MUSIC REVIEWS : Taipei City Symphony Plays East L.A. College
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From halfway around the globe, Taiwan’s Taipei City Symphony made its Southern California debut Tuesday in Ingalls Auditorium at East Los Angeles College.
Founded in 1969, it is a strikingly young orchestra, only 71 members strong yet able to produce a larger sound in lush repertory than its numbers would indicate. It has a German-educated music director, Chen Chiu-sen, who owns a graceful, fluid stick technique.
But, on Tuesday night, it seemed not to be a consistently accomplished orchestra--at least not yet.
The level of playing tends to fluctuate, particularly in the strings, and when the brass and percussion go into action, everything else is blotted out. Yet the main problem is a lack of fire.
Liszt’s “Les Preludes” sounded tame, routine, distinguished mainly by fine solo wind work in the pastoral section. Chen’s conception of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 was also cautious.
On home ground, the Taipei musicians delivered a more heartfelt account of a violin concerto, “The Butterfly Lovers,” by Chen Kang and Ho Jan-hao. It is an incredibly naive, ultra-sentimental fusion of pentatonic themes and 19th-Century European Romanticism. Yet it did have a very persuasive advocate in violinist Su Shien-Ta, whose sweet, steady tone vaulted effortlessly over every obstacle.
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