NEW YORK—With the preliminary round of the NTDTV Chinese International Violin Competition wrapped up, 12 contestants will move on to the semi-finals. The annual competition is being held at the Kaufman Center’s Merkin Concert Hall in New York.
Contestants had a choice of selections from one of three Mozart concertos—No. 3, 4, or 5. The required pieces will get more difficult as the days go on. Saturday is the semi-final, where Beethoven and Bach will be played; for the final round on Sunday, contestants must play one of Paganini’s caprices and “Butterfly Lovers” violin concerto by Ho Zhan Hao and Chen Kang. “Butterfly Lovers” is known as the Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet.
Judge Chia-Chi Lin said that classical pieces were chosen because the contest’s goal is to promote traditional culture. “Classical music’s inner meaning is to praise the gods, so classical composers’ hearts are pure,” she said. “That’s different from the goal of composers today.”
NTDTV (New Tang Dynasty Television) is a satellite television station whose goal it is to build cross-cultural understanding and the return to traditional arts.
The violin competition is one in a series of nine organized by NTDTV: classical Chinese dance, vocal, Han couture, Chinese culinary, piano, Chinese martial arts, figure painting, and photography.
Lin hopes that the contest will encourage young people to rediscover classical music in the age of pop.
“Classical music is the most basic music,” said Lin. “Now, musicians search for the new and exciting, but if you begin the search in classical music, what you'll find is purity.”
NTDTV Chinese International Violin Competition Semifinalists:
Alissa Cheung; Alberta, Canada Richard R. Lin; USA Yuncong Zhang; New York, USA Nancy Zhou; Texas, USA Shu Cheng Yang; Quebec, Canada Andrew Ling; Texas, USA Shih-Kai Lin; New York, USA Andrew Eng, Massachusetts, USA Shelly Ren; California, USA Chen Han Tsai; New York, USA Zhangtong Song; California, USA Christopher Wang; Saxony, Germany
