It is becoming more and more difficult to obtain review material in this area, so the items selected below are those that this reviewer happened on and enjoyed this year, rather than in any sense the “best of the year” as a whole.
An outstanding DVD from Naxos, issued in March, was Yang Tianwa: Live in Concert at St. Petersburg (reviewed Aug. 28). It contains Tchaikovsky’s and Brahms’s violin concertos — not very original material, you might think, but in the hands of this young Chinese violinist, memorable indeed. She plays them with a tenacity and strength that’s intensely enjoyable and adds an Ysaye movement (see below) as an encore. Also included as a bonus is the young violinist playing Bach’s Partita No: 2 in a studio video recording.
Yang has also recorded the Belgian composer Eugene Ysaye’s six Violin Sonatas (reviewed Aug. 28, Naxos 8.572995). This very fine CD deserves a separate recommendation. In addition, it should be noted that Yang has recorded all of Pablo de Sarasate’s violin music on eight CDs, once again on the Naxos label, though this reviewer has yet to hear them.
The DVD of Ravel’s two short operas, L’Enfant et les Sortileges (The child and the spells) and L’Heure Espagnol (Spanish time) (reviewed Sept. 25, fRA FRA 008) was the winner of the Gramophone magazine’s awards for 2014 in its opera category. Inventive and colorful, with Ravel’s vigorously humorous music, these one-act works mark a welcome break from the usual operatic repertoire. The DVD was shown at the London Proms (the BBC’s series of summer concerts) and received an enthusiastic reception. It clearly pleased the Gramophone critics as well.
New CDs of two of Mozart’s best-loved operas, Le Nozze di Figaro and Cosi fan Tutte, (reviewed May 29 and Dec. 4, Sony 88883709262 and 88765466162 respectively) conducted by Teodor Currrentzis, proved to have many admirers this year, despite the huge competition from earlier recordings. In essence these are youthful performances, as the promotional video available on YouTube clearly shows. By rehearsing and then recording at the Opera House of Perm, in the Russian Urals, the young Greek conductor demonstrated his commitment to musical values rather than commercial ones. Most of the orchestra and soloists are young too, and given that the sound is exceptionally incisive, but the performance style relatively laid-back, these versions of these great works to take notice of. Your critic, incidentally, chose the Figaro for an important Christmas present this year.
Finally, following conductor Claudio Abbado’s death in January, the world’s classical music press was awash with tributes. The consensus was that his finest product among many may have been the DVD of Mahler’s 9th Symphony with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, dating from 2011 and issued by Accentus [ACC 20214]. His last recording was an audio CD of Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos: 20 and 25 with Martha Argerich, issued posthumously (Both reviewed Jan. 30). The accompaniment is by the Orchestra Mozart, which Abbado founded.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless