On February 17th, the Minneapolis Hall in Minnesota, a major city in the north-central United States, ushered in a unique Chinese New Year party, and the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Chinese conductor Qian Junping staged a symphony with the theme of "Celebrating the Lunar New Year" and the "East Asian-Confucian" cultural circle with different national works as the main body. The performance brings together Chinese and South Korean, Vietnamese, Austrian and other Eastern and Western repertoire in one, aiming to build a bridge of cultural exchanges between China and the West, express in a unique way the perception and thinking of the existence of Asian American groups in the context of Western social and cultural context in the context of world changes, and try to bridge the gap between heterogeneous cultures through subtle and lasting power, and break the communication barriers and barriers formed based on inherent impressions.
Ignite the full spring of Mingzhou.
In early February, Minnesota is still experiencing a cold spring, and it's almost the coldest place in the United States. In the Minneapolis ** room, the audience was enthusiastic, and the applause seemed to be able to lift the ceiling of the ** hall. This is the scene when Qian Junping conducted the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra to stage the Spring Festival.
The Spring Festival is the biggest festival in Asia, but the repertoire of the New Year Symphony is often difficult to brilliant, but the selection of songs by the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra for this ** meeting is more than eye-catching. Conductor Qian Junping and the orchestra's principal bassoon, Xie Fei, the initiator of the ** meeting project, chose a set of "colorful" repertoire - the * meeting did not only perform Chinese works, but included orchestral works by composers from countries that also celebrate the Spring Festival, including South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore and other countries that also celebrate the Spring Festival, presenting a New Year ** meeting with an international vision in front of the audience. ** will be played in the popular "Spring Festival Overture", Qian Junping clearly highlights the sense of response of the voice in his interpretation. In "Three Tunes", the national elements in ** are appropriately expressed. In "Angel from Formosa", Taiwanese composer Xiao Tairan makes people smell the composer's fusion of national music style and romantic grace.
The two heavyweight concertos in the first and second halves fully reflect the novelty of this ** meeting. Before the end of the first half, Vietnamese composer Van An Vanessa Vao performed her four-movement work "Country Lullaby". In this work, Van Ann Vanessa Waugh plays the solo piano and Vietnamese zither on the stage and sings with a soprano, and the image taken by the composer is projected behind it, and together with **, the audience is brought into the composer's intimate and delicate inner secret full of nostalgia. In this work, Qian Junping uses his precise technique to link the orchestra with the solo, and the composer's own chant is full of storytelling.
In addition to one person and two pianos, there is also a song for two people: the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra commissioned Chinese composer Xie Zhenqiang to create a double concerto "Dragon Flying Phoenix Dance" for the local Jinghu player Xie Zhengang and Yueqin player Hu Mei ushered in the world premiere at the ** meeting.
The work is warm and unrestrained, fully demonstrating the integration of classical opera and modern **, and the two couple performers are in harmony with each other, and push the ** meeting to a climax with tacit cooperation. The Spring Festival is a time of reunion, and Xie Fei, the son of the two performers and principal bassoon, sits in the band at this time. There is a sentence in the work in which Bassoon imitates the rhythm of Peking Opera, which is the connection between him and his parents, and the warm vein behind the performance is refreshing. Then the two played "Spring Greetings" to further fill this joy in the ** hall.
In the middle of the two "tome" works, Qian Junping presented "Waltz of the Sound of Spring" to the audience in an elegant Viennese style. Nowadays, there are not many young conductors with long batons, but in the hands of Qian Junping, full of enthusiasm is unreservedly transmitted to the orchestra and the audience through his long baton. At the end of the meeting, the static and moving "Colorful Clouds Chasing the Moon" and Tang Jianping's rearranged "Golden Snake Dance" allowed the audience to appreciate the diverse beauty of China. The return of "Flowers and Full Moon" pushed the atmosphere of the on-site meeting to a climax. This orchestra, which has experienced Mitropoulos, Marriner and other masters, can be said to be as good as the so-called "five famous orchestras". Nearly ninety percent of the audience attended, but the majority of the audience was not Chinese, many yellow-haired foreign audience members wore Tang costumes to enjoy the ceremony, and the eye-catching dragon dance performance in the middle made them stand up and applaud excitedly. **It will be full of global perspective, high-level artistic quality, and give people the inspiration of art, cultural thinking and joyful enjoyment.
Multiculturalism is new.
The biggest feature of this meeting is obviously that through the unique repertoire arrangement and rich presentation methods, the East Asian culture and the Chinese and Western cultures are fully integrated, and the two form a unique cultural picture in the interweaving. The ethnic groups of East Asia are skillfully integrated into the performance of the symphony, so that the audience can feel the richness, diversity and inclusiveness of culture. This multicultural collision presents the audience with a colorful feast of sound and even visual (the use of large screens, the arrangement of dragon dances, etc.).
These ideas originated from Qian Junping's idea. Living in Berlin, he often celebrates the Spring Festival with Asian compatriots from different countries, which makes him naturally come up with the idea of holding a ** party that can make these people who celebrate the Spring Festival gain emotional resonance. He told Xie Fei about the plan, and the two hit it off, and after reporting it to the orchestra, the orchestra also expressed strong interest. As a result, since 2022, Qian Junping has led the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra to launch the Spring Festival every year around the Chinese New Year, which is mainly composed of Chinese music and works from other East Asian countries.
In the first year (2022), the orchestra's planning for Qian Junping is in the testing stage. The orchestra invited local influential pipa player Gao Hong, violinist Du Rui and others to try to attract audiences of different ages, backgrounds and identities with famous songs. In the second year, the team decided to invest more resources and invited erhu virtuoso Lu Yiwen and other artists from China, and won praise from the audience with their ingenious repertoire arrangement and high-level arrangement, which was even more successful than the first year. Through this process of exploration and practice and continuous persistence, the New Year Club has gradually formed a brand in North America and established a tradition of integrating Chinese and Western creation and culture.
On the basis of the successful attempts in the previous two years, this year's orchestra further clarified the positioning of the "East Asian-Confucian" cultural integration and Sino-Western exchanges of the Spring Festival, and expanded the scope of the selection, which not only covers Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Austrian and other Eastern and Western classics and new works, but also highlights the elements of national instrumental music. Vanessa Waugh solo.
And this meeting not only highlights the cultural characteristics of East Asia, but also shows a rich emotional aspect. Commissioned by the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, Tse Zhenqiang made his world premiere of The Dance of the Dragon and the Phoenix, named after the Chinese dragon, with the aim of spreading China's "dragon culture" and original Chinese opera during the Year of the Dragon**. The ancient dragon and phoenix are considered to be totems with auspicious meanings, ** showing the lively and jubilant festive atmosphere of the festival. Chinese New Year is a day of family reunion, and Asians have a deeper attachment to "home" than to the West, Van Ann Vanessa Waugh: "The National Lullaby is inspired by the lullabies of Vietnam's 54 ethnic groups. The Vietnamese tradition is that all mothers sing lullabies for their children, and personally, I grew up with the lullabies my mother sang to me. I heard people around me sing this song a lot, and I sang it to my daughters too. Although Vietnamese lullabies come in different dialects, they all share the same common theme: comfort to children and encouragement to loved ones. These lullabies represent the deepest comfort, calm, and inner strength that many Vietnamese call for to overcome life's insurmountable mental and emotional challenges. ”
* At the same time, the meeting caused a great response in the Chinese circle in the United States, and Shen Mi, the leader of the American Chinese Art Federation, made a special trip to listen to the ** meeting; In order to write a good commentary, Cai Benhong, vice president of talent management and leadership training at a Fortune 500 company, devotes countless hours to learning the background of the repertoire and interviewing composers and soloists to achieve the best performance results. The success of the meeting is obviously inseparable from the support of the Chinese community and the local people's interest in Asian culture.
It's not just joy.
Performing such a meeting in the United States is not only a lively event, but also a reflection on East Asian cultural values: in today's world, how to understand ourselves? How can we understand our kinship and ties with other Asian countries and our relations with Western countries?
Qian Junping believes that ** has a powerful power and can become a bridge connecting different cultures. In the past few years, he has tried to plan and organize performances in the form of a New Year party, focusing on the promotion of Asian culture under the theme of "celebrating the Lunar New Year", trying to build a bridge between Chinese and foreign cultures and cultural exchanges between the East and the West, and expressing in a unique way the perception and thinking of the existence of Asian groups in the context of Western social and cultural context in the context of world changes, trying to bridge the gap between heterogeneous cultures through subtle and lasting power, and breaking the communication barriers and barriers formed based on inherent impressions. to make it more widely recognized in Western society.
The Minnesota Symphony Orchestra's 2024 Chinese New Year is a feast that focuses on the cultural exchanges between East Asian countries and the East and the West, and bravely responds to social responsibility. Qian Junping tries to reflect on global social issues, find space to express concerns about these challenges, and emphasize the social impact of the world. "Classical ** needs to represent Asian culture and Oriental culture in a way that promotes itself, just like movies. Qian Junping said, "This kind of rethinking and positioning of the leading role reflects the challenge to tradition and the manifestation of national and regional characteristics in the context of multiculturalism." In this sense, ** is not only an art form, but also a bridge for cultural exchanges between the East and the West. Through this feast, the cultural characteristics and unique values of Asians in Western society may be recognized, and as a common language that transcends national boundaries and cultures, it indirectly plays a role in connecting emotional values and promoting social change and development. In this special period full of challenges and uncertainties, the power of ** is expected to become an irreplaceable endogenous driving force to promote social progress. ”
Qian Junping believes that in a certain sense, ** can become a tool to promote social change. Through **, he tries to promote a greater understanding and respect for the differences between different cultures. It will become a platform and a field for social issues to reflect and discuss, and stimulate social resonance and action. The Chinese New Year celebrations and their connotations of reunion, harmony and longing for a better vision can play a certain role in social connection beyond the function of art as a common message symbol that transcends culture and language. Through this common vocabulary, people can transcend cultural and ethnic differences to a certain extent, and jointly experience the emotional concepts conveyed by **, such as friendliness, nobility, and fraternity, which helps to establish a more harmonious relationship in society, and indirectly promotes the coordinated progress and common development of different social groups.
Qian Junping said: "* will infiltrate the hearts of human beings in a subtle way, which is the artist's gesture and the social significance he can bring to the world." ”
Zhang Tingyuwen.