 Classical appeal
By Chen Jie (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-30 07:54
The 11th Beijing Music Festival (BMF) will raise its curtain with an opera gala by Deutsche Opera Berlin under famed German conductor Matthias Foremny's baton at the Forbidden City Concert Hall on Thursday. In the following 18 days, the annual festival will feature seven operas and 11 concerts. There are fewer shows this year than in previous festivals. Organizers decided to trim the number to ensure they were skimming the cream of the crop. Much of the event will focus on opera, and there will be nine performances of seven operas in addition to three gala performances from the genre. The star of this year's festival is Deutsche Opera Berlin. Last year, its orchestra wowed Beijing audiences at an opening concert conducted by maestro Daniel Barenboim that featured the brilliant Chinese pianist Lang Lang. This year, the prestigious German opera house brings Wagner's Tannhauser and Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier to the capital. It will be the first time for either of the works to have been played in Beijing, and the performance of Der Rosenhavalier will be the first run of any of Richard Strauss' operas in the city. "Chinese audiences are relatively familiar with Italian and French operas, while Mozart is perhaps the only German composer whose works have been performed in China," says BMF artistic director Yu Long. "But Wagner and Richard Strauss are representative composers of the German Romanticism genre, and their works greatly influenced Western music's development. "In 2005, BMF presented Wagner's legendary Ring Cycle. It was the debut of Wagner's opera in Beijing, and audiences received the four-night show well. "This year, we'll introduce Tannhauser, because we believe Beijing has mature audiences who can appreciate Wagner," adds Yu, who studied conducting in Germany. Also, 2008 marks the 150th anniversary of Puccini's birth.
To pay tribute to the great Italian composer, BMF has commissioned the Shanghai Opera House to present Puccini's II Trittico (II Tabarro/Suor Angelica/Gianni Schicchi). The show will be the premiere of the Italian opera composer's trilogy in China and will open a new window for Chinese opera fans to know Puccini's works beyond Turandot, Madam Butterfly and La Boheme. As an equivalent to Puccini's II Trittico, BMF will also feature Chinese composer Guo Wenjing's operatic trilogy Chinese Women Heroines: Mu Guiying, Hua Mulan and Liang Hongyu. Directed by Li Liuyi, the performance takes the form of experimental theater, pioneering an innovative fusion of Peking opera and Western opera. The production also embodies BMF's long-term commitment to promoting Chinese musicians and works. Many globally renowned Chinese opera singers, such as soprano He Hui, tenor Warren Mok and baritone Liao Changyong - acclaimed by Domingo as "one of the best baritones I have seen" - will demonstrate the talents of Chinese opera singers. In addition to opera, BMF presents such famous soloists as American pianist Murray Perahia and Canadian Grammy-winning violinist Hilary Hahn. Also, acclaimed orchestras, such as Britain's Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, will perform. The Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) is among the world's first and foremost period-instrument orchestras. The concerts it staged in six continents and its more than 250 recordings since Christopher Hogwood founded it in 1973 demonstrate the orchestra's preeminence in Baroque- and Classical-period music genres. Richard Egarr succeeded Hogwood as music director in September 2006, and his inaugural season has won glowing praise from critics and audiences. AAM will perform Handel's Messiah and Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. Both were written by Baroque composers, and Aeneas is the oldest British opera. "It is a rare chance for Beijing's opera fans to see such 'antiquated' works performed by an 'ancient' orchestra," says Wang Jiyan, secretary-general of BMF's Artistic Committee.
Under the baton of Bramwell Tovey, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra will become the first Canadian symphony orchestra to visit China since 1978, when the Toronto Symphony Orchestra performed in the country. This year, the Vancouver Symphony won a Grammy for a recording of violin concertos conducted by Tovey and performed by Canadian violinist James Ehnes. It also won the Juno this year in the "Best Classical Album" category. In its quest to become a globally leading music festival, BMF has remained committed to the commission of new works since its 1998 founding. This year, it joined forces with the Bavarian State Opera and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra to commission South Korean composer Unsuk Chin to write the orchestral work Rocana. China Philharmonic Orchestra will perform it under the baton of Peter Ruzicka. In addition to concerts and operas, BMF organizes educational programs, including master classes, public rehearsals, pre-concert lectures and free concerts for kids. Organizers say they have upped the ante on this end of the event this year, improving both quality and quantity. This will be the first year in which every night will feature a pre-concert talk about the performance of that evening. Leonard Bernstein's daughter Jamie Bernstein will lecture on her father's trademark Broadway musicals. Vancouver Symphony Orchestra will play a free concert for kids. And director Li Liuyi and composer Guo Wenjing will talk about reviving traditional Chinese opera using contemporary conceptions. These educational programs are part of BMF's long-term strategy, which distinguishes it from other festivals in China and also cultivates new classical music fans. (China Daily 09/30/2008 page7) |
