Taiwan’s National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), which has to call itself the Philharmonia Taiwan when playing abroad, has produced a pair of superb CDs of live performances given under its former music director Chien Wen-pin (簡文彬). They feature Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8, with the famous Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 added as an extra track.
The performance of both symphonies is world-class. In the Mahler, the slow third movement is heart-breakingly beautiful (far more so than the bonus Adagietto from the Symphony No. 5 for some reason). It’s one of the finest renderings you’re likely to hear anywhere. All instruments seem caught up in the spell of this music. Soprano Ching Wu (吳青) adds her pure tones to the last movement, and this Symphony No. 4 proves absorbing and wonderful from beginning to end.
Shostakovich’s Eighth is a contro-versial work, dismissed by one critic as “displaying the strained excesses of a depleted imagination.” It was surely chosen for this CD only because Chien thought it was the finest performance in his Shostakovich cycle. However, this is a version that could win over doubters — it’s magnificent in every way. Both CDs are fitting tribute to both Chien and to Taiwan’s finest orchestra, with demonstration quality sound from recording wizard Yu Tzu-tse (尤子澤). Copies are available at Jingo outlets, www.artsticket.com.tw (NTCH site) and at NSO concerts.
Staying with things Russian, watching the first installment of Well Go USA’s three DVD set All the Russias is a moving experience. There will be five hour-long films in all, and this DVD contains the opening two. They’re investigations into aspects of Russian life as reflected in its classical music, with the Marinsky Theater’s Valery Gergiev providing most, but not all, of the commentary — you also see monks and experts of various kinds.
The first film is about the influence of folk music on the 19th-century Russian composers, developing into a disquisition on rural Russia in general. Whereas 100 years ago 87 percent of Russians lived in the country, today a similar percentage lives in cities. There are scenes of abandoned villages as well as of frozen landscapes and the arrival of spring, and extracts from operas and orchestral pieces illustrate how folk themes were incorporated into their works by the likes of Glinka and Tchaikovsky.
The second film, about the role of religion in Russian life, is even more striking. There’s footage dating from 1923 of a Siberian shaman performing a ritual, fragments of a performance of some rasping 11th-century plainsong (so different from the sweet Western variety), and more film of gorgeous onion-domed churches being razed to the ground during the Russian Revolution.
The conclusions these TV-like features come to are unambiguous — some people at least must return to the land or Russia is lost, and Communism’s attempt to eradicate religion from the hearts of the Russian people was doomed to failure. Some very fine music — by Arvo Part, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rachmaninov, among many others — is brought in to support both these arguments.
Rachel Cheung (張緯晴) is a young pianist in the habit of winning first prizes all over the world — in Ukraine, Llangollen, Wales, Salt Lake City, Utah, and her native Hong Kong. Video Artists International (VAI) has issued a DVD of her performance at the Miami International Piano Festival in 2005, and it’s astonishing to see both technical mastery and emotional expressiveness at such a young age — she was 13 at the time. She plays Bach, Liszt, Faure and a Dixie-like encore by Copland with equal confidence and brio. It’s an astonishing performance and Cheung is set to join the long line of pianists of Chinese extraction who have taken the classical world by storm.
For years I’ve wondered why the two one-act operas Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci are always performed in that order. Last week, watching the DVD of Karajan’s versions from 1968 and 1970, I suddenly saw the answer — it’s because Pagliacci is the finer work.
Last month I wrote that Jon Vickers’ singing of Vesti la Giubba — all I had seen of either piece at the time — had “less than total visual clarity,” but I now realize this was because the image was intended to be of him looking at himself in a cheap hand mirror. The reality is that both operas are etched with astonishing vividness and color, as well as being highly dramatic. Karajan, who was “artistic supervisor” as well as conductor, mixes onstage action with Sicilian landscapes in Cavalleria Rusticana and urban back streets in Pagliacci.
It’s the stars, though, that are the big draw. In the first opera, Fiorenza Cossotto is a fierce and yet also soulful Santuzza, with Gianfranco Ceccele as a moody but implacable Turiddu. But most of all, it’s Vickers — as Canio in Pagliacci — who is incomparably wonderful, and supported by a very strong cast, notably Peter Glossop as Tonio. These are probably the two most dynamic melodramas, both based on sexual jealousy, in all Italian opera, and their release on this single DVD will inevitably be compared with Zeffirelli’s 1983 pair with Placido Domingo and Teresa Stratas. It’s impossible to choose between them, and the only solution is therefore to buy them both.
May 26 to June 1 When the Qing Dynasty first took control over many parts of Taiwan in 1684, it roughly continued the Kingdom of Tungning’s administrative borders (see below), setting up one prefecture and three counties. The actual area of control covered today’s Chiayi, Tainan and Kaohsiung. The administrative center was in Taiwan Prefecture, in today’s Tainan. But as Han settlement expanded and due to rebellions and other international incidents, the administrative units became more complex. By the time Taiwan became a province of the Qing in 1887, there were three prefectures, eleven counties, three subprefectures and one directly-administered prefecture, with
It’s an enormous dome of colorful glass, something between the Sistine Chapel and a Marc Chagall fresco. And yet, it’s just a subway station. Formosa Boulevard is the heart of Kaohsiung’s mass transit system. In metro terms, it’s modest: the only transfer station in a network with just two lines. But it’s a landmark nonetheless: a civic space that serves as much more than a point of transit. On a hot Sunday, the corridors and vast halls are filled with a market selling everything from second-hand clothes to toys and house decorations. It’s just one of the many events the station hosts,
Among Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) villages, a certain rivalry exists between Arunothai, the largest of these villages, and Mae Salong, which is currently the most prosperous. Historically, the rivalry stems from a split in KMT military factions in the early 1960s, which divided command and opium territories after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) cut off open support in 1961 due to international pressure (see part two, “The KMT opium lords of the Golden Triangle,” on May 20). But today this rivalry manifests as a different kind of split, with Arunothai leading a pro-China faction and Mae Salong staunchly aligned to Taiwan.
Two moves show Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) is gunning for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) party chair and the 2028 presidential election. Technically, these are not yet “officially” official, but by the rules of Taiwan politics, she is now on the dance floor. Earlier this month Lu confirmed in an interview in Japan’s Nikkei that she was considering running for KMT chair. This is not new news, but according to reports from her camp she previously was still considering the case for and against running. By choosing a respected, international news outlet, she declared it to the world. While the outside world
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