It is becoming more and more difficult to obtain review material in this area, so the items selected below are those that this reviewer happened on and enjoyed this year, rather than in any sense the “best of the year” as a whole.
An outstanding DVD from Naxos, issued in March, was Yang Tianwa: Live in Concert at St. Petersburg (reviewed Aug. 28). It contains Tchaikovsky’s and Brahms’s violin concertos — not very original material, you might think, but in the hands of this young Chinese violinist, memorable indeed. She plays them with a tenacity and strength that’s intensely enjoyable and adds an Ysaye movement (see below) as an encore. Also included as a bonus is the young violinist playing Bach’s Partita No: 2 in a studio video recording.
Yang has also recorded the Belgian composer Eugene Ysaye’s six Violin Sonatas (reviewed Aug. 28, Naxos 8.572995). This very fine CD deserves a separate recommendation. In addition, it should be noted that Yang has recorded all of Pablo de Sarasate’s violin music on eight CDs, once again on the Naxos label, though this reviewer has yet to hear them.
The DVD of Ravel’s two short operas, L’Enfant et les Sortileges (The child and the spells) and L’Heure Espagnol (Spanish time) (reviewed Sept. 25, fRA FRA 008) was the winner of the Gramophone magazine’s awards for 2014 in its opera category. Inventive and colorful, with Ravel’s vigorously humorous music, these one-act works mark a welcome break from the usual operatic repertoire. The DVD was shown at the London Proms (the BBC’s series of summer concerts) and received an enthusiastic reception. It clearly pleased the Gramophone critics as well.
New CDs of two of Mozart’s best-loved operas, Le Nozze di Figaro and Cosi fan Tutte, (reviewed May 29 and Dec. 4, Sony 88883709262 and 88765466162 respectively) conducted by Teodor Currrentzis, proved to have many admirers this year, despite the huge competition from earlier recordings. In essence these are youthful performances, as the promotional video available on YouTube clearly shows. By rehearsing and then recording at the Opera House of Perm, in the Russian Urals, the young Greek conductor demonstrated his commitment to musical values rather than commercial ones. Most of the orchestra and soloists are young too, and given that the sound is exceptionally incisive, but the performance style relatively laid-back, these versions of these great works to take notice of. Your critic, incidentally, chose the Figaro for an important Christmas present this year.
Finally, following conductor Claudio Abbado’s death in January, the world’s classical music press was awash with tributes. The consensus was that his finest product among many may have been the DVD of Mahler’s 9th Symphony with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, dating from 2011 and issued by Accentus [ACC 20214]. His last recording was an audio CD of Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos: 20 and 25 with Martha Argerich, issued posthumously (Both reviewed Jan. 30). The accompaniment is by the Orchestra Mozart, which Abbado founded.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
Mongolian influencer Anudari Daarya looks effortlessly glamorous and carefree in her social media posts — but the classically trained pianist’s road to acceptance as a transgender artist has been anything but easy. She is one of a growing number of Mongolian LGBTQ youth challenging stereotypes and fighting for acceptance through media representation in the socially conservative country. LGBTQ Mongolians often hide their identities from their employers and colleagues for fear of discrimination, with a survey by the non-profit LGBT Centre Mongolia showing that only 20 percent of people felt comfortable coming out at work. Daarya, 25, said she has faced discrimination since she
RSS