Washington Post: China Philharmonic’s Silk Road tour wends to Iran

Washington Post
By Anne Midgette

Photo: China Philharmonic Orchestra

Cultural diplomacy is a significant activity for symphony orchestras. The Boston Symphony Orchestra toured Russia in 1956. The Philadelphia Orchestra went to China in 1973. The New York Philharmonic played Pyongyang in 2008; the Minnesota Orchestra went to Cuba this past May. And on Friday night, the music of Dvorak’s “New World” symphony was heard in Tehran, performed from the original music the New York Philharmonic has guarded since the work’s 1893 premiere.

This orchestra, though, wasn’t American. It was the China Philharmonic.

“The New York Philharmonic gave me the original parts,” said China Philharmonic music director Long Yu, speaking by cellphone from an airport en route to Greece the day after a concert he described as historic. “So it’s very touching if you see the music, you’re touching that history.”

The China Philharmonic, created in 2000 from what had formerly been the China Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra, and still technically the state radio orchestra, is wrapping up a six-stop Silk Road tour with Long Yu. Unlike Yo-Yo Ma’s ongoing Silk Road Project, which since 1998 has celebrated the Silk Road’s melange of cultures and history of exchange through chamber music and educational programs, the China Philharmonic’s tour takes a traditional approach to cultural diplomacy. The orchestra is playing Chinese and Western repertory and effectively showcasing its strengths to China’s not-so-distant geographical neighbors.

It also showcases Long Yu, a superpower of China’s burgeoning music world who also leads the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the Beijing Music Festival, and the Shanghai Orchestra Academy, in a role he would dearly like to assume: that of cultural diplomat.

Speaking the day after the concert, which was met with the requisite standing ovation, two encores and seven curtain calls (not an unprecedented number on international tours), he embraced the time-honored rhetoric trotted out on such occasions of “the universal language of music” and the joys of bringing the treasures of the West to a new audience.

“You can see how the people are looking for life, and the passion for life,” he said, waxing eloquent on the beauties of Tehran.

The West tends to think of China as a recipient of its cultural diplomacy, not as its purveyor. And yet at a time when some Iranians are chanting “Death to America” in the streets, it’s a Chinese orchestra, rather than an American one, that brought this American-flavored music, with the imprimatur of its American parts and what Long Yu describes as “liberal ideas,” to Iran.

The Pittsburgh Symphony, which last played in Tehran in 1964 as part of a tour sponsored by the State Department, voiced hopes last year of playing there again; and it’s been rumored that Daniel Barenboim may lead the Berlin Staatskapelle there during Angela Merkel’s state visit in October. But China has beaten them to the punch — with a work that symbolizes the appropriation of traditional forms by a “new world.”

On Friday, there were a couple of “new worlds” at play. China is planting a flag to show itself as a player in the international cultural community. But Tehran was also spreading its wings as a city that wants such culture. The performance, in fact, was shared between the China Philharmonic and the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1933, defunct for several years, and revived this past April with what by one account was a struggling but eager performance of Beethoven’s Ninth.

On Friday, led by Ali Rahbari (who has had a distinguished career in the West, and has come under fire in Iran in the past for “promoting Western values”), the ensemble played Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” — a snapshot of the East through Western eyes.

New York Times: China Philharmonic Orchestra to Play in Tehran

Photo: Daniel Barry

The New York Times
By Michael Cooper

As the world focuses on the accord to limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities that was reached last month, the China Philharmonic Orchestra, a major ensemble from one of the six nations that negotiated the deal, is planning to play two concerts in Tehran next week.

The Tehran concerts by the group, whose music director, Long Yu, enjoys a growing international reputation, have been scheduled for some time as part of a tour of the ancient Silk Road trade route, with stops planned in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Greece.

But coming a month after the accord was reached between Iran and the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Russia and China, the concerts are sure to be seen as a bit of cultural diplomacy at a moment when many nations are gearing up for more open relations with Iran.

One piece the orchestra plans to play in Tehran is Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, “From the New World,” which was written in the United States and incorporates American folk music. They also plan to play the Polovtsian Dances from Borodin’s “Prince Igor”; “The Butterfly Lovers,” a violin concerto by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao; and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5.

“This tour across the Silk Road trade route has been years in the planning,” Mr. Yu said in a statement, “and we in the China Philharmonic Orchestra hope that we can build a cultural bridge that stretches across the region and indeed across the world, that will bring people closer together at a level that can inspire them to make this world truly harmonious.”

An American orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, considered playing concerts in Iran last year to mark the 50th anniversary of its last concerts there, but ultimately did not go.

Broadway World: Opera Star Renée Fleming To Perform Gala Concert At Grand Teton Music Festival

Photo: Jonathan Tichler

Broadway World

A regular performer on the world's grandest stages, international opera superstar Renée Fleming's radiant voice and compelling artistry will soon be heard for the first time in the heart of the American West--Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Program to run gamut from opera arias to Broadway show tunes.

GTMF Music Director Donald Runnicles invited his long-time collaborator to perform as part of a special, gala event at Walk Festival Hall tonight, July 29 at 7pm--an invitation Ms. Fleming happily accepted. Guest conductor Edo de Waart leads the Festival Orchestra for this concert at the request of Maestro Runnicles who will be appearing at the Proms in London with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Joining Ms. Fleming on stage is the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra. This unique ensemble, which is brought together each summer by Maestro Runnicles, is comprised of leading orchestral musicians from North America's top orchestras, the nation's finest orchestra of this kind.

Tickets for this gala event are $85 and go on sale June 2 at 10am. They can be purchased at GTMF.org or by calling 307-733-1128. Tickets include a complimentary beverage at intermission. Advanced purchase is highly recommended.

Ms. Fleming, known for her sumptuous voice, consummate artistry, and compelling stage presence, has appeared in concert and in operas on every major stage in the world. Ms. Fleming is among a handful of classical artists who have transcended her art to reach millions of adoring fans worldwide. A frequent performer at high profile events, Ms. Fleming was the first classical artist to sing at a Super Bowl (2014), performed at the Beijing Olympics (2008), and sang on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in the Diamond Jubilee Concert for HM Queen Elizabeth II. Fans of the Metropolitan Opera's Live in HD series also know her as a charismatic, charming host to these lavish, big screen productions.

GTMF presents exhilarating musical experiences, and reunites a celebrated orchestra of musicians with Music Director Donald Runnicles each summer. During its annual, seven-week summer classical music Festival, GTMF presents full Festival Orchestra concerts on weekends and smaller ensembles on weeknights.

Lara Downes Releases "A Billie Holiday Songbook"

Steinway & Sons celebrates the centenary of iconic jazz singer Billie Holiday with an album of songs she made famous, arranged for solo piano by New York-based composer and pianist Jed Distler and performed by Steinway artist Lara Downes. The result is a musical portrait of the singer’s life.

Available on CD and MP3 via ArkivMusic.com: 

www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=1673717#custReviews

Long Yu awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur

Conductor Long Yu awarded France's highest honor of merit as the recipient of the fabled Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.

France recognizes Maestro Long Yu's leadership in strengthening China's cultural connections with other nations around the world.

Maestro Long Yu received the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in a ceremony at the French Consulate General in Shanghai this week. As Chevalier, he joins the highest order of the Légion d'honneur, whose past recipients include Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the Lumière brothers, Auguste Rodin, and Honoré de Balzac. The honor dates back to the early 19th century and is among the highest decorations of merit in France.

Maestro Long Yu is only the third Chinese National to receive the award. His notable collaborations with leading French orchestras include Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de Lyon and Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse.

This award marks a highlight of an impressive season for Maestro Long Yu. In July, star-studded concerts in Shanghai and Beijing coincided with his 50th birthday, and colleagues including Lang Lang, Alison Balsom and Maxim Vengerov performed, with new works composed by Tan Dun, Qigang Chen and John Williams. At the same time, he led the Shanghai Symphony into their incredible new home, a state-of-the-art venue built mostly underground, acoustically designed by Yasuhisa Toyota (famously, the man behind the sound of Walt Disney Hall). Only weeks later, he conducted the China Philharmonic as the first Chinese orchestra to perform at the BBC Proms. The New York Philharmonic welcomes Maestro Long Yu for subscription concerts in January 2015, and he returns in February with Yo-Yo Ma for his now-traditional Chinese New Year concert with them.

Long Yu is represented for general management worldwide by CAMI Music; please contact Anastasia Boudanoque (+1 212 841 9740, ab@camimusic.com). Further information available here.

Notes for Editors:

Maestro Long Yu is the Artistic Director, Chief Conductor and co-founder of the China Philharmonic Orchestra, and Music Director of the Shanghai and Guanzhou Symphony Orchestras. He is also Founding Artistic Director of the Beijing Music Festival.

He created China’s first orchestral academy, as a partnership between the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Conservatory and the New York Philharmonic.

Other China ‘firsts’ include bringing the first-ever performances of Wagner’s Ring cycle in the country, presenting its first-ever Mahler cycle, releasing the first album of Chinese music on a major recording label (Dragon Songs, alongside Lang Lang, for DG), and bringing the first-ever Chinese orchestra to play at the Vatican when the Shanghai Philharmonic played for Pope Benedict XIV. This year, he led the China Philharmonic as the first Chinese orchestra ever invited to play at the BBC Proms. The Shanghai Symphony under his baton was the first orchestra other than the New York Philharmonic to perform on Central Park's Great Lawn.

He has commissioned new works from many of today’s leading composers, among them Tan Dun, Krzystof Penderecki, Philip Glass, John Corigilano, Guo Wenjing and Ye Xiaogang.

Long Yu regularly conducts important orchestras and opera houses in the West such as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Chicago Symphony, BBC Symphony, Teatro La Fenice, Hamburg Staatsoper and Philadelphia Orchestra. He was previously honored to be appointed a Chavelier dans L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France, and a L’onorificenza di commendatore from the Republic of Italy. He recently joined the Artistic Advisory Committee of the New York Philharmonic.

Gramophone: Julian Rachlin Appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Northern Sinfonia

Photo: Janine Guldene

Gramophone

Following their appointment earlier this year of a Principal Conductor better known as a pianist, Lars Vogt, the Royal Northern Sinfonia now complete their artistic team with a Principal Guest Conductor better known as a violinist, Julian Rachlin. Rachlin made his conducting debut with the Sinfonia in October 2013 and has since led the Israel Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Rachlin will be appearing as conductor and soloist with the Sinfonia in a concert at Milton Court in London tomorrow evening (November 14). The programme comprises of Schnittke's Sonata No 1 for violin and chamber orchestra, Mozart's Violin Concerto No 5 and Beethoven's Symphony No 7.

Rachlin was just 14 years old when he appeared as a soloist with the Vienna Philharmonic, still the youngest soloist to have appeared with that orchestra. Andrew Achenbach interviewed Rachlin for Gramophone in 1995 when the violinist was just 19 but already had two recordings for Sony Classical under his belt. At that time Rachlin said, 'When I'm playing, I really want to tell the people something, to move something within them, and I believe that the public will always respond to any artist who is genuinely trying to convey some sort of emotional message. After all, why should we be ashamed of expressing our innermost feelings?' It looks as if the Royal Northern Sinfonia have some exciting concert seasons ahead.

Washington Post: Pianist Lara Downes gives insightful performance of Czech composers

Washington Post
By Stephen Brookes

Franz Kafka may have been ignored in his own lifetime, but his novels — and the sense of dread and alienation they evoke — came to have an extraordinary impact on the 20th century mind. So it was intriguing to hear pianist Lara Downes at the Embassy of the Czech Republic on Thursday evening, playing music by Czech composers who endured the rising totalitarianism that Kafka’s writing seemed to presage — and who were either killed by it or forced into decades of exile.

Perhaps the most tragic of these was Erwin Schulhoff, who produced an astonishingly innovative body of work — including the “Suite Dansante en Jazz,” which Downes opened with — before dying in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942. The six-movement suite is an earthy, slow-burning piece from 1931, bluesy at its heart but imbued with edgy, wildly colored, often brilliant ideas, and Downes gave it a fine reading — more thoughtful than sensual, maybe, but very engaging.

She followed with Andre Singer’s “Nine Parables to Franz Kafka’s ‘Amerika,’ ” which alternated short passages from Kafka’s enigmatic 1914 novel with equally enigmatic and expressive musical fragments — a fascinating work from Singer (who was forced into exile in the 1930s) that seemed to capture a complex and Kafkaesque world where nothing is what it seems to be. Robert Rehak and Mary Fetzco delivered the written passages with aplomb.

Jaroslav Jezek’s lovely “Svita” (Shining) — famous for boosting Czech morale during World War II — provided a few moments of sunshine, as did five of Bohuslav Martinů’s “Etudes and Polkas.” Written in exile (where the composer spent much of his life), these brief pieces seemed to evoke both the freedom of a new world and nostalgia for the old; a poignant glimpse into the heart of the exiled composer.

The final work on the program was the biggest but the least satisfying. Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a remarkable prodigy, and his Sonata No. 2 in E Major, Op. 2, written when he was all of 13 years old, is a remarkable accomplishment for an adolescent, technically accomplished and ambitious in every way. That said, it’s a noisy show-off piece, full of heroic chest-pounding and thundering charges up and down the keyboard, anchored by a largo con dolore that fairly wallows in adolescent woe. Downes — who admitted that Korngold was “the new love of my life” — gave the thing an impassioned performance, but it was her insights into the more complex, understated and subtle works on the program that more deeply impressed.

Critics rave about Lara Downes and Zuill Bailey's "Some Other Time"

Pianist Lara Downes and cellist Zuill Bailey have each, in their own way and quite often together, been credited with seeking out new ways of presenting classical music, of reinventing the art of the recital for our time. But for both of them, the tireless quest to touch audiences through reawakening their musical curiosity owes everything to the pioneering spirit of earlier American composers. To Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss and articulated most charismatically by Leonard Bernstein. Their new album Some Other Time released by Steinway & Sons digitally on April 1st and physically on 29th, 2014, takes its title from a number in Bernstein’s musical On The Town. It’s a number about moving on, about remembering a great adventure, but with the promise that it will all come together another day, another time. Except that, for Lara Downes and Zuill Bailey, that time is now.

Here is what the critics are saying about Some Other Time:

Classical Candor reviews the album here.

"What more could you ask for than a collaboration between preeminent cellist Zuill Bailey and innovative pianist Lara Downes? I've admired their work separately for several years already, and now they've produced an album together...And just to make myself clear, the music, the performances, and the sound are extraordinary."

WGBH Boston's CD of the week.

"Cellist Zuill Bailey and pianist Lara Downes have collaborated on a recording inspired by friendship, adventure, and nostalgia."

And All Music Guide raves!

"The recital as a whole is engaging, original, and insightful, bringing together a particular musical scene in a fresh way, and the studio sound is superb. Highly recommended."

Broadway World: Twin Sisters and Pianists Christina and Michelle Naughton to Make Houston Debut

Broadway World

Twin piano virtuosos, Christina and Michelle Naughton, will make their Houston debut Friday, May 16, 2014, at 8 p.m. in the Wortham Center's Cullen Theater, presented by Society for the Performing Arts.

Christina and Michelle Naughton are captivating audiences from around the globe with their mastery of showcasing celebrated works of the great composers. Their Houston program will includeFelix Mendelssohn's Andante and Variations in B-flat major for 4 hands Op.83a; Franz Schubert's Allegro in A minor for 4 hands "Lebensturme"; Maurice Ravel's "La Valse" for Two Pianos; and Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring for Two Pianos.

Christina and Michelle Naughton have toured the world with their intricate and beautiful four-hands and two-piano playing. Graduates of Juilliard and the Curtis Institute of Music, where they were each awarded the Festorazzi Prize, the Steinway Artists began their piano studies at the age of 4.

Orchestras the Naughtons have performed with include the Philadelphia, Milwaukee, New Jersey, North Carolina, Delaware, El Paso, Napa Valley and Madison Symphonies; the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Cleveland's Red Orchestra, Chicago's Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic and the Erie Philharmonic. They have also appeared on the Steinway Society-The Bay Area, Artist Series of Sarasota, UAB Piano Series, Chamber Music San Francisco Series, Kingston Chamber Music Festival, at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater, the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, the Schubert Club in St. Paul, the Wharton Center, the South Orange Performing Arts Center and Ramsey Hall in Athens.

International performances have included the Parc Du Chateau de Florans at France's La Roque d'Antheron Festival; the Concert Series in Ludwigshafen; Hannover's NDR Kleiner Sendesaal; the Homburg-Saar series; the Bremen Music Festival; and with the Hamburg Chorus. Their performances have been broadcast on New York's WQXR, Chicago's WFMT, Philadelphia's WHYY, Boston's WQED, Atlanta's WABE, Hong Kong's RTHK, Sirius XM Satellite Radio, American Public Media's "Performance Today" and more.

Crazy or brilliant? Anderson & Roe's reimagining of The Rite of Spring

“They turn the Rite Of Spring back into theatre - you could reach out and touch it. One of the most exciting performances I've ever seen”
- Stephen Tobolowsky, actor and director

Outside of Hollywood action movies, it is not usual to announce the release of a trailer as though it were news. In this case, though, we venture to suggest that it is. Classical pianists Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe have been reinventing the art of the classical music video for years, building a seven million-strong following on YouTube and winning an Emmy nomination (with their version of Schubert's Erlkönig) through their bold and wildly creative imaginings.

We learn some of the vivid details about their latest, THE RITE OF SPRING, through the trailer - snatches of fantastical images are seen, insects crawling on the pianists' hands as they play, dancers cavorting hypnotically around the musicians, lights, colours, streamers, petals ascending into the wind, a gallery's-worth of images that promise to brand themselves on the viewers' memories. In a shoot that crossed the United States and saw its protagonists filmed, variously, from an airplane in the Californian desert and naked in the ocean at night, there has rarely been a classical music film that has gone to anything like these lengths to get close to the composer's own shockingly vivid creation.

The trailer can be viewed here.

As previously announced, THE RITE OF SPRING will be released in segments (as it is composed), one every two weeks starting from the date of the work’s centenary, It will be free to view on YouTube at Anderson & Roe’s channel from May 29..