"Good Night" + "Radesky March", a combination of Chinese and Western, elegant and popular return songs, leaving endless afterglow for the last day of 2021 in Shanghai; Shanghai Quartet + Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the pair of "Wang Bang Group" loudly sent New Year wishes to the audience - "Happy New Year 2022 to everyone!" Tonight, the fiery red flowers on the stage and the female musicians in colorful dresses filled the Jaguar Shanghai Symphony Concert Hall with an welcoming atmosphere, and the "2022 Shanghai New Year Concert" also ended in enthusiasm.
Major cities around the world celebrate the New Year with high-level concerts. As one of the business cards of Shanghai cultural brands, the "Shanghai New Year Concert" is extended to the world with New Year greetings every year by the Shanghai Symphony. Tonight's performance was sold out, confirming that the "Shanghai New Year Concert" has long become an important channel for listeners to obtain a sense of life ritual and artistic happiness. Not only jaguar Shanghai Symphony Concert Hall, but also the cross-Chinese New Year's Eve concerts held tonight at the Shanghai Grand Theatre, Cadillac Shanghai Concert Hall and Shanghai Oriental Art Center, all of them also made a good box office. Citizens and tourists are willing to spend a ritualful evening with local musicians, showing the increasing musical connotation of the "City of Philharmonic Music" - in Shanghai, elegance is awakened from hibernation and full of vitality.
Speaking a standard old-school Shanghainese dialect, the founding members of the Shanghai Quartet, the first violin li Weigang and the viola Li Honggang brothers, are familiar "old friends" of Shanghai music fans, and they serve as the principal of the guest band and the guest viola respectively. "My mother, Chen Huier, was the deputy principal of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and as a soloist, she has collaborated with the orchestra on the violin concerto 'Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai'." As the "second generation" of the Shanghai Symphony, Li Weigang played the role of conductor in tonight's concert. He said this was the first time the Shanghai Quartet had tried to lead an 80-person orchestra because "the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra is one of the top orchestras in Asia, and there are very professional musicians here." As a result, the top chamber orchestras and local power symphony orchestras that "went out" from Shanghai hit it off at once, and jointly promoted this colorful and trend-leading "Made in Shanghai" New Year Concert.
Tonight's mixed and colliding Repertoire of Eastern and Western music on the stage shows the style of Shanghai, an international cultural city, and also shows the world the strength of Chinese contemporary symphony performance. A number of familiar "Viennese melodies" accompany everyone to celebrate the New Year: "The Sound of Spring" round dance, "plucked strings" polka, "Thunder" fast polka, "Blue Danube" round dance and other songs are staged one by one. In addition, the orchestra presented the "Golden and Silver Round Dance" that the Hungarian composer Lejal was invited to compose for the carnival ball, as well as Shostakovich's prestigious "Second Round Dance". In addition to the Western classics, tonight the audience also felt the Chinese style blowing from the grassland - the "Pastoral Song" performed by Yu Xiang, a native of Inner Mongolia, was composed by Chinese composer Sha Hankun based on the folk songs of Inner Mongolia, and depicted a beautiful picture of the vast grassland with the melody of the pastoral pastoral style. The return song "Good Night" sends poetic blessings full of Chinese style to everyone with a beautiful melody.
The world-class "Sound" Shanghai Quartet returned home, and each of the four members led one or two pieces to give back to their hometown listeners. Among them, the first violin Li Weigang and the viola Li Honggang brothers each performed Beethoven's "Second Romantic Song in F Major" and Bruch's "Romantic Song in F Major" with their bands. Cellist Nicholas Sawaras performs a bohemian look at Dvorak's G minor Whirlings. Yu Xiang, the second violinist of the new member, brought one of the most famous rhapsodies of the Italian composer Mundi, "Czardas". Sun Guozhong, a music scholar and professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, believes that this concert removed the traditional conductor's stage and was played by the Shanghai Quartet "leading" the orchestra, which completed closer exchanges and cooperation between the various voice parts of the symphony orchestra, and carried out fresh exploration and beneficial practice.
Photo: Ye Chenliang
Author: Jiang Fang
Editor: Wang Licheng
Editor-in-Charge: Shao Ling
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.