The Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra's season series "Music for All" is characterised by national authenticity of music peformance. Conductor En Shao will present China's modern academic music - a very rare thing to enjoy on the Russian stage. Graduating from the Beijing Conservatory, En Shao debuted in Europe in 1988. After winning an international coductor contest by the Hungarian television, he has headed the orchestras of Ulster, Guildford and Macao. He is the chief conductor of the Radio-Television Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, the China National Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Taipei Chinese Orchestra of traditional instruments (Taiwan). En Shao first met the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra in 2007 during the opening of the Russian year in China.
The programme includes two of the best-known pieces by modern Chinese composers, two tragic and beautiful stories. Symphonic literature is a relatively young genre in the Chinese musical culture. Each composer is independently and in his own way treating the problem of integrating Western tradition into the Chinese folk material.
Wu Zuqiang is a musician of a dramatic fate. Losing mother as a child, he was brought up at a cathedral in the traditions of Taoist philosophy and culture. He lost sight at 35 (aquiring a second name, A-bing, i.e. «blind») and has played on streets, famous for his mastery of national instruments. His works are tragic, but also highly poetic and beautiful.
He Zhanhao and Chen Gang, graduates of the Shanghai conservatory, have based their piece on ancient traditional plots and melodies of Chinese folklore and opera. The complex relations between the heroes are reflected in the dialogue of the violin and the cello.
The programme also features suites from Bartok's ballets created during the composer's intensive search for his own style and marrying the ancient traditional folk material with the avant-garde innovations.
12.02.2009

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