Letting music enter the city is the idea that the National Grand Theater Orchestra has been brewing for many years. The reason why it can be fully reflected in this new season is Ren Xiaolong believes that this is entirely due to the development of Beijing in the past decade. Whether it is air management, urban transformation, or the removal of used factories, it has become a creative industrial park, etc. This is a city change that Beijing citizens can truly feel. In the new season, as the band expands and the team of performers grows, the chamber music project will continue to be upgraded and expanded this season. The "Borderless Chamber Music" with 17 sets and 23 concerts has entered the chamber music week of Langyuan, a landmark cultural and creative district for the first time. The growing chamber music fixed ensemble and the exciting cooperation of well-known soloists all mark the increasingly solidity in the field of chamber music from quantity to quality and richer from form to content.
In 2021, musicians from the National Grand Theater Orchestra presented an outdoor concert to Beijing citizens in Fangcaodi.
[Unboundary]
expands the audience's cognitive boundaries of chamber music
"Following the 'Borderless Chamber Music' series of the last season, including 13 resident concerts and 6 tour concerts, in this season, 'Borderless Chamber Music' has almost achieved fission growth, not only the most combinations, but also the richest content." On this stage, music fans will see the Shanghai quartet led by Li Wei, as well as the names of musicians such as guitarist Yang Xuefei, erhu player Lu Yiwen, flute player Zhang Weiliang, pipa player Wu Man, pianist Abu, horn player Han Xiaoguang, violinist Wang Xiaoming and other musicians. Tang Ning, the director of the National Grand Theater Orchestra program operation team, said that the fixed ensembles participating in this season will reach a record high, and the orchestra performers are also extremely enthusiastic about participating in repertoire planning, which means that the chamber music performance culture has become more mature and active in the orchestra. Tang Ning believes that compared to serious symphony, chamber music has more possibilities. The name "Borderless Chamber Music" contains the orchestra's willingness to break boundaries and explore more possibilities in music.
Compared with the development of chamber music in China, Ren Xiaolong, general manager of the National Grand Theater Orchestra, believes that people mostly based on two cognitions and evaluations: one is the impression of chamber music, which still stays in traditional performance forms such as string quartets and woodwind quintets. The repertoire mostly performs classic symphony such as Mozart and Beethoven, but this is not the case. Another way is that there are fewer truly stable chamber music ensembles in China, so as audiences and music fans, there are limited opportunities to truly see chamber music systematically. Whether in terms of formal cognition, performer expression, performance form and content, it is relatively single, and the "Borderless Chamber Music" series is to expand the boundaries of music fans and audiences' traditional cognition of chamber music through cross-border forms in China and the West.
In Ren Xiaolong's view, chamber music can play contemporary works, or cooperate with the chamber music creation group, or commission new works, etc. These are all "boundaryless" concepts. "In the future, with the opening and operation of the Urban Sub-Center Theater, we will continue to upgrade the chamber music aspect. We hope to create a series that is of considerable scale in terms of content and performances in the future, which can support a chamber music season." In terms of the number of "Borderless Chamber Music" programs this time, Ren Xiaolong believes that among all symphony orchestras in China, it is already the most, and the overall content planning quality is very high. While the musicians participate in the planning together, each performance has also injected a lot of their ideas about some musical works. Therefore, these chamber music performances will inevitably promote the orchestra's further maturity.
[Integration]
Make music a part of life
In addition to the "Borderless Chamber Music" series, the "NCPAO in the City City Immersion" series that the band has been brewing for a long time and carefully planned will also enter the Langyuan Cultural and Creative Parks such as Vintage, Station, and Park at the end of October, and start the "City Music Week" in various theaters, dedicating 9 chamber music dramas of different songs, and share the fun of chamber music with the public with in-depth and easy-to-understand explanations, so that classical music can enter the public and integrate into the city.
In Tang Ning's view, as a palace of national performing arts, the National Grand Theater has demonstrated its own strength in the development of the art category of "vocal music, dance and drama". While allowing the audience to enter the art hall, it also allows the art to go out and approach more young people in cities. This actually requires continuous creation of more opportunities: "When it comes to symphony, it may not necessarily be serious. You can use various forms to closely combine music with current life and become a part of everyone's life."
Tang Ning introduced that the opening concert of this City Music Week was unveiled with a GALA performance composed of string music, copper pipe, wood pipe and percussion. In the next period, eight chamber music sessions will be launched, including Ruan Kyung-ko, Liu Yimei and the National Grand Theater Orchestra Bridge Quartet, Minimalist Quartet, Percussion Quartet, Fusion Quartet, Brass Quartet, Shichun Quartet, Outdoor Percussion Special, Woodwind Quartet, etc., to display various combinations of chamber music in all aspects, and also to comprehensively display Chinese works and repertoire of classical and romantic periods to the audience and music fans.
"Fall in love with classical music from now on" As the Slogan of this City Music Week, Tang Ning said that he wanted to convey a message to people through this sentence: music is not difficult and very interesting. If you can have a deeper understanding, it will open the door to the music world. "In the selection of music, we will pay more attention to fun, all of which are very classic and well-known musical works. In terms of packaging, the theme settings of each concert will be relatively literary and fresh, and the theme of the program will be more focused on the youthful expression. In these forms, live explanations will be added to the performance, and the speakers are young artists who have worked with the orchestra or musicians who perform live. Personal interpretation of the works is closer to the connotation of music expression, which can also narrow the distance between the performers and the audience." The emergence of a large number of high-quality creative industrial parks is also a very important condition for music to enter the city. Ren Xiaolong believes that in fact, there are some small theaters with good quality in many creative industrial parks, but they just lack high-quality content to improve the quality of their own cultural and creative zones. Therefore, this is also a matter of mutual benefit and mutual benefit for the performance groups. "We can use their platforms to integrate music into the city, let our music go out of the theater, and the ivory tower. On the other hand, the cultural and creative zone also uses our high-quality content to make it more cultural connotation and social value, making the cultural life of the entire city benefit from it."
Beijing News reporter Liu Zhen
Editor Tian Weini
Proofreading Zhai Yongjun
