Print
Email to Friends
Comment (The first half of the concert will feature two very special works. One is an arrangement of Debussy's Fetes made by PCL's artistic director G¨¦rard Lecointe. Debussy was inspired to write the original work by the sounds of the Oriental gamelan orchestra he heard at the 1900 Paris World Fair. Lecointe's arrangement is sheer genius, and exactly captures the percussive origins of this piece while using modern mallet percussion to recreate the work's original French, impressionistic sensibilities. It is a thrilling reinterpretation of Debussy's sound world, and sheds a truly new light on Debussy's genius. The work also establishes Lecointe as a master of percussive sound. The second special work is a commission from Chen Ping and Gao Shuyang of a work specially for PCL's visit to china from Wu Fe. This work is a collaboration between west and east, featuring PCL and two traditional Chinese instruments, the guzhen and the pipa, and explores the juxtaposition of very ancient and very modern sounds in a very energetic way.
The second half of the concert is where the champagne corks start to fly and the party really gets hot. IFC will team up with PCL and local pianist Shen Yue in three movements from Off, Off, Offenbach, a work created by Gerard Lecointe from everyone's favourite bits of Offenbach. In this work, Lecointe cuts out all the boring bits of Offenbach's best operas and gets straight to the good tunes, setting them in clever musical contexts. Opera aficionados will laugh at the musical jokes, and those who are hearing the tunes for the first time will love the presentation!
Over the last five years, the International Festival Chorus (IFC) has presented quite a few heavy works. And after five years of hard work, perhaps it is time for a change of pace, and an evening of champagne and laughter. The IFC is teaming up with Les Percussions Claviers de Lyon (PCL), the world's most spectacular percussion ensemble, to present an evening of fun music on April 14 at the Forbidden City Concert Hall in a program that will invigorate lovers of all kinds of music, and bring East and West together in a sensual musical feast.
International Festival Chorus concert
Date/Time: 7:30pm, April 21
2pm, April 22
Location: Lyceum Theatre, No.57 Maoming Nanlu
Ticket: RMB 500, 350, 250, 200, 150,50
Tel: 021-62172426/62173055
