In Tuesday’s (10/15) Globe and Mail (Canada), Nathan VanderKlippe reports from Fuling, China, where the Ottawa-based National Arts Centre Orchestra, led by Music Director Pinchas Zukerman, is on tour. “Shi Shuai is the face of classical music’s most promising new frontier: a young and gifted violinist, born in Shanghai and trained by some of the West’s most prominent musicians, but eager to return to China to perform and teach in a burgeoning symphony scene. And Fuling, the pretty outpost of 1.2-million at the nexus of the Yangtze and Wu Rivers, has the trappings of a new home for Mozart and Bach. Like dozens of smaller Chinese cities, it boasts a gleaming grand theatre that just opened this year and has, in its initial season, brought Canada’s National Arts Centre orchestra to perform. The future of classical music, many have grown fond of saying, is in China—and Ms. Shi’s arrival in Fuling with the NAC seems emblematic of the new sound echoing here.… The potential of a middle class burgeoning among 1.3-billion new customers continues to thrill, but the work of attracting interest is filled with pitfalls.… The numbers of young Chinese people studying piano and violin far exceed the population of Canada.”
Posted October 16, 2013
