[ad_1]
Zack – and off, the crab scissors, who had just run so happily to the screen in the Shanghai subway. The animal is then chopped, crushed, fried: this is what explains the advertising for a restaurant that boasts the freshness of its products. Then, in a video about the behaviors, a funny man shows that it is forbidden to lean forward on the escalators of the subway stations (why should we take it?). And finally, an advertisement follows for the city of Shanghai. You can see futuristic architecture, autonomous cars, avant-garde laboratories – and a symphony orchestra.
As you have already noticed, clbadical music does not mean the past, but the future in Shanghai. Not the tradition, but the growing market. It is significant that the advertisement shows a Chinese orchestra led by a European leader. Because music only repeats what has already happened in the field of technology: we want to learn from the West, quickly and thoroughly. To be there as soon as possible, where you want to go: at the top.
Good nerves, good contacts
It's just for western orchestras. "Everything is still fresh here," said Michael Haefliger, artistic director of the Lucerne Festival. with espresso in the center of Shanghai. He was in China for the first time in the 1980s, at that time with the task of badyzing the concert halls. Since then, the music sector has exploded, it continues to explode, just like the city. At every corner is demolished and built; Yesterday, you went through narrow streets in tight laundries, they are already skyscrapers the day after tomorrow. And where there was nothing, a nerve center of culture opens up. Being here, says Haefliger, "it's fun".
It's also exhausting. Organizationally, everything is much faster in China than in Europe. If you want to carry an orchestra here, you need good nerves, better contacts and a good dose of talent for improvisation. In June, explains Haefliger, many things were unclear: "China is negotiating to the end." But the bottom line is that everything went well and that the Lucerne Festival Orchestra (LFO) was able to give its five concerts in Shanghai. It should be a real home, with a very different repertoire, so that people here can really experience what this LFO is and can be. The magic word is Branding.
Ilona Schmiel, the director of the Zurich Tonhalle, also uses it. Only a week after the LFO, she travels with the Tonhalle Orchestra between Beijing, Shanghai and Taipei – a coincidence, but not surprising. Because every orchestra that holds his own travels to China. That's because it's just a trend. Others because they have a longer-term perspective. The second magic word is: sustainability. We want to be present and known in this market, which everyone promises so much. And of course, we also think of Chinese tourists. At the moment, explains Michael Haefliger, they mainly walked to Lucerne by the bridge of the Chapel. "But it would be nice if they also found their way to the KKL."
Think of the phrase you are looking for for the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall. The phone just died, the Fuxing Middle Road, where the concert hall is, several kilometers long, and when asked "Shanghai Symphony" or "Concert", you get not only the style of linguistic interrogation. Concert Hall? No idea
A room like a steaming basket
You finally find it, thanks to a friendly banker who uses a translation program to find what he is looking for and puts the address in Chinese characters on a pink post-it. And thanks to a friendly taxi driver who, unlike some of his colleagues, can read and unload at the right place. While you stand under plane trees in front of a simple brick building with an eingedelltem roof. It was opened only in 2014, designed by the Japanese Arata Isozaki – which is surprising considering the political past of both countries. But who wants good concert halls, we must forget the old conflicts.
And it's really a good room, this hall of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. A pretty intimate also with its 1200 seats. As in many Asian theaters, the groups of spectators are grouped around the podium in the style of the Berlin Philharmonic. The fact that one is in China is visible only by the braided wall elements which ensure a favorable acoustics. As an auditor, you feel a bit like one of those bamboo baskets in which you dumplings dumplings, the famous dumplings of Shanghai. Only visitors to the concert are not steamed, but frozen; the air conditioning is running at full speed.
"When I first played in China, the audience was not so quiet at the concert."Riccardo Chailly
After all, the sound develops heat here. A pure program Ravel is proposed this first night and the main conductor of the LFO, Riccardo Chailly, who otherwise does not really want to live in exuberance, can not help but shine at the end. The orchestra played well, clear, dynamic and free; the dance rhythms of "La Valse" broke up brilliantly, the "Bolero" became a jazzy impudence and the audience applauded.
It's a surprisingly young crowd. Some are dressed elegantly, others wear tracksuits – not just those two who are eager to co-manage, know what it's all about. The atmosphere is concentrated, no one coughs, nobody hits in the wrong place. Unlike their grandparents, who were young during the Mao Cultural Revolution, these spectators obviously have a connection with Mozart and company. Unlike their parents, they did not have to fight for a high social position – they grew up with proper training. Many of them may have already received piano lessons.
Riccardo Chailly said that a lot has changed in recent years. "When I first played in China, the audience was not so quiet in concert". The same goes for the musicians of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. For example, French violinist Geoffroy Schied reports that listeners unpacked their food during the concerts – "it does not exist anymore". The rooms would have changed too; Although behind the scenes of Shanghai are not yet "charming", they are much less spooky than in the old Beijing concert hall: "There are these endless corridors, all identical, with neon lights and many locked doors. You are always happy when you discover him. "
Mr. Wu speaks Viennese
And the expansion continues. Currently, about twenty new concert halls are under construction in different Chinese cities and others are planned. Unlike Europe, where for years have debated such projects, everything is going very fast here. The money is there and also the willingness of the state to push the business together. The centralizing system certainly has its advantages here.
Jiatong Wu, chairman of the Wu Promotion concert agency and a fairly powerful man in the Chinese music industry, points it out. You meet him in the lobby where he welcomes you in perfect German with a Viennese accent and the charm that suits. After all, he has already studied in Vienna in electrical engineering; In the 1980s, while a stay abroad was still an extraordinary thing, "China was much farther from Europe than today".
The music then began at Heuriger, in conversation with a friend of the Wu family, the Viennese music critic Franz Endler, who died today. It was at this time that the idea of organizing musical performances guest came. Not with an orchestra, "it would have been too expensive and we would not have done it". But a quartet, not clbadical but Viennese music by Schrammel: it seemed feasible.
The Wus praised the concert hall in Beijing, which only had a dozen concerts a year: "Those who wanted to present an event had to pay an extra sum for cleaning, because in the weeks that followed, he always remained dusty. " The concert was a success and Jiatong Wu found it all much more electrifying than electrical engineering. He has also begun to import larger ensembles, such as the Vienna Strauss Festival Orchestra; the Chinese public worshiped waltzes, polkas, the "Radetzky march", "it was an enthusiasm similar to a pop concert".
Music is always politics too
Since then, many things have happened. Wu Promotion attracts big names every week in China: Rudolf Buchbinder and Mischa Maisky, the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Vienna Philharmonic – and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. The Chinese public can now distinguish between good and bad interpretations, said Jiatong Wu. "This is also important for Chinese orchestras: they know the purpose."
You are far What is the quality of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the best and most ambitious of the country, which has just signed a contract with Deutsche Grammophon? Wu's answer is simple: "Compared to the past, they are damn good, but the creation of a high-level orchestra really takes a lot of time – maybe a hundred years – or just fifty, because the Chinese are very busy. "
Currently, 33 students in Chinese music are enrolled at the Zurich University of the Arts.
But this symphony of Shanghai was founded only the day before yesterday. Next year, he will celebrate his 140 years, with a history marked by all sorts of restructuring, renown, new beginnings. Relations with the West were sometimes narrow, sometimes non-existent, depending on the current political situation. The portraits on the fence in front of the concert hall are reminiscent of Italian violinist and orchestra conductor Arrigo Foa, who came to Shanghai in 1921 and taught generations of Chinese musicians at the conservatory. Or again the Chinese conductor Lu Hong, persecuted during the Cultural Revolution and rehabilitated only in 1979.
What was true at the time is still valid today: music is what politicians want. In institutions as in concert agencies, many employees are still members of the party. And guest performances of foreign orchestras are only possible because they are desired by the government. To such an extent that they also provide financial support: the Shanghai Symphony provides free room at the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, the hotel expenses of musicians being supported by the Chinese side.
There are musicians from 24 nations who meet in summer for Lucerne concerts. Claudio Abbado, founder of LFO in 2003, invited allies from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker or the Salzburg Hagen Quartet. With Riccardo Chailly, musicians from La Scala in Milan joined the group. The distribution is therefore pan-European in the best sense of the word – including the few violinists from Japan and South Korea who have long been part of it. On the other hand, the fact that three Chinese played in Shanghai was an exception: they moved in the short term for musicians who did not obtain a visa.
Pure mbad is crucial
In general, Chinese musicians in European orchestras are poorly represented. But that will change in the next few years, and everyone is convinced that it is requested. More and more Chinese go abroad to study music. their first destination is now America (and some Chinese already play in American orchestras). But the interest in European education is also increasing. In Switzerland, the badault is still limited; Currently, 33 students in Chinese music are enrolled at the Zurich University of the Arts. In German universities, the rate is sometimes much higher; in Mainz, for example, there are many more Asians than Europeans studying, and the Chinese are the fastest growing group.
At the same time, education in China is improving more and more. There are nine conservatories across the country, which is surprisingly few. but everyone could populate a small town with his students. As for the public, it is the sheer mbad that is crucial. In a city of 25 million people, like Shanghai, the concert halls are filled even when only a fraction of a million people are interested in music. And that among the 1.38 billion people of China, thousands of talented young musicians are discovering: You can deduce from it.
Go to Europe
One of them is the pianist Haochen Zhang, aged 28, who joins the Lucerne Festival Orchestra as a soloist in Shanghai. It is not as famous as Lang Lang or Yuja Wang, the only two Chinese pianists to have made a career in the world. But he studied with Gary Graffman in the United States, winning American awards and playing at Carnegie Hall. Now he is starting to jump to Europe; In November, he will make his piano debut at the Lucerne Festival.
He is very musical, says LFO chief Riccardo Chailly, "and really brave." Because the first joint performance does not take place in the hall of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, but in the open air in Gongqing Park, far north of the giant city. It's fine here, but also wet and fresh. Many musicians seem unusually chubby as they arrive on the scene for an upbeat sound in pop China – because they hide windbreakers under their shirts and fräcken.
The public has warmed up. About 3000 people came, including many families. Until almost the end of the concert, the delays are jostling in the ranks; The traffic is dense in Shanghai, you can spend hours in traffic. Even otherwise, he is here – of course – restless only in the lobby. People change places, they do not just speak in a low voice, from time to time, a drone buzzes in the audience.
But the orchestra is heard, not only thanks to the brutal reinforcement. The program is suitable for mbad ("Bolero" included), and in particular Mozart's Piano Concerto KV 491 is almost conjured. Haochen Zhang plays as he's in a chamber music room: flexible and transparent, elegant and flexible. The orchestra also has a more subtle sound than the conditions would allow.
A flying orchestra conductor
But then, you let it appear directly in the addition of "Tico Tico". And suddenly, it gets a little stunned: a Swiss orchestra playing in Europe plays a South American street song in China – musical globalization tends to be grotesque. And we almost look back with nostalgia at the strange and shocking Metrowerbung with the crab.
But there are also other moments. Those in which Europeans and Chinese understand each other, knowing that they do not really understand each other. Riccardo Chailly took over in the middle of the second sequel "Daphnis and Chloe". He continued driving, but was visibly uncomfortable. So much so that he suddenly turned to the audience, let the orchestra continue to play alone and asked for help with pleading gestures. The audience reacted with amusement, astonishment – and one of them jumped on the podium and handed the staff over to the maestro, who thanked him amicably and then continued to direct. And yes, it was a cultural encounter that both parties will not forget.
This trip was funded by the Lucerne Festival.
(Editors Tamedia)
Created: 26.10.2018, 18:11
Source link
