China founds another new orchestra
OrchestrasThe only country to increase its orchestral community this century, China has just announced the formation of the Wuxi Symphony Orchestra in the city of Wuxi, Jiangsu province. The orchestra will give its opening concert on January 1, 2024.
The artistic director and chief conductor is Lin Daye.
Star soloist at the inaugural concert is the Putin pianist Denis Matsuev.
China just gets on with it while the West contemplates further desperate stunts and gimmicks to attract a “younger wider audience”.
You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about. Have you attended at classical music concert in China? Stunts and gimmicks could perfectly sum up Lang Lang. The audience is younger and wider in China but not necessarily more tasteful nor educated than the West. A lot of catching up to do in China.
“Have you attended at classical music concert in China?”
Yes, I have.
“The audience is younger and wider in China”
That’s rather the point, isn’t it?
I think you are both wrong in part.
Yes, very generally speaking, Chinese audiences do not have quite as refined an ear as western concert audiences but it’s important to note that there’s none of the elitist sentiment and exclusionary ‘better than you’ mentality which accompanies that is so prevalent in the West.
Western promoters are trying to bring in new audiences because the old ones are literally dying off and new ones are not coming up underneath in anywhere near the numbers needed to sustain the art form into the future.
There are those who say ‘oh everyone’s been saying classical is dying for years and it’s still here’ and they’re right, but only because this work has been going on for years to keep it alive.
Do I think that the gimmicks make much of a difference? No, not really, but I think they are completely right to experiment, to be a little populist from time to time and to keep on pushing the boundaries, as without this, it’s going to be
China goes through the same process as European 19C audiences… a new thing, classical music, public concerts, serius music as a sign of modernity and bourgeois sophistication, so: one has to learn about what it actually is.
A lot of catching up to do? We’ll as classical music is a western import, there would be, wouldn’t there?
E Asians are doing very well indeed, all things considered.
There are 1.4 billion Chinese, unemployment is high, and labor is cheap, it could be orchestras, it could be a Nike factory, it’s about job creation.