At the beginning of the new year, the performance market for New Year's concerts in various places is still in a lively stage. As a prelude to the start of the new year, the New Year's Concert has always been the highest-level event that attracts royalty, dignitaries and celebrities overseas.
Since the Vienna New Year's Concert was broadcast live around the world in 1993, it has also become well-known and loved by domestic audiences. However, recently, in Shijiazhuang and other places, there have been frequent news that the audience has asked for a refund for the royal concert.
Source: Bailu News
What is embarrassing is that these overseas diplomatic symphony orchestras in the name of royalty and philharmonic music, after layers of peeling by rights protection netizens, the chief musicians turned out to be amateur passers-by in overseas parks...
On the evening of December 22, many audiences holding New Year's concert tickets gathered in the hall of Shijiazhuang Grand Theater.
Everyone heard that this performance was performed by the Royal Belgian Philharmonic Orchestra, and deliberately grabbed tickets from the Internet in advance.
Concert tickets @ Source: Jiupai News
According to the instructions on the ticketing website, tickets should be checked in half an hour before the day of the performance to avoid being late due to audience congestion.
However, the performance, which was originally scheduled to start at 7:30 that day, did not start ticket check-in until 7:20. This made the audience, who had been waiting in the leaky hall for a long time, 10 minutes late when they found their seats.
The reason given by the ticket inspector turned out to be that the orchestra equipment and instruments were not properly adjusted?
And that's not all, the show didn't start until 19:40. At the strong demand of the audience, a cellist slowly appeared on the stage to play a piece that was not in the preview, and the symphony that he had promised became his solo performance.
Repertoire list @ Source: Jiupai News
The solo performance made many audiences look confused, and the concert has a blind box opening link?
After the cello went down, two more musicians came up, and they played absurdly for twenty minutes, and the sound was sometimes loud and sometimes inaudible. After a delay of twenty minutes, a few string musicians were replaced, and they still did not play according to the program, not only skipping the original repertoire, but also playing a few pieces freely.
What's even more outrageous is that one of the tunes was also performed 3 times.
Source: Bailu News
By the time the tenors and harp musicians took the stage, there was no stopping sighing, but none of the staff members in the audience came forward to explain. In the end, I heard the sound of shouting for a refund on the stage, and the theater had to come out to apologize and give a light sentence: The chief is sick, I'm sorry.
The audience, who originally planned to listen to a performance of the Belgian Philharmonic Orchestra in the cold wind of more than ten degrees below zero, was finally perfunctory by a group of musicians of the grass stage team, who can swallow such a dumb loss.
Subsequently, Shijiazhuang Grand Theater issued an apology statement, saying: After the Royal Belgian Philharmonic Orchestra entered China on the evening of December 19, due to the temperature difference, some of the actors were seriously ill and ill during the rehearsal the next day, so they could not maintain the original performance. We will start the refund procedure in a timely manner and sincerely apologize to all the audience.
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But such a statement did not calm the emotions of the audience that night, but caused a wave of pickpocketing of the "Belgian Philharmonic Orchestra".
Shockingly, the "Belgian Philharmonic Orchestra" is a local business orchestra invited by the organizers from Belgium, and the musicians are composed of preparatory students and amateurs. The "400 years of history" and "royal" on the ticket posters are all fake gimmicks used to deceive people.
Hundreds of pieces of anti-counterfeiting information flooded the official platform of the Shijiazhuang Grand Theater overnight.
A reporter called the organizer to inquire about the foreign name of the Royal Belgian Philharmonic Orchestra T Muziek Frascati on an overseas website, and the foreign name of the Belgian Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 2007, and the orchestra's official website and social media did not mention the word "Royal", why did the ticket poster claim to have a history of 400 years?
Introduction to the orchestra's official website @ Source: Orchestra's official website
For the reporter's question, the organizer hung up the phone and did not answer.
This farce-like New Year's concert has been reversed several times, and the outside world has also heard a new term - "water group". As the name suggests, "water troupes" refer to amateur bands that are exaggerated in their promotional materials, have no background in the band, and sell dog meat on the head of a sheep.
In recent years, there have been endless incidents of European "water groups" coming to China to swagger and deceive, and even some of the so-called chiefs are wild musicians picked up from overseas parks...
Source: Xinmin Evening News
As the prime time of the year-round performance market, in the New Year's concerts and ballet performances held in various places around New Year's Day, there are reports of various "water troupes" indiscriminately filling the number from time to time.
For example, some time ago, the "Russian Royal Ballet", "Vienna Royal Symphony Orchestra", and "Italian Naples Royal Philharmonic Orchestra" were popular during the curtain call. However, these countries already have no royal families, so where is the royal performance team?
Orchestras such as the "Deutsche Symphonie Orchestra Berlin" and the "Berlin Symphony Orchestra" seem to have a long history, but they are amateur groups that are very different from the world-class orchestra "Berlin Symphony Orchestra", which enjoys an excellent reputation in Europe and is based in the Berlin Konzerthaus, a famous art palace in Germany.
Schematic diagram of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra in Germany
So, who gave these "water groups" the courage to go abroad to cheat money under the guise of being full of loopholes? This has to start with the target customer group that the water group has taken a fancy to.
Whose leeks are slaughtered by overseas water groups? There are endless debates in various circles on this issue. Some people think that it is a pure layman who buys a ticket to join in the fun, some people think that it is a group purchase of a union that does not understand music to make a New Year's gift for employees, and some people think that the "water group" does not pit the poor, but deceives fake experts who don't know how to pretend to understand.
Unfortunately, the people who want to make money most from overseas water groups are actually middle-class parents and children learning musical instruments.
Mastering a Western musical instrument as a high-threshold school in the specialty system has always been known for its high consumption and low returns. In the circle of parents who learn musical instruments, there is no most expensive, only more expensive is the common aspiration of the family.
In addition to the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of musical instruments, strings and other parts that must be paid, hundreds of thousands of musical instrument lessons, as well as tens of thousands of master classes and concert tickets for various orchestras are the large expenses that continue to follow.
And once you get on the boat of musical instruments, it means that there is no turning back from the bow, and it is a pity to choose to give up halfway because of the cost. Especially for children who are new to musical instruments, it is necessary to listen to the performance of overseas orchestras on a large number of live occasions to find gaps and improve. This also gives an opportunity for some overseas "water groups" with impure purposes to take advantage of.
Since learning Xi musical instrument is a high-cost and low-return course, why does it attract so many middle-class families to follow suit?
Whether it is a key university at home or overseas, students who have a skill in literature, art and sports seem to have an advantage in applying for the examination.
Today, when it is becoming more and more difficult to get into a good university, art expertise has become the most optimistic stepping stone for middle-class parents. Moreover, learning Xi classical music and musical instruments can not only meet the aesthetics of middle-class families, but also be used to highlight taste.
Diagram
However, such a literary and artistic "involution" not only aggravates the anxiety of parents, but also children may not be able to experience the fun from it. In the end, only the overseas "water group", a malicious organizer, became the biggest winner.
It is hoped that music fans who love classical music should keep their eyes open when buying concert tickets, and when encountering ambiguous orchestras, they should check the history and relevant information on the Internet in time, and do not waste time, money and good mood because of "water groups".