Taiwan Wind Ensemble
CHOU, Wen-Wen , conductor
WU, Ting-Yu, solo violin
| LEE, Che-Yi (b. 1970) | Rhapsody "Ma Ka Ta" |
| Brett Abigana (b. 1980) | Sketches on Paintings No. 2 |
| HUANG, Ssu-Yu (b. 1970) | "Butterfly Lovers" Concerto for Violin and Wind Ensemble |
| Igor Stravinsky (1882~1971) | Octet for Wind Instruments |
| CHIN, Gordon Shi-Wen (b. 1957) | This Land (1998) |
| CHUNG, Yiu-Kwong (b. 1956) | Totem Pole |
The opening work in this concert, Rhapsody "Ma Ka Ta"was a bright and breezy exploration of the potential of a few pentatonic ideas, rather heavy handed and pedestrian but quite fun to play I imagine. More to my taste were the Sketches on Paintings No. 2 by Brett Abigana, with their varied scoring, subtle chamber music episodes and interesting melodic and harmonic developments. I found the saccharine qualities of the "Butterfly Lovers" Concerto for Violin and Wind Ensemble just too much for me and committed the unforgivable sin of walking out and finding a meal and a drink. Again Artistic Planning Committee, where were you? This came out in 2006 so must have been recorded for you to vet and turned down with regrets. This was poor material, poorly scored and poorly constructyed, naïve in the extreme, despite the advocacy of the fine violinist, con doctor and wind ensemble.