Chinoiseries

As early as the 18th century, there was great enthusiasm in Europe for China, which for Europeans was a mystical and distant, almost unattainable place. The interest in exoticism was enormous and the idea of a peaceful giant empire was fascinating.
The China fashion soon spread to the European royal courts. Castles, pagodas, interiors and Chinese gardens were often imitated. These chinoiseries were the direction of European art based on Chinese models and satisfied the hunger for the exotic and foreign.
Teodorico Pedrini, Italian missionary, harpsichordist and composer, sent to China by the Pope, lived and worked until his death as the only European around the Kangxi Emperor, provided the Hof Kaiser with European music and accompanied the emperor on his travels through the country. Pedrini is the only composer of the 18th century from whom European music composed in and for China has survived.

The program is complemented by traditional Chinese music and improvisations on Chinese instruments.
Lin Chen, born in Nanjing, China. She began taking lessons on the Chinese dulcimer "Yang-chin" at the age of five. She has lived in Germany since 2006, where she first studied in Weimar and completed her studies in Hamburg in 2011 with the concert exam with distinction under Prof. Cornelia Monske. Many performances as a soloist and as part of various ensembles and orchestras (including the International Mahler Orchestra) have taken Lin Chen to China, Japan, Hong Kong, Finland, Austria and numerous German cities.
Today, the Hamburg Ratsmusik looks back on half a millennium of music history in Hamburg, as the city first employed permanent minstrels in 1522. Revived in 1991 by Simone Eckert, the ensemble continues this tradition and has been dedicated to historically informed performance practice on original instruments more than 300 years old with unbroken enthusiasm for more than 30 years.