Olympic welcoming tour waving baton in Europe

China Daily | Updated: 2008-02-05 07:38

Guangdong Chinese Traditional Orchestra will give a concert at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne for the International Olympic Committee tomorrow to celebrate the Spring Festival as well as to welcome the Beijing Olympic Games in August.

Under the baton of Hu Bingxu, who enjoys fame by conducting traditional Chinese music and Peking Opera, the 80-member Guangdong orchestra will play a program including Cantonese music Dragon Boat Race and Autumn Moon over a Placid Lake, the guqin piece Flowing Water, the pipa concerto Spring and Autumn and orchestral piece adapted from Peking Opera Mu Guiying Takes Command.

It is one of the concerts in the orchestra's European tour during the Spring Festival. They embarked on the one-month-tour from Lucerne in Switzerland on January 25 and perform in Munich, Antwerp, Bremen, Hanover, Prague, Vienna and Lausanne.

The National TV of Austria sent a crew to join the tour to shoot a 90-minute documentary about the concerts. The documentary will broadcast in Europe before the Beijing Olympic Games in August.

"I enjoy conducting Chinese traditional music and hope the European audience will love it. When more and more Chinese fans start to listen to the Western music, I wish the Western people would know about our music," says conductor Hu.

"While the Olympic Games will draw guests from around the world to Beijing in summer, the Guangdong Chinese Traditional Orchestra's concert tour brings a piece of China to Europe," says Wu Jiatong, managing director of Wu Promotion, the company which presents the tour.

Wu Promotion started to present Chinese traditional orchestra to tour Europe every Spring Festival from 1998 and this year is the turn of the Cantonese music, which is popular in South China's Guangdong and neighboring provinces along the Pearl River.

China Daily