In Celebration...
There is much to honour in Macau’s International Music Festival 2009.

Although the Macau’s International Music Festival has become an annual event, this year’s edition takes on a special significance as it coincides with the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China and the 10th anniversary of Macau as a SAR. The music festival’s programme reflects this unusual confluence with a programme of some of the most well-loved classics of the Chinese repertoire as well as many popular operas, concert works and performers from the West.

It would be very surprising if a commemorative programme of Chinese classical music didn’t include the story of the butterfly lovers in one form or another. The 17th century tale of a doomed couple has been told in Shaoxing, Sichuan and Huangmei opera, as a ballet, in movies and TV series, as a musical and in various songs. However, it opens this year’s international festival as the famous violin concerto by Chen Gang and He Zhanhau played by the Macao Orchestra conducted by Chen Xie Yang, with the same soloist, Yu Lina, who introduced the work in the world premiere some 50 years ago. This classic concerto has given its music to many films and TV series dedicated to the lovers and was the inspiration for the ballet by Jann Paxton. It is matched on the Macao Orchestra’s opening programme by an equally famous, if more controversial, work, the Yellow River Piano Concerto with Shi Shucheng as soloist. This concerto started life as an adaptation of a cantata Xian Xinghai wrote mainly from folk melodies during the Sino-Japanese war to express defiance against the Japanese invaders. Various composers used their skills to change the cantata into a piano concerto that has endured as many transformations as China has undergone cultural ideologies since Mao Tse Dong: For this concert, the Macao Orchestra presents an arrangement by Shi Shucheng. Lu Quiming’s Ode to the Red Flag completes the Macao Orchestra programme for concerts on October 9 at 8pm and October 10 at 3pm in the Macao Cultural Centre Grand Auditorium. Tickets at MOP$200, MOP$150 and MOP$100.

The Macao Chinese Orchestra is in a more celebratory mood in its commemoration of China’s 60th year as a people’s republic. In the concert Age of the Dragon on October 10, Pang Ka Pang conducts Zhao Jiping’s Celebration Overture, Liu Tianhua’s Beautiful Night in an arrangement by Liu Chenchen, Gu Guanren’s Pipa concerto Hua Mulan with Ma Lin as the soloist and Kuan Nai Chung’s Butterfly Dream for Dizi and Orchestra with Tang Junqiao playing the dizi. But the highlight of the concert may well be Kuan Nai Chung’s percussion concerto The Age of the Dragon. When he realized that the first year of the new millennium was also the year of the dragon, the Chinese national symbol, the composer was inspired to write a piece of music that expressed his hopes and expectations for the future. It took the form of a percussion concerto in four movements with two soloists – one Chinese and the other a Westerner. The movements are based on the sun as a symbol of faith and power, the moon as ‘a reflection of deepest feelings’, the stars standing for wit, hope and wisdom, and the earth as the nurturer and home of all the planet’s peoples. ‘…the Earth will get smaller and smaller in the new millennium while people’s hearts will grow closer and closer to one another. I would count this as my only wish on the eve of the new age,’ wrote Kuan Nai Chung of his work. Appropriately the concert will finish with Quan Jihao’s Dance of Joy. The Macao Chinese Orchestra presents The Age of the Dragon on October 10 at 8pm in the Macao Cultural Centre Grand Auditorium. Tickets are MOP$200, MOP$150 and MOP$100.

Britain’s famous Academy of Ancient Music join Macau’s festival with a quite different commemoration in mind. This orchestra specializes in music of the baroque and classical eras to the extent that they only play instruments actually dating from the time of the music. Christopher Hogwood formed the orchestra in 1973 and over the years they have proved again and again in concerts around the world – and in some 250 recordings – to be among the greatest, if not the best, orchestras of their kind. The orchestra’s visit to the Macao International Music Festival this year looks particularly to the music of Joseph Haydn on the 200th anniversary of his death. In concert they will perform the Lord Nelson Mass, one of Haydn’s last masses which one critic described as ‘arguably Haydn’s greatest single composition’. The mass didn’t originally have anything to do with Nelson. Haydn titled it Mass in Angustiis or Mass in Times of Anxiety because a rampant Napoleon was threatening to overrun Haydn’s native Austria. Ironically, the French emperor suffered a huge defeat at the hands of Nelson in the Battle of the Nile just as the mass was first performed and this may have led later biographers to change the title of the work. It is, anyway, far from anxious, sombre and stressful but builds through joy to a final exultant climax. Works by Purcell, Handel and Gibbons are also on the programme of the concert on October 11 at 8pm in the Macao Cultural Centre Grand Auditorium. Tickets are MOP$200, MOP$150 and MOP$100.

If you can deduce anything from a concert entitled Hudson Shad: Comedians, Cowboys, Crooners, and Classics, it must be that you have veered off the programme of high-brow classics. Six very funny men from the USA who call themselves Hudson Shad join the festival this year with an eclectic collection of songs guaranteed to make your eyes water with both pleasure and laughter. Highly polished performers, Hudson Shad are two tenors, two baritones, a bass and one piano who create lots of fun with favourites like Hello Dolly, Big Spender, It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing) and the overture from The Barber of Seville. You can catch them on October 14 at 8pm at the Dom Pedro V Theatre. Tickets are MOP$200, MOP$150 and MOP$100.

These are just a few of the wonderful offerings at this year’s Macau International Music Festival – we don’t have the space to mention others like San Francisco Opera’s The Marriage of Figaro, the T’ang Quartet with John Chen or the Vienna Boys Choir. But you’ll find more information and many more enticing performances on the full programme at www.icm.gov.mo/fimm. Tickets for all shows can be booked through www.macauticket.com. Please note that free admission shows also require tickets.