Royal Academy of Music marks Spring Festival with East-West Dialogue concert

A concert titled "East-West Dialogue: Spring Sequence of New Sounds" was held on Sunday at London's Royal Academy of Music to celebrate Spring Festival.

The event was produced by the Sino-British Ensemble, an instrumental and vocal ensemble consisting of artists from China and Europe, and co-organized by the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, or SACU, and the UK Beijing Arts Group.

China's Ambassador to the UK Zheng Zeguang, and his wife, Counselor Hua Mei, attended the event on invitation.

The program featured a series of performances specially designed as dialogues, where musicians presented new arrangements of classical compositions from both the East and West.

Notably, Chinese pianist Li Jinfeng and British pianist Julian Jacobson performed a piano duo featuring the Yellow River Piano Concerto, a Chinese composition symbolizing the resilience and fighting spirit of the Chinese people, alongside Vltava, one of the six movements from the Czech symphonic poem Ma vlast, also known as My Fatherland.

Both pieces reflect an artistic response to rivers, yet each conveys a unique sentiment shaped by the historical context of its composition.