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.
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated