On Saturday, June 5, at 2:00–3:30 pm, the afternoon concert series jointly presented by BMF Club and Beijing Music Radio saw its third concert, featuring classic music, staged at Winland International Finance Center. Hostess Gu Yue from Beijing Music Radio had a dialogue with musicians, introducing the program to the audience online and offline so that they could better understand the works. Musicians that performed at the event included professor Fan Lei (clarinetist), professor Sheng Yuan (pianist), Zhang Zhang (soprano), and Qin Yu (pianist). 

Opening the concert was professor Fan Lei and professor Sheng Yuan’s performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Lied ohne Worte, Op.67 no.2. Lied ohne Worte is a suite of small piano pieces and a creation of Mendelssohn and the music is easy, vivacious, melodic and romantic, like a dream.

Then, the two musicians continued to play for the audience Johannes Brahms’s masterpiece and last piece—Sonata for Piano and Clarinet, op. 120 no. 2. The sounds of the two instruments wove spontaneously into a somewhat gloomy ode to life.  

Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, D.965, brought to the audience a different texture. As the last piece of work by Franz Schubert, this song is a perfect combination of melodic, structural, and emotional beauty, which was brought to life by the excellent performance of Fan Lei, Qin Yu, and Zhang Zhang. The resonant sound of the clarinet depicts the picturesque view in the eyes of the shepherd while quietly responding to the emotions flowing from the vocal part. The soprano sang in such a clear and crystalline voice that, with accompaniment from the piano, it felt as if one was in the vibrant early spring that Schubert envisioned, leaving the audience in a distant world of fascinating imagination. 

Concluding the concert was an encore by professors Fan Lei and Sheng Yuan, the third movement of Robert Schumann’s Fantasia, which was so romantic and attractive.

Winland International Finance Center headquarters quite a number of international financial institutions in China. Art is what helps us relate to our customers and provide the value they prefer. We have been staging classic music concerts since 2006 and it has been sixteen years now. Our concerts have become a calling card of Financial Street Beijing, in the art world, and an important occasion for the dissemination of classic music in China. 

This time, by joining hands with the “afternoon concert” series staged by BMF Club and Beijing Music Radio, we made the concert available online through the BMF Club app and the Kuke website, so as to bring music to a wider audience, which is perfectly in line with the purpose of the serious, i.e. bringing classic music into people’s daily life.