Across the Chinese New Year's Eve, the 2022 Shanghai New Year Concert was held at jaguar Shanghai Symphony Concert Hall. Instead of dressing in black, the musicians on stage changed into colorful dresses, and the stage was dotted with red and gold bouquets. The New Year is a common festival all over the world, and major cities welcome the New Year with a high-level concert. The "Shanghai New Year Concert", which has been established for 13 years, has become the choice of many citizens for the New Year's Eve, and many audiences on the scene have also dressed up to embrace 2022 in the romantic and cheerful "Viennese Melody".
The Shanghai New Year Concert is not limited to the scene, and more audiences watched the music event online through the official website of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, CCTV News, Tencent Art, Look at the News, The Paper, and other platforms. The live recording of the concert was broadcast on Oriental Satellite TV at 00:30 on January 1, 2022, allowing the sound of Shanghai to spread farther afield.
Although the "Shanghai New Year Concert" founded in 2009 is still in its formative stage compared with the Vienna and Berlin New Year Concerts, it has welcomed world-renowned conductors such as Muti, Mashul, Pretnev, Gilbert, Eichenbach, Pavo Jarvi, Gati, Horneck, van Zhideng and so on. Surprisingly, the 2022 Shanghai New Year Concert removed the podium and instead invited the Shanghai Quartet to present it with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, with the first violin Li Weigang playing the lead role. Li Weigang said: "This form is a huge challenge for us, it tests the ability of musicians to listen to each other and cooperate with each other. The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra is one of the best in Asia, and they give us the confidence to accept the challenge and hope to use this stage to better showcase the beauty of chamber music. ”
The concert featured the Strauss family's "Sound of Spring" round dance, "plucked string" polka, "Thunderbolt" fast polka, "Blue Danube" round dance and many other signature pieces of the Viennese New Year's Concert, in addition to the Hungarian composer Lehar's "Golden and Silver Round Dance" for the carnival ball and Shostakovich's prestigious "Second Round Dance".
Founded in 1983, the Shanghai Quartet became the first Chinese group to win an award in a Western chamber music competition. With the improvement of time and the replacement of members, the Shanghai Quartet has grown into one of the world-renowned veteran quartets over the past 38 years. The first violin Li Weigang and the viola Li Honggang are two brothers, both shanghainese, the new member, the second violin Yu Xiang also studied in Shanghai, cellist Nicholas Savaras from New York. Savaras, who has been with the orchestra for 20 years, said: "Instead of joining a quartet of Chinese, I joined one of the best string quartets in the world. ”
At the end of the curtain, the Shanghai Quartet led the orchestra to shout: "Happy New Year 2022 to everyone!" And threw the bouquet toward the audience. Zhao Yun, a music fan who has taken his family to the concert hall for the third consecutive time, said: "Welcoming the New Year requires a little sense of ceremony, and we feel that it is more meaningful to listen to a concert than to eat a big meal." Although the winter nights are cold and the global epidemic has not yet receded, the music conveys warmth and hope, and my New Year's wish is to go to Vienna to attend a concert as soon as possible, or to meet artists from all over the world in Shanghai. ”