Beijing's Cool Space, Warmest of NSO Sounds with harmony

Washington Post, STYLE section page C1,C2.

Beijing, June 12 - The National Symphony Orchestra played its first concert here Thursday night - the second stop of its ongoing 10-day tour of China and South Korea - in a cool, shimmering, predominantly silver theater that is at once traditional and futuristic.
The concert took place at the National Center for the Performing Arts-commonly known as "The Egg" which opened in 2007.

Audience members applaud the NSO concert in Beijing's National Center for the Performing Arts.

Fittingly, the first music it played was a new American work, Daniel Kellogg's "Western Skies."

Principal Conductor Ivan Fischer certainly showed that he knew his audience with his selection of the encore. The orchestra brought all its members out onstage and plunged into "Stars and Stripes Forever," accompanied by loud, rhythmic clapping from all over the room.

Francis Scott Key is known to the Chinese audience from American history.

Francis Shieh a.k.a. Xie Shihao,an octogenarian and a graduate student from China in 1947 resolving to learn American English and American culture of economics ad infinitum.

June 12, 2009 at 9.42 a.m.