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July 15, 2023

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Summer music fest hits the right notes

By Yao Minji | 00:00 UTC+8 July 15, 2023 | Print Edition

THIS year’s Music in the Summer Air festival opened last week with an audaciously young and creative cast for the “Light in the Universe: MISA 2023 Opening Concert.”

Known for supporting young talented musicians, the summer festival moved further this year to have 23-year-old Jin Yukuang conducting the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra for the opening concert.

“This is my third year participating in MISA, and the first time to conduct the opening concert as well as the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra,” Jin said before the opening.

“Three years of MISA have completely changed me — in a good way — meaning I have made so much progress.

“I’m glad to see some of my friends and classmates, around the same age, are also on the stage, but it’s also such a scary experience that I haven’t slept well recently.”

The opening piece “Three-Body Fantasy” is composed by another young musician Fay Kueen Wang, based on the scores of the top-rated TV drama “The Three-Body Problem,” adapted from Liu Cixin’s best-selling sci-fi novel.

Wang impressed many at last year’s MISA, where one of the duet opening concerts featured her “The Wheel of Time.” The bicycle, once the major mode of transportation in China, became a musical instrument on stage.

This time, the young composer integrated a diversity of music genres as well as Chinese folklore elements to reconstruct cosmo, life and consciousness with sound to depict the romanticism and grandeur of the “Three Body” world.

It was followed by symphonic poem “Metacosmos,” composed by Icelandic musician Anna Thorvaldsdottir, who was the 2012 winner of the Nordic Council Music Prize.

“Metacosmos” was premiered by the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2018, followed by an European debut performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Alan Gilbert.

Elliot Leung’s Symphony No. 1 “The Metaverse” followed before the concert ended with selected excerpts from the classic set “The Planets” by Gustav Holst.

“The world is constantly changing,” Leung explained.

“We can now doing many things at the same time, such as operating 10 mobile apps simultaneously, thanks to technology. This was unimaginable even only 10 years ago. I want to display it through music.”

The rather unusual opening of the festival highlighted this year’s futuristic theme — “sound in the world, light in the universe” — inspired by the popular concept of the metaverse.

The festival, to run through next Thursday with 30 performances, sees both well-established returning friends like musicians from the New York Philharmonic and young talented musicians.

The New York Philharmonic is back in Shanghai after three years of absence, with an ensemble of nine musicians.

The orchestra had become a regular guest performer at the annual festival since it first came in 2014. It had performed six times at the summer music festival before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted performances around the world.

“Shanghai is almost like a second home for us,” flutist Yoobin Son told Shanghai Daily the day after their “Back to MISA” concert.

“Memories came back pretty quickly, almost immediately after arrival. It is great to see some of my Shanghai students already working in the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and so excited to be back here in person to teach and to perform in Shanghai again.”

The New York Philharmonic and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra jointly established the Shanghai Orchestra Academy in 2014. In addition to the “Back to MISA” concert, musicians from both orchestras also performed with students from the academy on Wednesday.

“We had some virtual collaborations with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra during the past three years, and of course we taught students remotely, but that’s completely different from doing so face to face,” said cellist Nathan Vickery.

“It’s really fun to be back in the city and the concert hall again, and to feel the audience here in person again, who are so warm ad receptive as always.”

Both Son and Vickery had traveled to Shanghai with the orchestra regularly since 2014, though it’s the first time for them to perform in the city in a small ensemble for a chamber concert.

It’s also the first time Son sat among the audience members in Shanghai, when she could rest for the second half of the “Back to MISA” concert. There, she realized how many young people in the audience were enjoying the music.

“There were many very young children, who were sitting through the entire concert, which wasn’t a kids’ concert,” she recalled. “That doesn’t always happen in other countries, and it is exciting since it shows bright future for classical music here.”

For the concert with their students, the musicians picked both classic pieces from Bach and Strauss and contemporary works like “Umoja” from Valerie Coleman. Named after the Swahili word for unity, it’s the signature wind quintet piece by the American composer and flutist as well as a woman of color.

Such in-person collaborations are also highly appreciated by Gary Ginstling, president and CEO of New York Philharmonic, who finds it more important than ever.

“The arts community has had to navigate incredible challenges in recent years, but thankfully our NY Phil audiences are very enthusiastic about returning to hear live symphonic music this past season,” he said.

“Our global arts community is on a long road of recovery from the pandemic, and international musical exchange such as MISA is another step forward for us on this shared journey.”

Ginstling traveled to Shanghai to unveil another collaboration with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. The oratorio “Émigré,” which will debut in Shanghai on November 17, follows two Jewish brothers who arrive in Shanghai as refugees in 1938 as they go on to navigate their new lives and find a home and community in the city.

 

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