Inauguration of the Festival: Shanghai Symphony Orchestra
Friday, 19 March 2010
Asia’s oldest and most recognised orchestra conducted by one of the distinguished Chinese conductors. Together with eminent Chinese soloists – Jian Wang (cello), Xu Xiao Ying (soprano), and Xiaoyong Yang (baritone) – the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra will inaugurate 14th Ludwig and Beethoven Easter Festival on 21st of March performing under Maestro Long Yu Robert Schumann’s Cello concerto in A minor, Op. 129, and works by Chinese artists: Wu Zuqiang’s Moon Reflection in the Er’quan Spring and Xiaogang Ye’s The Song of the Earth for soprano, baritone, and orchestra, Op. 47
The concert will open with the piece entitled Moon Reflected on Second Spring, also known as Moon Reflection in the Er’quan Spring, the most famous work of Huà Yànjūn: the blind Chinese folk artist. The work was scored by a distinguished Chinese composer, Wu Zuqiang, in 1977.
“This Cello Concerto stands out with the lyrical character of its first two movements; it is not an exaggeration to say that this work is the apogee of the Great Romantic in the final period of his oeuvre,” said Adam Walaciński describing this work of Schumann in the Festival Catalogue. “Similarly to many of his other extensive pieces, Schumann fully condenses the sublimated poetic expression in the slow middle movement of the Concerto. The energetic and highly vivacious finale, maintained in simple duple metre ushers his audience into a less poetic world, in a cheerful and carefree mood, somewhat unrefined, perhaps, but contrasted with subdued moments in episodes associated with its subsidiary theme.”
The Song of the Earth, which the artists will perform for the closing of the concert, is the Chinese version of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, with the words of the latter being the German translation of Chinese poetry. This is what the catalogue says about the origin of the work:
“Following the suggestion of Maestro Long Yu, Music Director of China Philharmonic Orchestra, the orchestra commissioned the composer Ye Xiaogang to write a “Chinese version” of The Song of the Earth.
The work was composed in 2004. Its parts five and six premiered in during the Young Euro Classic Music Festival in Berlin on August 5th, 2005. The composer deliberately related to the work by Mahler preserving the six-part structure of the cycle and used the same poems by 7th-century Chinese poets.”
More information about the works and artists of the 14th Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival can be found in the Festival Catalogue.