Archive for February 10th, 2010

China Travel – Heilongjiang River(2)

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Songari River is the largest tributary of the Heilongjiang River, with a total length of 1,657 kilometers and a drainage area of over 550,000 square kilometers. Its source, the Heaven Lake, has beautiful scene and has been an important tourist resort all through the ages. The primitive forests can be seen everywhere in the Songari River valley, the forest region with largest area in China. The soil in the Songari River valley is fertile, and it abounds in soybean, maize, broomcorn, wheat, flax, cotton, apple, sugar beet and other crops. It is also a large fishing water of freshwater. The main products include the carp, crucian, Huso dauricus and other fish. In addition, local inhabitants use ice to sculpt various ice lanterns, which are the fine folk artworks with special characteristics.

The total length of the Wusuli River is 905 kilometers, with a drainage area of nearly 187,000 square kilometers. The soil of the Wusuli River is fertile, primitive forests can be seen everywhere, a great deal of minerals are held in the area, and it abounds in soybean and broomcorn. In addition, the aquatic resources are very rich, including the special local products of salmon, huso sturgeon, bighead fish, sturgeon and dongzhu (a kind of pearl), etc.

Along with the frequent commercial intercourses with Russia in recent years, China successively opened 7 ports to carry out commercial trade with Russia. The freight of 1990 alone was up to 400,000 tons, so these ports can bring significant economic benefits to the two countries every year.

(Source: chinaculture.org)

Beijing Olympic – Tenerife Symphony Orchestra Concert

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Venue: National Centre for the Performing Arts - Opera House
Dates: July 4 – 5, 2009    19:30
Price:  VIP    580    480    280    180    80 RMB

Programme Introduction

Tenerife Symphony Orchestra
The Tenerife Symphony Orchestra (OST) played a fundamental role in changing the recognition awarded to Spanish orchestras during its meteoric national and international launching in the eighties. Nowadays, in the first years of the 21st Century and with the Orchestra already established as one of the best orchestral ensembles of Spain, the OST begins a new re-launching stage thanks to the efforts of Lü Jia, the maestro of growing international renown, who assumed the duties of new artistic director for the 2006 – 2007 season and finished his first season as music director and principal conductor in the 2007- 2008 period.

The Tenerife Symphony Orchestra fulfills all the duties of a entity of its magnitude with almost twenty programs per year, and the season is completed with three series of didactic concerts for schools, scheduled performances at the Festival Internacional de Música de Canarias and the Festival de Ópera de Tenerife, special concerts, recordings and international tours.

Armed with the huge influence left by those great names of the music, the OST has toured the most important concert halls of Spain – Madrid, Bilbao, Valencia, Barcelona, San Sebastián, Peralada, Sevilla, Granada, Santander, Zaragoza, La Coruña or Murcia – and also appeared at some of great musical centers of Germany – at the Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festivals – and the United Kingdom, as a guest of the BBC for its presentation in London. In December, 2004, the OST started an international tour that that took the orchestra, with huge success, to the main concert halls of Cologne, Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe, Ulm, Stuttgart and Salzburg, an in June 2008 the OST took part in the II Festival de Música América-España de la Orquestay Coro Nacionales de España in the Auditorio Nacional de Música de Madrid.

A great number of its over thirty recordings for labels like Auvidis, Decca or Dutsche Grammophon have merited national and international awards, being the most significant of those the ‘Cannes Classical Awards’,  the ‘Grand Prix’ of the Academie Française du Disque Lyrique’, ‘Premio Ondas’ -awarded to the OST in 1992 and 1996-, ‘Choc’, awarded by Le Monde de la Musique, the ‘Diapason d’Or’ -1994 and 1995 – and the OST also received the awards for the best recording of the year by the magazines CD Compact and Ritmo.

Created in 1935 as the Orquesta de Cámara de Canarias (Canary Islands Chamber Orchestra), its first conductor was Santiago Sabina. Between 1968 and 1985 that duty was in the hands of Armando Alonso. In 1970 the name was changed to Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife. Edmond Colomer conducted the orchestra between 1985 and 1986 and Víctor Pablo Pérez was its chief conductor from 1986 to June 2006.

Programs
July 04
Chapi
Prelude to “La Revoltosa”

Haydn
Symphony No. 104, Movement Ⅰ

Mozart
Overture to “Le nozze di Fígaro” K.492

Schubert
Overture to “Rosamunde” D.644

Beethoven
Symphony No. 5, Op. 67, Movement Ⅰ

——Intermission ——

Chaikovski
Symphony No. 5, Op. 64, Movement Ⅰ

Stravinsky
Firebird Suite (1919 version), Movement Ⅳ

Ravel
La Valse

July 05
Tenor: Li Shuang
Soprano: Xu Chunyu

Verdi
Overture to “La Forza del Destino”

Puccini
Oh! mio babbino caro (from “Gianni Schichi”)

Puccini
E lucean le stelle (From “Tosca”)

Mascagni
Intermezzo Cavallería rusticana

Puccini
Che Gelida Manina
Mi Chiamo Mimi
Duetto, 1st Act, (from “La boheme”)

——Intermission ——

Rossini
W. Tell Overture

Puccini
Signore Ascolta
Non Piangere Liu (from “Turandot”)

Puccini
Intermezzo Manon Lescaut Acto III

Puccini
Chi il bel sogno di Doretta (from “La Rondine”)

Puccini
Nessun Dorma (from “Turandot”)

Verdi
Libiam ne´lieti (from “La Traviata”)

(Source: ebeijing.gov.cn)

Chinese Culture – Painter of Great Men: Wei Chuyu(2)

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Huai-hai Battle

Wei collaborated with Chen Qi, Zhao Guangtao and Chen Jian on the painting of the Huai-Hai Battle and received a PLA arts prize in 1983 for their work.

His two oil paintings of Ma in Shaanxi and Zhongnanhai (1993), were chosen again by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications and printed as commemorative stamps for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mao Zedong, which was subsequently deemed “the best stamp” in the country.

In recent years, Wei has been invited to paint former British prime minister Winston Churchill and Daewoo Corp President Kim Woo Choong.
Immortalizing a great man

Back in 1992, 16 years after Mao’s death, Wei was invited to visit the chairman’s former bedroom, which had doubled as his study. In 1993 Wei was asked to design a series of stamps to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Mao’s birth.

“When I was standing in front of Chairman Mao’s bed in his

Chairman Mao

room, touching the desks he used to work on and seeing so many books on the shelves, I was really shocked,” said an emotional Wei. “I realized that I was close to a great soul; close to an unknown, but touching part of history.”

Wei said that although there have been some adverse remarks made about the man who led communist China to victory in the civil war of 1949, about which he was not willing to go into detail, he believes that Mao Zedong was a great man who worked for the Chinese people.

“I did not experience that time myself. The things in Chairman Mao’s former bedroom — the shabby blanket and ashtray, the piles of books — they cannot speak, but they tell us how the chairman used to live and work. He worked hard but lived plainly.”

Source: chinaculture.org