Young Euro Classic 2008

 

young.euro.classic musicians on tour: LANXESS sponsors German-Chinese symphony orchestra

 
For the second year running, LANXESS sponsored a cultural exchange between musicians from China and Germany. The young people met in Shanghai  for their joint concerts at the young.euro.classic music festival.

 
For eight years now, the best youth orchestras from Europe and many other parts of the world have been coming to Berlin for young.euro.classic. In the course of the festival, the talented young musicians peformed 15 concerts at the city’s “Konzerthaus” in Gendarmenmarkt Square featuring classical works of symphonic music, musical rarities from their countries of origin and contemporary orchestral works.

 
This year LANXESS again sponsored the young.euro.classic Festival Orchestra China-Germany, thereby helping to ensure that the festival remains an unforgettable experience for its 43 members, who have been selected from the students at the Shanghai Conservatory and the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts.

 
For nine days, the young musicians, including the soloists Oleksandra Fedosova and Yu Xiang, attended an Orchestra Academy in Shanghai where, under conductor Tang Muhai, they rehearsed a demanding program.

 
At the center of the program, which also included works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was the first performance of two works written specially for the festival. The two composers Anno Schreier and Deqing Wen were each commissioned to produce a piece of music that is typical of their respective cultures and therefore illustrates the differences between them – hence the shared title “Im Wettstreit” (“In Competition”).

 
The highlights of the Orchestra Academy in China were the symphony concerts in the Shanghai Concert Hall and the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing.