Asia is the future of classical music, goes the tired cliché repeated by such luminaries as Simon Rattle. As the COVID-19 pandemic wanes in places like Taiwan and the Republic of Korea, however, that banality becomes quite literally true. East Asian orchestras, supported by competent governments and resilient public healthy systems, are beginning to play for live audiences again—a state of affairs many European and, especially, American musicians can only dream of.What will that future look like? A series of concerts, both live and livestreamed, on May 24 (the Serenades by Dvořák and Tchaikovsky, and a work by Tyzen Hsiao), on May 30 (Mozart’s “Gran Partita” and Dvořák’s Serenade Op. 22), and June 12 (Beethoven Five and Seven), has allowed the National Symphony Orchestra of Taipei, Taiwan, to feel for a new role in a changed world. Last week, I spoke with Shao-Chia Lü, the orchestra’s music director since 2010, and executive director Wen-Chen Kuo about the pragmatic art of the post-pandemic concert.
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