Han Ximin

ximhan@126.com

THE ensemble, Story of Spring, which featured more than 2,000 accordion players at the Xixiang Sports Center yesterday afternoon, set a new Guinness World Record.

At 4:15 p.m., Luo Qiong, the accreditation official, confirmed that 2,260 had participated in the performance, as the organizer crushed its record from 2014, when it had attracted 1,361 players to the National Accordion Championship.

Besides professional players and contestants, more than 800 accordion fans signed up for the ensemble to witness the birth of a new record.

The performance also marked the start of the Shenzhen Bao’an International Accordion Festival, which is being held at Xixiang Music Valley in Bao’an District from yesterday to Thursday.

The Shenzhen Bao’an International Accordion Festival has been listed on the city’s cultural events schedule for 2017. The organizer invited international accordionists, bandoneonists and bayan players, as well as local Chinese musicians, to play South American tango and Western classical pieces, as well as Russian, Ukrainian and Chinese folk music during the festival.

Walter Rios, a national treasure-level accordionist from Argentina, and Chinese player Tan Jialiang, joined artists from the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra to kick off the opening concert yesterday evening.

Rios played Piazzolla’s “Invierno Porteno,” “Adios Nonino,” “Libertango” and “Oblivion” along with other classic Argentinean tango pieces. It was the first time that Rios, now in his 70s, had performed in China. Chinese accordionist Tan played “Capriccio Movement I” and Chinese Song “Memory Beyond Water,” “Transient Fireworkds Prone to Die Away” and “Rose, Rose, I Love you.”

During a series of contests between today and Thursday, contestants from 20 countries and regions will compete in nine categories at the International Accordion Championship. Shenzhen people will hear from both professional and amateur accordionists who have been divided into 26 groups according to age and type of performance.

Raymond Bodell, president of the Confederation Internationale des Accordeonistes, Viacheslav Semenov, professor of Gnessin State Music College of Russia, and more than 20 other members of Confederation Internationale des Accordeonistes have been invited to be judges during the music festival.

During the four evenings, personal concerts will be held at the music valley’s west square by accordionists Anna Kryshtaleva, Yuri Sidorov, Alexander Poeluev and Varuzhan Shanshiyev from Ukraine.

Accordionist Shanshiyev, a graduate from Ukrainian National Tchaikovsky Academy of Music, will play different styles of music, from Baroque to modern, including his own compositions and transcriptions. He has cooperated with many orchestras in China to put on his own concerts.

For tonight’s concert, the Ukrainian accordionist will play Gardel’s “Por Una Cabeza,” Giraud’s “Sous le Ciel de Paris” and Chinese folk and pop songs. Russian bayan player, Sidorov, will play Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” Tchaikovsky’s “Dumka,” Gridin’s “Gypsy Rhapsody,” Weber’s “Concertino” and Russian and Ukrainian folk songs at another concert tonight.

Young Russian accordionists, Poeluev and Kryshtaleva, will play Greig’s “Procession of Gnomes,” Scarlatti’s “Sonata in A Major,” Couperin’s “Les Rozeaux,” Tchaikovsky’s “October,” Galliano’s “Tango Pour Claude” and more at the personal concert tomorrow.