Concert Review: ‘From Formosa’ – Taiwan Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble

Did you know there was a Taiwanese American Heritage Week? I didn’t – until I reported last month about the Taiwan Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble’s 2026 U.S. tour. On May 19, 2026, the ensemble concluded Heritage Week with the fourth and final stop on its tour. Joined at the Kauffman Center’s Merkin Hall in New York City by Taiwu Ballads Troupe (TBT), an Indigenous Taiwanese vocal ensemble specializing in music from the island’s Paiwan people, the five instrumentalists unveiled a panoply of fascinating, mostly Taiwan-rooted music that incorporated Western classical, contemporary avant-garde, and Indigenous music.

The Taiwan Philharmonic

Known at home as the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), the Taiwan Philharmonic is celebrating its 40th year. Over those decades it has evolved into a world-class institution. The program began with string quartet music played by four top-notch musicians associated with the orchestra.

First up was the world premiere of Terra/Liturgy of Hakka Music for String Quartet, by Yun-Jou Chen, four short movements evoking the Hakka culture’s Yimin Festival and agrarian life. Along with Taiwan’s 16 officially recognized Indigenous tribes, the island has a population of Hakka people, a sub-ethnicity originally from mainland China.

The music encompasses challenging avant-garde and simple melodies of childhood. A yearning quality in the first movement gave way to contemplative harmonies streaked with long, slow, downward glissandos from the cello in the second. Woody tapping on the instruments and chunky pizzicatos are intended to suggest ritual veneration of ancestors. In the last movement, friction produces a sound resembling that of a distorted electric guitar arising amid dissonant chords.

The piece was pleasing and interesting and its pairing with the Two Pieces for String Quartet by Aaron Copland proved a wise one. Copland’s “Lento Molto” features similar dark harmonies. The musicians leaned heavily into the dense, swelling climax. Unsettled harmonic motion in the “Rondino” also seemed to link up with the Chen piece. The musicians performed both with conviction and skill.

Next up, the four musicians accompanied the five women of Taiwu Ballads Troupe in three pieces of Taiwanese music for string quartet and chorus, arranged by Ting-Chuan Chen. Barefooted and bedecked with smiles and gaudy costumes, the singers radiated sincerity and joy as they alternated brisk and slower tempos and traded unison passages and powerful multi-part harmonies in glistening vibrato-free voices. The third piece, the rhythmic, dance-like “Yinalayina” (“Our Longing”), had a particularly sparkling accompaniment from the strings.

Tales from the Old Globe

“From Formosa” was the title of the program. “Formosa” is an old name for Taiwan, given to the island by the Portuguese. I knew the name from my childhood, likely from a globe I had in my room that probably dated from the 1950s (a globe that also had a giant “country” called “French West Africa”). The use of the name for this tour was intended to evoke ages past. As Taiwu Ballads Troupe demonstrates, at least some of the island’s Indigenous groups maintain their cultures. TBT represents the Paiwan people, who number some 100,000.

The singers returned after intermission to perform an a cappella set of Indigenous polyphonic love songs featuring complex harmonies, touches of heterophony (where multiple voices sing a melody in unison while embellishing it differently), dance steps with linked arms, and claps and foot stomps. As this fascinating performance transported us to another land, it also gave Western ears the privilege of experiencing an unfamiliar, yet recognizably celebratory realm of devotional musical and physical language.

Following the TBT singers came the most compelling instrumental music of the consistently strong program: “Silver Fields of Taiwanese Indigenous Music for Piano Quintet,” by contemporary composer Ke-Chia Chen. Its varying flavors of steady beats are meant to evoke footsteps over fields of silvergrass. But they are only one strand of a striking piece that also suggests stormy, changeable weather, along with ghostly and even sinister images.

A sequence of varied paces and rhythms drives the music, including a sustained stretch of irresistible momentum with the strings playing a beat of five against the piano’s two. Briefly, a more placid four-to-two beat settles in, but a syncopated rhythm quickly develops to re-adjust expectations. Exuberant and also slightly angsty melodic passages evolve out of faintly jazzy harmonic changes. I found this piece grippingly powerful and was glad to see that the composer was present to see the audience’s enthusiastic reaction.

Fusion Reaction

An equally powerful performance of The Highlander’s Suite for Piano Quintet by noted Taiwanese neo-Romantic composer Tyzen Hsiao followed. The composer passed away in 2020 after a distinguished career creating an absolutely unique fusion. The music connects East Asian modes with inspiration from Indigenous folk music and various Romantic flavors – 19th-century Europe, sentimental, even Great American Songbook.

For a well-earned encore the ensemble delved into Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet, as if they had to establish their classical-music bona fides. It wasn’t necessary to do so as such – these are excellent musicians by any measure – but it was well played, despite a little bit of muddiness in some of the louder sections, not rhythmic but acoustic, perhaps due to the shape of the room. In any case, violinists Hao-Tun Teng and Yi-Ju Chen, violist Jubel Chen, cellist Yi-Shien Lien, and pianist Chun-Chieh Yen had already proven themselves masters of Eastern strands of music and the Western classical tradition that the Taiwanese composers on this program so ably and fascinatingly intermingle.