Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Powerful strings

To celebrate a friend's 30th birthday (many of my friends here are around 30) a group of us went to hear 当今最伟大的弦乐四重奏, the greatest string quartet of our time, which is of course the 70-year-old 鲍罗丁 Borodin! The program went from a worn out-sounding 鲍罗丁 Baoluoding #2 through an electrifying 肖斯塔科维奇 Xiaositakeweiqi #8 to end in the unfamiliar sweetness of 柴可夫斯基 Chaikefuseji’s #2. Surely you've heard of those other Russian greats? The concert took place in the Shanghai Recital Hall, which is a storied place of its own. Once the Nanking Theater, it was renamed and,
in 2003, relocated in an unprecedented feat of civil engineering: raised 3.38 meters it was moved, whole, 66.46 meters across a street to the southeast. Remarkably, its acoustics are said to have improved, too!