Orchestra conductor 'deciphers' a night of Brahms
The performance.
Fast-rising conductor Qian Junping, 33 years old, debuted with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra for a night of Brahms last week, featuring up-and-coming Chinese American violinist Nancy Zhou.
"If composers are programmers, then we conductors are codecs that decipher their works," Qian explained.
"Once we get the score, we immediately check if there is 'bug.' On top of interpreting and understanding the score, we also need to tap into what's valuable and meaningful about the piece, putting energy and emotion into the swing of the arms."
Brahms, Qian added, is a composer who needs quite a bit of deciphering.
"He is a very symphonic composer, and composes violin or piano concerto in a symphonic way, making it both fantastic and challenging," said Qian. "And I also conduct it from a symphonic perspective."
The violin concerto.
He conducted "Violin Concerto in D major" by Brahms, which was both dedicated to and premiered by his friend, violinist Joseph Joachim.
Conducting the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra is sort of a homecoming for the young conductor, who was enrolled as a violist at the Music Middle School affiliated to Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 2004, before going for further studies at Curtis Institute of Music.
For violinist Nancy Zhou, first-prize winner of the second Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition, performing with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra again is a long-awaited reunion.
In addition to the violin concerto, the symphony orchestra also played "Serenade No. 2 in A major" by Brahms, and started the concert with the Chinese premier of "First Sight."
Inspired by the folk dancers of the Dai ethnic minority people in China's Yunnan Province, the six-minute score is composed by Grammy nominee Zhou Tian, another old friend who was the orchestra's artist-in-residence in 2019/2020 season.
