It sometimes seems as if there’s nothing Taiwan’s classical music audiences love so much as paying good money to see international celebrities in the flesh.
The next 10 days will witness the Croatian pianist Ivo Pogorelich giving concerts in Taipei and Kaohsiung, with Jose Carreras and Kiri Te Kanawa hard on his heels in joint recitals in the same cities. While Pogorelich will play in concert halls (the National Concert Hall in Taipei and the Chih-teh Hall in Kaohsiung), the two singers, accompanied by Taiwan’s Evergreen Symphony Orchestra under David Gimenez, are likely to all but fill the two cities’ giant arenas. What, then, is going on?
Pogorelich, a hugely talented artist at the height of his powers, will play a program of serious items chosen, one imagines, to please himself rather than to conform with any perceived taste out there in the stalls. Carreras and Te Kanawa, by contrast, appear to be doing everything in their power to attract mass audiences. The second half of their program consists of unchallenging items (Gershwin, Man of La Mancha), and they will wind up proceedings by singing together a Chinese folk song, A Place Far, Far Away (在那遙遠的地方).
It is always nice to hear the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra, but it’s nevertheless tempting to say that when once-powerful vocalists are in the twilight years of their careers, they routinely embark on tours of Asia. This is perfectly legitimate — what is surprising, though, is that audiences appear so willing to pay to go and hear them. There must be a thousand better working singers in the operatic field, youthfully vibrant and lacking only celebrity names. But here in the far-flung corners of Asia we seem to prefer to pay to hear the celebrities, whatever their age, in far-too-large auditoriums in which generous amplification is of course a necessity.
But the huge arenas are justified because the ticket-buying demand is there. It’s only possible to conclude that what
people really want is to be seen to be connected to some kudos-bearing name. They don’t want a musical experience but a status-enhancing one.
Pogorelich is another matter. He’s part of the ongoing, if rather drawn-out, Chopin International Festival (this year being the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth) and he’ll play, among other things, Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58, not greatly popular but something serious pianists love to get their teeth into. Good luck to him! He’s not one for throwing sops to the masses, and if you judge any of these three visitors to our shores to be worthy of your support, then Pogorelich is undoubtedly the one to go for.
The fact that he’s also giving a free concert in Taichung tomorrow night testifies again to his good, and strictly non-commercial, intentions. The contrast with what’s happening in the Kaohsiung stadium and Taipei arena could hardly be more marked.
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