Filial festival
The second China Xiaoxian Cultural Festival started yesterday in Yutai, Shandong province, and will run until Thursday.
The festival features a series of traditional cultural activities and exhibitions of calligraphy and ink painting, seal cutting, folk song, dance and opera performances, seminars on traditional family values, and promotions of local organic foods, such as Yutai rice.
A key concept in Confucianism, "xiaoxian" means filial piety, or obedience to and respect for the elderly.
The 24 Best Examples of Filial Piety were very popular and a favored subject for local artists.
Yutai was noted for being the hometown of three brothers, namely Min Ziqian, Min Zichi and Min Zijian, who were included in the 24 Best Examples of Filial Piety and were praised by Confucius for the virtue they demonstrated caring for their older and younger family members.
Remembering Haydn
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the death of the great Austrian composer Joseph Haydn and is being observed by music organizations throughout the world.
The on-going Beijing Music Festival dedicated four concerts last week to celebrate the life and works of the legendary composer.
The Orchestra of the KlangVerwaltung and the Choir Chorgemeinschaft Neubeuern from Munich held a concert at the Peking University on Thursday evening, featuring excerpts of Haydn's oratorios.
The Orchestra of the KlangVerwaltung is composed of players from orchestras in Munich, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Stuttgart Stateopera, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Cologne Radio Orchestra and many well-known soloists and chamber musicians.
Enoch zu Guttenberg, founder and conductor of both the orchestra and the choir, gave a lecture to introduce the composer and his works.
On Friday evening, German musicians performed Haydn's Nelson Mass at Beijing's Wangfujing Church. They also performed Seasons and Creation at the Forbidden City Concert Hall at the weekend.
"Most people know Haydn as the 'father of symphony' and the man who taught Mozart and Beethoven. As the composer of some of the world's best-loved symphonies, oratorios, concertos and chamber music, his name was truly international," says Yu Long, artistic director of the Beijing Music Festival.
Chamber music
The 15 dedicated musicians of I Musici De Montreal Chamber Orchestra treated the audience to a feast of chamber music on Sunday at the Forbidden City Concert Hall. Under the baton of its founding director, the cellist Yuli Turovsky, the musicians stood on stage, playing Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony, Mozart's Divertimentos and Tchaikovsky's Memory of Florence.
This chamber orchestra, founded by Turovsky in 1983, is a true gem of Canada's classical music scene. Every year, it tours around the world giving more than 100 concerts to rave reviews. Its repertoire ranges from baroque to romantic and contemporary.
"I had a secret dream to found a chamber orchestra when I moved from Moscow to Montreal," says the maestro Turovsky who was born in Moscow and began to learn cello at the age of 7.
The 31-year-old Chinese violinist Li Zhe is the youngest and the newest member of the group. A one-time student of violin at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music and London's Guildhall School of Music, Li moved to Montreal in 2004. He won a place in the group, after three rounds of auditions, defeating 49 other competitors.
Editor: Feng Hui
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