It’s less well-known than it should be that Taiwan’s Evergreen Symphony Orchestra [ESO] has a large number of DVDs available containing recordings of their concerts. I’ll review some of them over the next few months, and begin now with one featuring a concert given with, among others, the eminent Russian violinist Zakhar Bron in 2005. Also starring was the Japanese violinist Mayuko Kamio, only 19 at the time. The conductor for the occasion was Taiwan’s Wang Ya-hui (王雅慧) — she was then the orchestra’s music director.
The opening Vivaldi item is predictably light-weight, but the central piece, Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins, is fine indeed. Most surprising for me, though, was the Poeme for violin and orchestra by the reticent French 19th-century composer Ernest Chausson. Beautifully played here by Mayuko Kamio, it’s a hauntingly atmospheric piece. Chausson apparently wrote it after feeling a full-scale violin concerto would be too demanding for his small-scale talent — half way between romantic and impressionist. It was first performed three years before he died after crashing into a brick wall while out riding his bicycle.
These DVDs from ESO have real charm, giving the genuine feeling of a live performance. The full range can be seen on the orchestra’s Web site,
www.orchestra.evergreen.com.tw.
Video Artists International, of Pleasantville, New York, continues to offer rare recordings of famous stars across the whole range of classical music. Watching its black-and-white Tosca, starring Renata Tebaldi (one of the 20th century’s greatest operatic sopranos) in a performance in Tokyo in 1961, is a strange experience.
The production itself is 100 percent traditional. The 39-year-old Tebaldi is wildly applauded on her first appearance on stage, and the Cavaradossi, Gianni Poggi, acknowledges protracted cheering with grateful gestures to the audience just moments before he is due to be executed by firing squad in the stage plot.
Tosca may be as melodramatic as any opera can be, but it has enormous strengths nonetheless. This performance is towered over by a superb Scarpia from baritone Giangiacomo Guelfi. He dominates the close of Act One, and the Te Deum against which he is supposed to snarl his evil designs scarcely makes a showing.
Act Two, at the end of which Tosca murders Scarpia , is superb throughout. This video shows Cavaradossi being tortured in the neighboring room, something that isn’t usually visible to a real-life audience. Meanwhile Scarpia is demanding his night of love with her as the price for his menials removing the spiked iron crown from her lover’s skull.
Puccini’s music isn’t ideally clear by modern recording standards, and the shepherd boy’s song that opens Act Three can hardly be heard at all. Even so, this is a version that collectors of operatic rarities will find hard to resist.
Haydn is known as the “father of the symphony,” but he was also the father of the string quartet. Prior to him, and in his earlier efforts in the form, the first violin played all the tunes and the other three players simply provided an accompaniment. But in the six quartets Opus 33 he made the crucial move of giving all four instruments equal, or almost equal, status, with the leading motifs switching around among them. This breakthrough led to the form becoming the premier vehicle for “intellectual” music for the next 150 years.
Moreover, it was these six quartets that inspired Mozart to labor over six of his own in the new style. They are some of the greatest quartets ever written, and he dedicated them to Haydn. The two men, plus Mozart’s father and another instrumentalist, played some of them together in Mozart’s Vienna apartment, and this was the event that prompted Haydn to tell Mozart’s father that his son was the greatest musical genius known to him, dead or alive.
There are many recordings of Haydn’s quartets, but the ones on period instruments by the French Quatuor Mosaiques (Mosaiques Quartet) are something special. Period instrument playing, which came into fashion in the 1970s, was initially beset with problems, but the Mosaiques are credited with having ironed these out and produced versions that are simultaneously characterful and seamless. They have to compete with the excellent bargain-priced versions from the Kodaly Quartet on Naxos, as well as the impassioned ones from the Lindsays, but this pair of CDs can nevertheless be recommended to all listeners who appreciate impeccability and poise.
Andre Rieu’s latest extravaganza, Andre Rieu in Wonderland, is both predictable and astonishing. The live concert, containing popular classical items served up along with horses, a camel and an elephant, plus Some Day My Prince Will Come and Somewhere Over the Rainbow, is a happy-happy carnival of enormous color and brio. Rieu’s events are basically parties and, though purists are sure to disapprove, they really can’t harm anyone. They give great pleasure, as well as helping banish the popular conception of the classics as being drab (Rieu’s underlying purpose). This one took place in Holland’s Efteling amusement park and centers on enchanted castles and delicious princesses. Clearly an almost-fantastic time was had by almost everyone.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
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