The Macao Orchestra and Cho-Liang Lin

8/5 (Friday);8pm     Macao Cultural Centre Grand Auditorium     Tickets: MOP 300, 200, 100

Conductor: Lü Jia
Cho-Liang Lin, Violin
Min Xiaofen, Pipa

Programme:
Lam Bun-Ching: Sudden Thunder
Sergei Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, op. 63
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E minor, op. 64

This concert of the Macao Orchestra Classics Series starts with a piece composed by Macao native Lam Bun-Ching, Sudden Thunder, a work that explores various traditional pipa techniques. The Orchestra and Lü Jia then ravish the public with Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto, a work full of gracefulness, lyricism, exoticism and satire. Written in 1935, the concerto was commissioned by admirers of French violinist Robert Soëtans who premiered it in Madrid the same year. International superstar violinist Cho-Liang Lin’s interpretation of this work is regarded as “most authoritative”, combining the “lyrical finesse of Kyung-wha Chung with the power of Perlman and Heifetz”.

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 became one of the composer’s most popular works. The "motto" theme derives from a passage in Mikhail Glinka's opera A Life for the Tsar – significantly, a passage using the words "turn not into sorrow". The motto has a funereal character in the first movement but gradually transforms into a triumphant march which dominates the final movement.

“Cho-Liang Lin has an exceptionally generous and very apt coupling... the command of Lin at every point has one marvelling that such poised, flawless virtuosity can also convey such warmth along with such positive characterisation.”
Gramophone Magazine

Duration: approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes, including one interval