Chinese

World-renowned pianist Lang Lang continues his celebration of composer Franz Liszt’s 200th Birthday with Liszt Now. The new video features Live at The Roundhouse, a 60-minute live concert from the 2011 iTunes Festival in London and The Art of Being a Virtuoso, a 71-minute documentary following Lang Lang’s global celebrations of Franz Liszt’s anniversary. Also included is A Visual Journey with Franz Liszt, 55 minutes of bonus content featuring video projections used at the Roundhouse concert set to select studio recordings from Lang Lang’s latest album, Liszt: My Piano Hero.

The world premiere of Nixon in China in October 1987 inaugurated a fresh era in American opera. The piece boldly carved out new territory by treating recent American history as suitably mythic operatic material. Skeptics thought this could result only in a trendily pop art-style ridicule of well-known political icons, but it turned out to be as valid a choice as Wagner’s dysfunctional gods or the tormented passions of verismo lovers. Years after the opera’s initial run at the Houston Grand Opera, Nixon is now recognized as a 20th-century masterpiece… —Thomas May

'Oriental Landscapes' is a subtle showcase for percussionist Evelyn Glennie's skills, and the first piece, Chen Yi's Percussion Concerto tackles the obvious problem head on. She talks in the notes about combining Eastern sounds and folk music with Western art music: 'If you just put them together…then it sounds artificial. But if you can merge them in your blood, then they sound natural together'. For the first two minutes there's the astonishing range of sounds made by a collection of traditional Chinese gongs, and when the orchestra enters ……..

Andrew McGregor @ BBC review

In these collections, music is used to convey the diverse characteristics of tea and flowers to listeners. The composers blend the different features of Chinese instruments such as the paixiao, gaohu, guzheng and pipa with sound of nature to create a vivid representation of new age music.

This live concert film captures a post-Chinese Democracy era Guns N' Roses performing in late 2012 at The Joint in Las Vegas' Hard Rock Casino. GN'R namesake Axl Rose leads a revamped version of the band (including former Replacements member Tommy Stinson on bass and longtime Guns collaborator Dizzy Reed on keyboards) through almost three hours of material…

Chinese-born American Lei Liang’s intercontinentally inspired work has been described as ‘hauntingly beautiful’ (The New York Times) and ‘brilliantly original and inarguably gorgeous’ (The Washington Post). Verge is a musical amulet for Liang’s new-born son Albert, while Aural Hypothesis explores how calligraphic lines can find expression in sound. Both Five Seasons and Tremors of a Memory Chord bring together Chinese and Western instruments to create fascinating sonorities, from an evocative single pipa to the unique richness of a grand Chinese orchestra.