A young Taiwanese pianist living in Berlin came in second and won the Audience Choice Award at the first International Beethoven Piano Competition in Arad, Romania, on Thursday.
This was Lu Yi-chih's (
Lu impressed the five Austrian and Czech judges with his playing of a Haydn sonata in the preliminary, two of Brahms' rhapsodies in the semifinal and working with a local symphony orchestra to play Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in the final round.
The 25-year-old Lu attributed his Audience Choice Award to his outstanding performance playing the Beethoven concerto, but admitted that he played a bit under par in the preliminary and semifinal rounds because of a serious cold.
"It is a pity," he said.
One of the nation's most distinguished young pianists, Lu went to study at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria, at the age of 17 and moved on to the Berlin University of the Arts last year.
Lu, who has been busy performing across Europe, held a piano recital at the National Concert Hall in Taipei in May and worked with Austria's National Radio Station Orchestra performing a Mozart concerto at Vienna's Grossen Saal Musikverein in October.
Lu has won many piano prizes over the past three years, including second place at Barcelona's Maria Canals and Slovakia's Hummel International Piano Competition, grand prize at Austria's Gradus ad Parnassum and runner-up status at the third Sendai International Music Competition.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its