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Born to play Beethoven

Following his last album Dragon Songs which attracted legions of fans to the world classical music scene, 25-year-old Chinese pianist Lang Lang is releasing his sixth album with Deutsche Grammophon, Universal Music Company. The album is a collection of Beethoven's Second and Fourth Piano Concerto, played by Lang Lang and Orchestre De Paris, under the baton of Christoph Eschenbach.

This is Lang Lang's first Beethoven recording. The keyboard talent says that Beethoven is one of his favorite composers and the Fourth Piano Concerto is his favorite concerto. For Eschenbach, a celebrated Beethoven interpreter himself, Lang Lang "was born to play Beethoven".

This is the first album for which Lang Lang collaborates with Eschenbach, his mentor and collaborator. And In October, Eschenbach will take his Orchestre de Paris to the Beijing Music Festival to play Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto with Lang Lang.

Army generals who paint

Jiangxi Jinsheng Culture Co Ltd held two exhibitions in Beijing last week to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). The Star General Gallery co-organized the exhibition that featured calligraphy and paintings and was held at the Military Museum.

The collection of 108 works were created by Chinese generals, including Zhang Wannian and Chi Haotian, both former chairmen of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China.

Sponsored by China Collectors' Association and China Tobacco Chuanyu Industrial Corporation, an exhibition featuring stamps, matchbox pictures, badges and picture storybooks on the theme of the PLA and its soldiers ran at the Baoguo Temple.

Thousands of stamps and match pictures tell the moving stories of China's revolutionary history and the development of the PLA.

Home is where the art is

Trends Home, China's leading magazine of house decoration, is running an exhibition at Beijing's Today Art Museum to mark the magazine's seventh anniversary. The show features hundreds of photos that appeared in the Trends Home magazine in the last seven years.

At the opening ceremony of the exhibition on Sunday afternoon, the 2007 Trends Home Awards were announced. Readers voted in seven categories such as Best Color, Best Room Design, Best Innovation, Most Practical and Best Celebrity's Home.

Tiny dancers seeing stars

Organized by Chinese Dancers Association and the Culture Bureau of Shenzhen municipal government, the Fourth National Competition for Child Dancers was launched last week in Shenzhen.

Some 120 teams and 4,000 child dancers from 32 Chinese mainland provinces and Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao performed ballet, folk, ethnic, and contemporary dances at the week-long competition. In the final, 48 teams won the award Star Bud and 260 teachers won awards as trainers.

With the goal of promoting dance education in kindergarten and primary school, the program was also a chance to find talented young dancers by the Chinese Dancers Association, which started the National Competition for Child Dancers in 1998 in Beijing.

China Daily

(China Daily 08/16/2007 page18)