Post by Blue on Aug 2, 2012 11:21:50 GMT
Recently Hsinchu City hosted a two-week long Chinese music festival with mostly free concerts sponsored by the Hsinchu City Government: (www.hcmf.tw) There were performances every day with attendees given souvenir stickers showing musical instruments. Those who collected enough stickers could participate in a drawing with prizes such as a gigantic tv as well as the hulusi. T-shirts were also sold: I bought one that has an erhu as the graphic.
During the festival, I watched a performance from a Chinese music orchestra from Shangdong (山東民族管弦樂學會民族樂團). The conductor 曲祥 happened to have a dizi background and his clothing actually resembled between the head of a marching band and a circus ringmaster. Or a more accurate description would be that he resembled Harold Zidler in the movie Moulin Rouge; his choice of music and conducting style sounded like Harold Zidler shouting "A magnificent, opulent, tremendous, stupendous, gargantuan, bedazzlement, a sensual ravishment. It will be: Spectacular Spectacular." When the conductor 曲祥beckoned certain musicians to perform more intensely with his baton, he would also stare at those same musicians intensely, trying to inspire them to relate with what he was feeling.
The performance began with a dramatic flair (田間歡歌： 任寶楨 曲) in which all the musicians literally yelled “hahahahahaha!” at the end of the first piece almost as if they were maniacs! Next came
孔子隨想---金色的山東 in which the percussionists were frantically moving from one end of the room to the next striking the chimes, drums, crotales, triangles, and so on with no aid of sheet music; meanwhile the dizi and erhu were jointly hypnotizing the audience with music that almost sounded like the Twilight Zone. Afterwords, a flute player performed 野蜂飛舞 (Flight of the Bumble Bee) using the G-pitched bandi. Then was 一杯美酒, which sounded like a Middle Eastern or Indian tune. In 喜訊, the sheng player literally stood up and started to dance on the stage; while, 帕米爾的春天 involved a bangdi and qudi duet whose volume would have driven Xindi to climb up a wall in terror!
For the generation X-ers, 海燕 sounded like an 80's movie soundtrack. One of the final scores ( 紅樓夢序曲) sounded like the end of an epic movie.
There were also performances involving singers. I wasn't able to stand the high pitch singing of 蘆花 from a female singer in a bright red dress, but I felt that technically she performed much better than the male singer in the other pieces.
Jay Chou's pop song 菊花台 was also featured through the combined effort of the cello and the erhu, later to be accompanied by the support of the liuqin and pipa. The performance was hauntingly sad and beautiful (the erhu made it sound so sad of course).
The only regret in the entire performance was that the shouts of “安可!安可!安可!” (Encore! Encore! Encore!) wasn't fully reciprocated enough as only one encore performance was granted.
During the festival, I watched a performance from a Chinese music orchestra from Shangdong (山東民族管弦樂學會民族樂團). The conductor 曲祥 happened to have a dizi background and his clothing actually resembled between the head of a marching band and a circus ringmaster. Or a more accurate description would be that he resembled Harold Zidler in the movie Moulin Rouge; his choice of music and conducting style sounded like Harold Zidler shouting "A magnificent, opulent, tremendous, stupendous, gargantuan, bedazzlement, a sensual ravishment. It will be: Spectacular Spectacular." When the conductor 曲祥beckoned certain musicians to perform more intensely with his baton, he would also stare at those same musicians intensely, trying to inspire them to relate with what he was feeling.
The performance began with a dramatic flair (田間歡歌： 任寶楨 曲) in which all the musicians literally yelled “hahahahahaha!” at the end of the first piece almost as if they were maniacs! Next came
孔子隨想---金色的山東 in which the percussionists were frantically moving from one end of the room to the next striking the chimes, drums, crotales, triangles, and so on with no aid of sheet music; meanwhile the dizi and erhu were jointly hypnotizing the audience with music that almost sounded like the Twilight Zone. Afterwords, a flute player performed 野蜂飛舞 (Flight of the Bumble Bee) using the G-pitched bandi. Then was 一杯美酒, which sounded like a Middle Eastern or Indian tune. In 喜訊, the sheng player literally stood up and started to dance on the stage; while, 帕米爾的春天 involved a bangdi and qudi duet whose volume would have driven Xindi to climb up a wall in terror!
For the generation X-ers, 海燕 sounded like an 80's movie soundtrack. One of the final scores ( 紅樓夢序曲) sounded like the end of an epic movie.There were also performances involving singers. I wasn't able to stand the high pitch singing of 蘆花 from a female singer in a bright red dress, but I felt that technically she performed much better than the male singer in the other pieces.
Jay Chou's pop song 菊花台 was also featured through the combined effort of the cello and the erhu, later to be accompanied by the support of the liuqin and pipa. The performance was hauntingly sad and beautiful (the erhu made it sound so sad of course).
The only regret in the entire performance was that the shouts of “安可!安可!安可!” (Encore! Encore! Encore!) wasn't fully reciprocated enough as only one encore performance was granted.
