After the recent sky-high prices for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, sanity returns to Taipei’s music scene with two concerts by Taiwan’s National Symphony Orchestra (NSO).
But there’s no question of any diminution in quality. The NSO has recruited some stellar talent for each event and, together with the orchestra’s own habitual high standards, the two represent both excellent value for money and the promise of rewarding artistic experiences.
Next Friday, for instance, will see Brahms’s late and challenging Double Concerto (for violin and cello) performed by two young instrumentalists who it would be hard to better.
US-based violinist Joseph Lin (林以信) is a founding member of the Formosa Quartet (which won first prize in the 2006 London International String Quartet Competition), and has even spent a year in Beijing mastering the intricacies of Chinese classical music. Still only 31, he’s a major talent in the early years of what’s sure be an imposing career.
He’s joined by the charismatic cellist Amit Peled, another of the US’s most promising young string soloists. You can hear a sample of his heart-wrenching style of playing wherever you happen to browse on www.amitpeled.com.
Nor is this all. On the rostrum will be Derrick Inouye, Assistant Conductor at New York’s Metropolitan Opera (responsible, for example, for the 2009 premiere of the Met’s new production of Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust).
After the interval, the concert concludes with Bartok’s scintillating Concerto for Orchestra.
The following Friday, June 11, sees the NSO with yet another noted international soloist, pianist Alex Kobrin. He won first prize in the Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano, Italy in 1999, as well as a special prize dedicated to the memory of the great pianist Michaelangeli. In Taipei he will play the ever-popular Second Piano Concerto of Rachmaninov.
Adding to the youthfulness of the pair of events, the conductor this time will be the 28-year-old, Hong Kong-born, Perry So (蘇柏軒). He’s currently assistant conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, as well as having a close relationship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In addition, he founded and leads the Huangshan International Music Festival (中國黃山國際音樂節), which takes place in the mountains of central China.
As well as the Rachmaninov concerto, the concert includes Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D Minor, plus Tchaikovsky’s Hamlet overture. The program will be repeated the following evening, June 12, in Hsinchu.
Both these concerts, it should be noted, are simply part of the NSO’s regular program, not mega-events sponsored by Lexus and the like. How the orchestra’s administration manages to recruit such international talent, almost as a matter of course, is baffling to say the least. But it’s hugely to Taiwan’s benefit that it does so, and that the resulting concerts are then marketed at distinctly non-inflated prices is marvelous indeed.
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