2024.8.16 Taiwan News

For audiences in Taiwan, the guitar seems to be an instrument for either folksongs or rock ‘n’ roll.

However, for an upcoming concert collaboration between Evergreen Symphony Orchestra and guitarist Pablo Sainz-Villegas under the leadership of conductor Pavel Baleff on Sept. 16 at 7:30 p.m., Sainz-Villegas will play Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez along with other delicate concertos full of Spanish flavors and classical temperament.

Along with other classical music, this concert will portray a perfect mosaic art piece, guiding audiences to travel through different scenes and musical experiences from passion to tenderness and romanticism to tranquility.

Conductor Baleff is currently the general music director of Loh-Orchestra Sondershausen of Theater Nordhausen, Germany, and the conductor in residence of Baden-Baden Philharmonic. He has won the Radio Bulgaria prize for the best young musician and produced radio and television recordings with the leading orchestras in the country.

The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, once said that “Baleff has two qualities that mark him as distinctive: the ability to produce an open, warm sound from the orchestra leaving plenty of air around the notes, and a gift for musical pacing that allows a composition to emerge as though from its own internal energy with no urging from the podium.”

Pablo Sainz-Villegas is the artistic director of La Rioja Festival and has been mentioned by the international press as the successor to Andres Segovia, the master of classical guitar. After Segovia performed at Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1983, Sainz-Villegas was the first solo guitarist to perform there since Segovia in 2021 and also the first guitarist to collaborate with the Berlin Philharmonic since 1983 in 2020, and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 2001 in 2019.

He has played in more than 40 countries, including the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, the Wiener Musikverein in Vienna, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the National Performing Arts Center in Beijing, and the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and has been regarded as an ambassador of Spanish culture. Whether you are an enthusiast of classical or folksong guitar, you cannot afford to miss his live performances.

The repertoire selected in the concert has gone beyond the framework of traditional classic music narration and incorporated elements of dance music, local colors, and personal emotions, vividly demonstrating the thoughts of musicians in the post-Romantic era, who no longer created for the pleasure of aristocratic and ruling classes but instead honestly revealed their concerns for families and countries.

You are cordially invited to join us in the National Concert Hall at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 16 and travel afar with the six strings of a guitar to enjoy the beautiful and exotic music scenes and explore the warmth and tenderness in your hearts. Please click here to purchase tickets.