The National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) is on Friday to deliver a special performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Ein Sommernachtstraum (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) at the National Concert Hall against a backdrop of images showcasing Taiwan’s alpine woods.
The orchestra’s music director, Jun Markl, would conduct the performance, which is to comprise 14 pieces of music including the Ein Sommernachtstraum overture and incidental music, the orchestra said on Wednesday.
The performance’s backdrop would feature photographs taken from Kinmen County’s Taiwushan (太武山) by award-winning photographer Liu Chen-hsiang (劉振祥). Liu is the photographer for Cloud Gate Dance Theatre and has worked with directors such as Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) and Edward Yang (楊德昌), the orchestra added.
Photo courtesy of the National Symphony Orchestra via CNA
Visual design artist Chen Yan-ren (陳彥任) would add his personal touch to Liu’s photos to give them a vivid, tranquil quality to match the setting of the play for which the pieces were created, it said.
Markl came up with the idea to blend Taiwanese scenery into the performance following a hike to Yushan (玉山) last year, when he was awestruck by the diversity and lushness of the fauna there, the orchestra said.
The performance would feature soprano Lai Chueh-yu, mezzo soprano Chen Yu (陳禹) and the Taipei Chamber Singers choir, it said.
In the first half of the show, German pianist Herbert Schuch, who would be performing in Taiwan for the first time, is to accompany the orchestra in a performance of Erwin Schulhoff’s Concerto for Piano and Small Orchestra, Op. 43, which was the first jazz piano concerto to blend elements of classical music when it debuted in 1923, and Piano Concerto for the Left Hand by French composer Maurice Ravel.
Schuch was the top prize winner of the 2005 International Beethoven Piano Competition Vienna.
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