Our very own Shouwang is listed #2 out of 10 best classical music performances of 2008

Alex Ross is the classical music critic for The New Yorker , often considered the leading cultural weekly magazine in the US. A Harvard graduate and one of the most influential American music critics, his book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, is a cultural history of music since 1900 and has won numerous prestigious prizes and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In October Alex Ross received the MacArthur Fellow Award, one of America’s most prestigious awards often referred to as the “genius” award.

In March 2008 Alex Ross spent a month in Beijing to learn more about avant garde and classical music in China, a subject he had been learning about for many years. In particular he was interested in meeting Shouwang, whose name had been introduced to him by Andy beta, another prominent New York music critic who had called Shouwang “one of the most-gifted musicians of any scene”. In April he published in The New Yorker a widely-read seven-page article on the Beijing music scene. In the article he argued that although the classical music scene in China was still seriously underdeveloped, he felt very excited about Beijing’s younger musicians and composers, writing “The pride of Beijing’s underground – No Beijing, Yan Jun calls it – is a twenty-two-year-old indie-rock wunderkind named Zhang Shouwang”.

In the December edition of The New Yorker he listed what for him had been the ten most important concerts he saw in 2008. According to his article:

Alex Ross: The Ten Best Classical-Music Performances of 2008

December 8, 2008

Classical music is sometimes the grandest of art forms, sometimes the most shiveringly intimate. Although the deepening economic crisis may mean that we won’t see too many more spectacles on the order of Stockhausen’s three-orchestra “Gruppen,” in Berlin, or the high-tech pandemonium of “Die Soldaten,” at the Park Avenue Armory, other highlights of my concertgoing year—Mitsuko Uchida playing Mozart in the dining hall of Marlboro Music in Vermont; the brilliant young guitarist-composer Zhang Shouwang casting a minimalist spell in a Beijing rock club; a sound-and-light installation by John Luther Adams humming away in a closet-sized room in Fairbanks, Alaska—suggest that the classical scene will remain lively even if some big organizations fall by the wayside.

Messiaen, “Turangalîla Symphony”; David Robertson conducting the St. Louis Symphony, Carnegie Hall, New York City (February 15th).

Zhang Shouwang, solo improvisation, D22, Beijing (March 27th).

John Luther Adams, “The Place Where You Go to Listen”; Museum of the North, Fairbanks, Alaska (April 2nd).

Schubert, Piano Sonata in C Minor; Mitsuko Uchida, piano, Carnegie Hall, New York City (May 9th).

Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 12; Mitsuko Uchida playing and conducting musicians from Marlboro Music, Marlboro, Vermont (June 28th).

Bernd Alois Zimmermann, “Die Soldaten”; Claudia Barainsky, Claudio Otelli, Steven Sloane conducting the Bochum Symphony, Lincoln Center Festival at the Park Avenue Armory, New York City (July 5th).

Kaija Saariaho, “Notes on Light”; Anssi Karttunen, cello, and Susanna Mälkki conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mostly Mozart Festival at Rose Hall, New York City (August 14th).

Mozart, Clarinet Concerto; Kari Kriikku, clarinet, and Osma Vänskä conducting the Mostly Mozart Orchestra, Lincoln Center, New York City (August 15th).

Stockhausen, “Gruppen”; Simon Rattle, Daniel Harding, and Michael Boder conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, at Tempelhof Hangar 2, Berlin (September 20th).

Leonard Bernstein, “Mass”; Marin Alsop conducting the Baltimore Symphony, United Palace Theatre, New York City (October 25th).