The Evergreen Symphony Orchestra in Teatro Comunale Alighieri during the 2012 Ravenna Festival in Italy. (Photo : Evergreen Symphony Orchestra/Official Website)
World-class venue for world-class talent.
Taiwan’s Evergreen Symphony Orchestra (ESO) will be having a two-day performance this month in two of Australia’s distinguished concert venues.
The orchestra will be serenading the audience at the world-renowned Sydney Opera House in New South Wales on July 12. Another performance is set on July 14 at the Brisbane City Hall, a magnificent Italian Renaissance building in Queensland.
ESO will be playing under the baton of German Gernot Schmalfuss, its music director and chief conductor since Jan. 2007. The repertoire includes classical music for the July 12 performance and popular Taiwanese folk songs for July 14.
At the Sydney Opera House, the audience will be treated to “Schumann's Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op. 47” and “Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 in D Minor.” ESO will also play two Chinese compositions, namely, Chen Gang and He Zhanhao’s “The Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto” and Mao Yuan and Liu Tieshan’s “Dance of the Yao People.”
Those who will attend ESO’s performance at the Brisbane City Hall will be serenaded with some of Taiwan’s most famous folk songs, such as “Jasmine,” “The Torment of a Flower,” “Loving the Year Round” and Deng Yu-Sian (music) and Lee Lin-Chu’s (lyrics) “Adolescent Longing.”
Both performances shall include Ma Shui-long’s “Bamboo Flute Concerto” as ESO’s tribute to the late Taiwanese composer.
Ma, who passed away only in May and would have turned 76 on July 17, was described by music critic Bernard Holland in a 1987 New York Times article as someone who “let his instruments speak in a European voice but with an Asian mind.”
The Evergreen Symphony Orchestra was founded in 2001 by Evergreen Group’s chairman Chang Yung-Fa through his foundation. The orchestra already performed in London, England; Tokyo, Japan; Norway; Singapore; Busan and Seoul, South Korea; California, U.S.A.; and in different parts of China.
ESO’s profile on its official website ends with this sentence: “The ESO will continue to export Taiwan’s music and culture to every corner of the global village.”
This July, that corner of the global village will be Down Under.
