Conductor Gunther Herbig is holding a workshop in Taipei for the first time and has attracted 16 students from five countries to attend.
The German maestro is expected to choose 10 students from among those attending to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) on Sunday, an NSO official said.
The workshop began on Monday and will conclude on Saturday.
“A conducting workshop is very different, its requirements are very expensive,” Herbig told a press conference yesterday.
He added that it was very difficult to be a conductor.
The arrangements are complicated and the range of skills required is extensive, since “a conductor has to have a good ear and the ability to bring a score to life,” Herbig said.
“It also needs a lot of psychological skills to deal with a group of individuals in the orchestra,” he said.
Having held many conducting classes in Europe, Herbig said he is pleased to have a chance to coach students in Asia.
Herbig has served as an artistic adviser and principal guest conductor of the NSO in Taiwan since January 2008.
He has previously led many famous orchestras worldwide and worked as the general music director of the Dresden Philharmonic in 1972 and held the same post with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra from 1977 to 1983.
Herbig also served as the principal guest conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in 1979 and later was invited to conduct major ensembles at the London Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic London and the Orchestre de Paris among others, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and many others in major cities.
He then moved from East Germany to North America in 1984 where he worked for 10 years as the musical director of two symphony orchestras, first in Detroit and then in Toronto.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods