle Ages a diptych was a pair of paintings hinged together, usually for display in a church. Hwang has therefore composed a piece in two movements, each based on her own paintings. The first pair of paintings depict the goddess Guanyin (觀音) and the mountain in Tamsui named after her. The second pair evoke a Matsu (媽祖) festival.
The music for the two movements is unsurprisingly very different, but both feature the erhu (二胡) and guzheng
(古箏). The first movement suggests the sunsets for which Tamsui is famous and so is slow to start, then resplendent, then finally fades away, like all sunsets. The second is boisterous, noisy and crowded with incidents like all festivals, though with a tranquil middle section that represents Matsu’s blessing.
Hwang studied in the US and won two important prizes at the University of Pennsylvania (one of them twice). And in 2004 she won the New York Musicians’ Club piano composition competition.
For the rest, the NSO will play Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, hoping perhaps to attract patrons with the famous Adagietto, the symphony’s fourth movement, undoubtedly the best-known piece of music Mahler ever wrote. The evening and the NSO season opens with Mendelssohn’s overture The Hebrides. The orchestra’s maestro Lu Shao-chia (呂紹嘉) will conduct.
Season Opening Concert — Mahler No. 5 (NSO馬勒系列開季音樂會-馬勒第五), Sept. 17 at 7:30pm at the National Concert Hall, Taipei. As of press time, only NT$600 and NT$800 tickets were left. Tickets are available at the NTCH box office, online at www.artsticket.com.tw or by calling (02) 3393-9888.
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