Taiwan and Poland are to host a benefit concert for Ukraine on Sunday at the National Concert Hall in Taipei.
Tickets for the “Pray for Ukraine — Solidarity with Ukraine” concert are on sale now, the Polish Office in Taipei wrote on Facebook on Friday.
After deducting expenses, proceeds from the concert would fund relief work to help Ukrainian refugees, through donations made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Polish office said.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
The office said that it came up with the idea of the concert, which is organized by the Taipei Philharmonic Foundation for Culture and Education and directed by the foreign ministry and the Ministry of Culture.
The concert is to feature performances by Taiwan-based Polish pianist Kamil Tokarski, Taiwanese-American violinist Leta Chin (金昫祈), soprano Lin Ling-hui (林玲慧) and baritone Chen Han-wei (陳翰威), and is to be conducted by Wu Yao-yu (吳曜宇), associate conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra.
The concert is to include Prelude Op. 33 No. 1 by Sergei Bortkiewicz, a composer and pianist who was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in 1877 to a Polish noble family.
Bortkiewicz studied in St Petersburg, Russia, and Leipzig, Germany, and lived in Berlin, but during World War I he was forced to leave Germany and return to Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine. During the Russian Revolution, he fled to Istanbul, Turkey, as a refugee. He eventually returned to Berlin and then Vienna in 1922, where he spent the rest of his life.
The concert is also to feature A Prayer for Ukraine, a patriotic Ukrainian hymn by Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko that was published in 1885.
Lysenko, known as “the father of Ukrainian music,” was born in Hrynky in 1842. He was the founder of the national Ukrainian music movement, based on specific Ukrainian cultural traditions and the originality of its folk music.
The Polish office said that since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, more than 4 million Ukrainians have fled their country, while tens of thousands of people still need assistance and protection inside Ukraine.
“In this difficult time of life and death, we should stand up to help Ukrainians,” it said.
The concert also aims to bring people from all walks of life together to help Ukrainians through practical action, it added.
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do
RSS