I was fortunate enough this month to meet a young Czech who was a fanatical fan of
his country’s orchestral music. When he held a fine pair of Sennheiser headphones to my ears and flicked his cell phone I experienced what I can only call a revelation. The sound that erupted was not only ice-clear but sensational.
It was an opera by Smetana called Libuse, apparently a sure-fire hit in Prague, but rarely heard anywhere else. It’s an intensely nationalistic piece celebrating the founding of the Czech nation and was premiered at the opening of Prague’s National Theater in 1881, and revived at the opening of its replacement — after the original building had burnt down — two years later.
The style of the music is titanic, both forceful and magnificent, and in my friend’s recording the astonishing voice of Eva Urbanova in the title role was overwhelming. She’s a top-ranking international star, of course, having sung Tosca, Turandot, Ortrud and Santuzza at the Met in New York, and many other leading roles elsewhere. Maybe she should urge Libuse on some non-Czech theater managers, but the short cut for music-lovers is to get hold of these remarkable CDs as soon as possible. The conductor is Oliver von Dohnanyi.
The Smetana Quartet was one of the finest string quartets in Europe in the decades following World War II. It finally disbanded in 1989, but before then was a veritable ambassador of Czech music abroad. The quartet was especially popular in Japan, where it first went in 1958. The group’s members describe the experience in an hour-long documentary that’s added to the DVD from Supraphon that contains their farewell Prague concert. Japan was their favorite foreign country, they say, and there’s footage here of their farewell concert in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall in November 1988. After 1989 they helped found the Skampa and Panocha quartets in Prague, as well as worked with several others.
Smetana himself was always their special interest. He was undervalued abroad, they felt, and they invariably played one of his two string quartets at concerts — warmth and emotion controlled by reason, they consider. Schonberg said the second one, written when the composer was desperately ill, was the beginning of modern music. Janacek’s two somber quartets were probably even more so. They’re operas without words, they opine, “concentrated suffering and fury.”
Josef Suk played with the Smetana Quartet in Tokyo in 1984. Video Artists International have issued a fine DVD of a concert he gave with pianist Rudolf Firkusny — both Czechs, of course, and Suk Dvorak’s great-grandson — in 1992. On it they play violin and piano duos by Dvorak, Janacek, Brahms and Beethoven in Prague’s Dvorak Hall of the Rodolfinum (where Dvorak himself conducted the Czech Philharmonic). It’s a particularly congenial occasion, and the music-making is everywhere mellow and devoted.
Lastly, in view of the visit of Anne-Sophie Mutter to Taiwan next weekend, it’s appropriate to mention the DVD of her performing, with the Berlin Philharmonic under Seiji Ozawa, in the 2008 Herbert von Karajan Memorial Concert (DVD 2009). It contains Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, a solo sarabande by Bach played by Mutter, and Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony. Needless to say, the performances are all superlative.
When nature calls, Masana Izawa has followed the same routine for more than 50 years: heading out to the woods in Japan, dropping his pants and doing as bears do. “We survive by eating other living things. But you can give faeces back to nature so that organisms in the soil can decompose them,” the 74-year-old said. “This means you are giving life back. What could be a more sublime act?” “Fundo-shi” (“poop-soil master”) Izawa is something of a celebrity in Japan, publishing books, delivering lectures and appearing in a documentary. People flock to his “Poopland” and centuries-old wooden “Fundo-an” (“poop-soil house”) in
Jan 13 to Jan 19 Yang Jen-huang (楊仁煌) recalls being slapped by his father when he asked about their Sakizaya heritage, telling him to never mention it otherwise they’ll be killed. “Only then did I start learning about the Karewan Incident,” he tells Mayaw Kilang in “The social culture and ethnic identification of the Sakizaya” (撒奇萊雅族的社會文化與民族認定). “Many of our elders are reluctant to call themselves Sakizaya, and are accustomed to living in Amis (Pangcah) society. Therefore, it’s up to the younger generation to push for official recognition, because there’s still a taboo with the older people.” Although the Sakizaya became Taiwan’s 13th
Earlier this month, a Hong Kong ship, Shunxin-39, was identified as the ship that had cut telecom cables on the seabed north of Keelung. The ship, owned out of Hong Kong and variously described as registered in Cameroon (as Shunxin-39) and Tanzania (as Xinshun-39), was originally People’s Republic of China (PRC)-flagged, but changed registries in 2024, according to Maritime Executive magazine. The Financial Times published tracking data for the ship showing it crossing a number of undersea cables off northern Taiwan over the course of several days. The intent was clear. Shunxin-39, which according to the Taiwan Coast Guard was crewed
For anyone on board the train looking out the window, it must have been a strange sight. The same foreigner stood outside waving at them four different times within ten minutes, three times on the left and once on the right, his face getting redder and sweatier each time. At this unique location, it’s actually possible to beat the train up the mountain on foot, though only with extreme effort. For the average hiker, the Dulishan Trail is still a great place to get some exercise and see the train — at least once — as it makes its way
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