Reported by Syu Jyun-Kuei / County Government
Since its inception ten years ago, Kinmen Tunnel Music Festival has become an event to which music lovers look forward at the end of every year. This year’s Kinmen Tunnel Music Festival kicked off yesterday. A total of seven performances will be presented in two days, and all the tickets have been sold out. Many music lovers said the festival was “worth the money.”
Starting from a small idea, the festival has grown into an annual grand event for music lovers. Ten years ago (in 2009), Kinmen National Park Headquarters invited Chang Chen-Chieh, a cellist, to organize a large outdoor event in memory of the Battle of Guningtou, which was fought sixty years ago. The invitation from Kinmen National Park Headquarters inspired Chang to perform inside Jhaishan Tunnel, and he made this crazy idea come true.
The 2018 Kinmen Tunnel Music Festival kicked off inside Jhaishan Tunnel yesterday and will last two days. A total of seven performances will be presented in these two days. 200 tickets were sold for each performance, and a total of 1400 people have purchased the tickets. According to Kinmen National Park Headquarters, sixty percent of these music lovers came from Taiwan or other countries. They arrived at Kinmen just for this grand event, and they contributed to the increase in profits of the tourism and recreation industries in Kinmen.
Four performances were presented based on the theme of “beautiful singing voice” on the first day. The first performance started at 10:30 a.m. Mewas Lin, Taiwan’s No. 1 soprano, and Heo Yueh-Ren, a rising tenor who is a Malaysian Chinese, were invited to deliver the performances. Lin also performed at the Guningtou Peace Concert ten years ago. Yesterday the festival began with Lin’s “Nostalgia,” which depicted solders’ longing for their hometown during the battle. Her collaboration with Heo represented the connection between Kinmen and Southeast Asia. Accompanied by a string quartet that consisted of Chang Chen-Chieh, a well-known cellist, Lin Tien-Chi, a conductor and violinist, Chen Wei-In, a rising star who used to serve as the concertmaster in Detmolder Chamber Orchestra, and Hsu Hsiao-Hung, an assistant professor at the National Taiwan University of Arts and a violist, Lin and Heo performed a number of captivating pieces inside the tunnel, from Mozart’s the Marriage of Figaro Overture, Un bel dì vedremo (one fine day) from Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly, to La donna è mobile from Verdi’s Rigoletto, which drew big applauses from the audience. For the grand finale, they performed Libiamo ne' lieti calici (Brindisi) from Verdi’s La traviata. During the performance, they used Kinmen kaoliang liquor instead of red wine, which drew smiles from the audience.
Chang, who directed the festival, said emotionally that it is both a miracle and a unique experience that his crazy idea at that time could last until present day and turn into an event which the whole world looks forward to and for which tickets are sold out immediately every year. He added that Kinmen Tunnel Music Festival has also given Jhaishan Tunnel a new purpose. He believed the melodies would definitely stay with the audience for life after the performances. The acoustics inside Jhaishan Tunnel are absolutely the best in the world, and the audience have great manners under the management of Kinmen National Park Headquarters.
Today’s performances will be delivered by Wang Hai-Ling, “Yu Opera Diva,” and Novia Wu, “Princess of Magic Dizi,” based on the theme of “an encounter between classical music, Wang Hai-Ling, and the magic dizi.” The first piece will be Bach’s Sarabande played by Chang, the art director of the event and a cellist, alone. Chang chose this piece to reflect on the impact of wars on human beings and pray for peace. Performing this piece inside Jhaishan Tunnel will make it more meaningful. Next is the performance by Wang Hai-Ling, “Yu Opera Diva.” Wang will perform two arias with totally different styles, the lively “Grandaunti Liu” and the affectionate and worried “Madam Cao” from “Lord Cao’s Memoirs: Lin Tao,” which will express both great joy and deep sorrow that are the characteristics of Yu opera performances. The natural acoustics inside the tunnel will highlight the uniqueness of Wang’s splendid singing voice, and her collaboration with the string quartet will create new sparks for the Eastern and Western music. In addition, Novia Wu, a rising star nicknamed “Princess of Magic Dizi,” will deliver the solo dizi performance of “A Trip to Suzhou,” which is full of oriental charm. The performance of the string quartet will captivate the audience with echoes inside the granite tunnel, especially the second movement from Dvořák’s "American" string quartet, which will bring audience to tears with its emotion-evoking music playing in the tunnel. It has almost become a must play for Kinmen Tunnel Music Festival.
Kinmen National Park Headquarters hereby reminds visitors that access control will be implemented from November 2nd to November 4th and Jhaishan Tunnel will be closed to the public in these three days due to Kinmen Tunnel Music Festival. Today is the last day of the festival. Kinmen National Park Headquarters thanks everyone for their cooperation in making this grand musical event possible.