Taiwan Tour

The tour to Taiwan with the trio has ended successfully. Thanks to my mother's managerial abilities we were able to fly business class round-trip (including a seat for the cello). That really made a huge difference. The press conference was not as horrifying as the first time we did it about 3 years ago. Although I don't think I will ever get used to having people taking pictures or filming about 5 inches from me while I am playing. The questions from the journalists were not unusual. I only wish that I could have better Chinese (mandarin) for good answers. My language skills are really my weakness, not only with English, but also with Chinese. I am at the point that neither one of them feel comfortable for me to express what I want to. Oh well....

We stayed most of time at the Landis Hotel in Taipei. http://taipei.landis.ahahotels.com/ One of the best services we have ever received, great restaurant, beautiful and comfortable rooms... The stay in this hotel made this tour ever more wonderful.

Our first concert was held in Hsin Chu National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. The hall was accoustically not great, yet, the people who run the concert series were very nice and professional. The 9-foot piano was really too big for the hall, (especially with its bright tone). The audience was wonderful there. We later found out that the AC went out during the performance, and with the temperature of 30 C, no one left the hall. We were very touched!

2nd Concert was held in Taichung Hsin Ming High School Auditorium. It is a nice size hall, great for Chamber music. I actually managed to be daring with music making on stage (which I always try, but not always succeed at).

Our last concert was held in National Concert Hall in Taipei. The concert was a benefit for the Formosa Cancer Society. A society devoted to finding cures, and educating the public on everything related to cancer (preventions, treatments, medicine...). We had a great turn out, and hopefully they raise enough money to get this new education fund going.

We prepared one program for all these 3 concerts. Starting with Tom Benjamin's Aperitif, then the powerful Brahms c minor Piano trio, and ending the first half of the program with a set of 4 Taiwanese folk songs. Two of them are arranged specially for us by Tien Hao Jan, a Taiwanese composer. We ended the program with the gigantic Tchaikovsky Piano Trio, and Haydn Gypsy Trio last movement for encore. I don't think the Taiwanese audience understood the musical language of the Benjamin Aperitif, which was very surprising for us. The Aperitif is as the title suggested, light, funny, jazz-like (although there are some Prokofiev influences in harmonic language also) little opener. Most of the musicians I talked to like the piece very much, unfortunately the general public did not receive it as well as we would like.

The drama of both the Brahms and Tchaikovsky Trios communicated very well to the audiences. Although, we felt exhausted at the end of the concert, because both pieces require such physical demands and emotional journeys that we had really hard time playing the encore. (Most of the time, I really wish we did not have to do it). The Taiwanese songs were of course everyone's favorite. Many told me that they really want to sing along with us, which I am really glad that they didn't. ^_^

We managed to go to several different temples in Taipei. We visited the Confucius temple, Bao-an temple, Lung Shan temple, and Guan Di Temple. Each temple is very different. The most opulent one was the Bao-An temple. My favorite was the Confucius Temple. It was the most peaceful, graceful, and elegant one.

We also visited the Shi-Lin Night Market. It was disappointing. The market does not have as many varieties of street food as I remember, also, the shops are now either selling cheap souvenirs for tourists or foreign things. We also visited the Yang-Min Mountain, although we went there on the day of Typhoon. Because of the Typhoon, we actually managed to visited many scenic spots on the Yan-Min Mountain, because there was no traffic what so ever. The hot spring areas did trigger my asthma though.

Of course we also visited world's tallest building, "101". The elevator went from 5th floor to the 98th floor in less than 40 seconds, yet we did not feel anything. We were glad that on the way down, the elevator did go much slower though. I am not sure that physically I like to feel the quick drop from that altitude. We went on a clear day, we could see the whole Taipei. The scenery was beautiful.

My parents were great. There is just no word to describe how thankful I am to them. I guess the worst thing we had to deal with from this trip was the Jet-lag. Maybe that I am getting too old for this, but it took me more than a week to get adjusted to the time change when we flew back to U.S. The whole week was painful for me because we had to get right back to work. We flew back on Friday the 7th, and we had to perform in PA on the 9th. Then we went straight into teaching ... I think the worst torture one can receive is to not be able to sleep when one wants to everyday...