Shanghai Daily news

Who will be the most featured composer during the Sixth Shanghai International Arts Festival? Before anyone answers Mozart or Beethoven or Bach, give some thought to a former prodigy who became an acerbic philosopher and a Russian genius of 20th century symphonic music -- Sergei Prokofiev.
For example, the score of his ballet ``Romeo and Juliet,'' Prokofiev's work that is most familiar to Chinese audiences, has been performed twice at the festival -- once by Les Ballets de Monte Carlo and again by the Shanghai Ballet. Next, conductor Zhang Guoyong from the Shanghai Opera House will lead the Youth Symphony Orchestra of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and pianist Wang Jue in a tribute concert to the great Russian composer. Prokofiev entered the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1904 at the age of 13, by which time he had already written a great deal of music. At the conservatory he shocked his more conservative director Glazunov but learned much from an older fellow-student, the composer Myaskovsky. After the Russian Revolution he was given permission to travel abroad and he went to America and later Paris before returning to Russia in 1936. At home, though in touch again with his cultural roots, he found himself out of favor with the authorities and in 1948 he was the subject of direct censure. His death in 1953, on the same day as Stalin, deprived him of the pleasure that the subsequent relaxation of the censorship of his music would have given him. ``He's a complex composer,'' Zhang says and he gives the composer's complexity as one of the reasons he and the orchestra decided to incorporate Prokofiev's compositions into the arts festival. Zhang, a former student at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Music in Moscow, is known locally as an expert in Russian music. ``Prokofiev was an `enfant terrible' who composed lyrical, ironic music in a new harmonic language. He also wrote music that was a reaction to the overblown sentimentality of late romanticism,'' Zhang says. Apart from Zhang's own affection for Russian music, the sensational emergence of pianist Wang Jue added to the momentum to feature Prokofiev's music. Acclaimed by piano maestro Fu Cong as ``a real musician,'' Wang has enjoyed great success in international piano competitions. Last May, at the Second Leschetizky International Piano Competition in Taiwan, he won the silver medal as well as the Best Leschetizky Performance Award and the Best Asian Pianist Award. At the upcoming concert, Wang joins the orchestra to play one of Prokofiev's most challenging works, ``Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor,'' a work Wang played in the Leschetizky competition. The orchestra will also play Prokofiev's ``Symphony No. 5'' and both pieces will be making their Shanghai debut. Considering the once close relationship between Chinese and Russian musical circles and the influence Russia has had on many of today's leading Chinese musicians, Zhang believes that there should be more performances of the great works of Russian composers. ``Russia has given to the world a generation of talented composers whose gifts still inspire people. For Prokofiev, it was his optimism, his never-ending passion and his energy that will always enlighten us,'' says Zhang.

Date: November 7, 7:15pm
Venue: He Luting Concert Hall, Shanghai Conservatory of Music
Tickets: 60-240 yuan
Tel: 6272-0455, 6272-0702