A mature Sino-Austrian symbiosis -- Shao-Chia Lü with the Taiwan Philharmonic and Bruckner's Fourth Symphony

Shao-Chia Lü (呂紹嘉), a Taiwanese conductor graduated from the Hochschule für Musik Wien with excellence in 1991, has won the International Kiril Kondrashin Competition for conductors, International Besançon Competition for Young Conductors (both first prize and Lyre d'Or award) and the Pedrotti International Competition for Orchestra Conductors. After having worked for more than 10 years in Europe, he became the Music Director of the Taiwan Philharmonic, also known as the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), in 2010. A highly gifted musician, he has made many concerts with the NSO to great acclaim. He was featured in a previous NSO Live CD, recorded even before he was the Music Director of the NSO. The present 2-CD is his second in this series. Disc 1 includes Bruckner's Symphony No. 4, and Disc 2 contains The Swan of Tuonela by Sibelius and Pelléas and Mélisande by Schoenberg.

The Bruckner was recorded live at the National Concert Hall, Taipei on 25 September 2010, while the other 2 were recorded live in 2011. The conductor-orchestra rapport was so mature in the Bruckner concert that it come as a total surprise, at least to me, that it was only his second concert as Music Director with the NSO.

As you can see from the pictures below, the packaging is a lavish display of care and love, and it is not just skin-deep. The liner notes, attached to the inside front cover and of 23 pages, are what one would expect from a conscientious release. Bibliographies and essays are bilingual, in Chinese and English. What warms my heart is that the programme notes in Chinese are not mere translated copies of those in English, or vice versa. The English essays make use of Georg Tintner's notes from Naxos, while the Chinese ones are written by Prof. Lu-Fen Yen (顏綠芬), Professor of Musicology in the Taipei National University of the Arts. Even the recording equipment and monitors are listed at the end.

The beautiful cover with an attached bilingual flyer

The add-on bilingual back cover

The original front and back cover in English

The attached liner notes on the left and the inner cover for the CD trays on the right

The package fully opened showing the 2 CDs

How about the performance then? My simple answer is: every doubt, every incertitude, every misgiving about a Chinese orchestra led by a Chinese conductor in a Bruckner symphony is answered admirably in this performance by Lü and the NSO.

The music unfolds naturally with nifty phrasings and subtle nuances, but the wood is not missed for the trees. The long span of the structure is evident as Lü always shows a clear sense of direction, for example from the Hauptthema to the Coda in the first movement. Tempo relationships are finely balanced. The second movement, Andante quasi allegretto, is simply lovely. The cellos play with such cantabile that melts my heart. The flutes are like angels. The hunting Scherzo is fittingly lively and rhythmic. Lü's fine control and the orchestra's ensemble might are clearly shown in the crescendo and even subito passages in the Finale. When the symphony comes to its end, it finishes gloriously.  

The only minor problem is the recorded sound: the lower frequencies are lightweight. Thus in general the strings lack the body while the lower strings in particular lack the weight and darkness of many Austro-German orchestras. But the transparency of each instrumental group is a joy to listen to. This slight de-emphasis of the bass soon gets out of my mind as my attention is firmly grasped by the beautiful musical flow. To me the hi-fi element in a recording is only of secondary importance to the musical element after all.

Hats off to the maestro and the orchestra.

Timings:

I: 18'25"

II: 15'10"

III: 11'12"

IV: 22'24" with applause (Music ends at 21'07")