Performing three tome concertos in a row is rare even if you look at the world. On the evening of July 15, at the closing concert of the 2019 Shanghai Summer Music Festival (MISA), Yu Long, music director of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, led his relatives to perform Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B minor, and the soloists were pianist Li Jian, violinist Ning Feng and cellist Alyssa Wellstein. The show also provides ahead of schedule for the upcoming 140th anniversary world tour, which kicks off next month: all three works are on the touring repertoire, and Alyssa Wellerstein, one of the most active cellists in the music scene today, will join the tour.
In the second half, when Alyssa had just begun to play, who expected the strings to suddenly break, and she was in danger on the stage, quickly returned to the backstage, took out the spare strings, and replaced them herself, the whole process was completed in one go. The audience in the hall also quietly waited for Alyssa's return. A few minutes later, Alyssa, who was mopping the floor in a red dress, walked confidently onto the stage again, and the performance continued smoothly.
In the past two weeks, the Shanghai Summer Music Festival has staged 23 performances at the Shanghai Symphony Hall and the City Lawn Music Plaza. The New York Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis, Chengzhen Zhao, Ute Lampa, the Eben Quartet, the Colin Currie Percussion, Michael Werny, the Drum Boy... A series of loud names set off a musical boom. There are music fans from afar at home and abroad, there are audiences in wheelchairs to watch the performance, there are young children who are babbling and learning to speak, and there are elderly people with white hair. Thousands of cast members and tens of thousands of spectators in front of and behind the scenes have created a warm Shanghai Summer Music Festival.
"The Summer Music Festival has become a beautiful landscape for Shanghai's urban music culture." Sun Guozhong, a professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, said, "The vast number of music fans gather here warmly, and the rhythm and brilliance of the music make this city with a richer atmosphere of the times and strong vitality." It is worth mentioning that this year's summer music festival has inserted 18 high-level indoor and outdoor performances into the wings of online live broadcasting through 10 platforms such as the official website of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Tencent, Youku, The Paper, iQiyi, Culture Cloud, Look at the News, Tianyi Video, Oriental Network and BesTV, with a total of 7.8 million viewers.
The three concertos of the Summer Festival's closing concert will be performed by Alyssa Wellerstein, Frank Peter Zimmerman and Lu Yixuan on the upcoming 140th Anniversary World Tour. In addition, the tour will also stage Rachmaninoff's "Symphonic Dance" and Chen Qigang's "Five Elements" and other works at different stations. The two works that Long Yu and I have submitted for recording have been included in the album Gateways (Doorway) released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on June 28 this year. The British newspaper The Times gave the record a four-star positive rating, and did not hesitate to praise: "The biggest shock that runs through this new album comes from this excellent Shanghai orchestra under the baton of Yu Long, which makes people bask in the brilliant recording." ”
On this tour, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra will perform in 23 days in Washington, Chicago, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Grafenegg, Amsterdam, London five countries and seven cities, and have appeared in the world's top music festivals such as the Lavinia Music Festival, the Edinburgh International Arts Festival, the Lucerne Music Festival, and the Proms. On August 12, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra will officially set off to open a huge "Dialogue between Chinese and Western Music", showing the strength of the China Symphony Orchestra and China's brilliant culture to the world audience.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Shi Chenlu Text Editor: Shi Chenlu