Taipei, October 1, 2026    The Evergreen Symphony Orchestra presents “Jaap van Zweden, Matthias Goerne & ESO” on December 11 and 13 at Weiwuying National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts and the National Concert Hall in Taipei. Led by conductor Jaap van Zweden, ESO’s Artist-in-Residence, the concerts will feature German baritone Matthias Goerne in works by Beethoven, Schubert, Richard Strauss, and Shostakovich. Van Zweden and Goerne have collaborated on numerous international stages, but these performances will mark their first appearances together in Taiwan.

The New York Times praised Goerne, noting that “Goerne’s instrument, with its velvety crevices, catches darkness and light,” while the Chicago Tribune has hailed him as “today’s leading interpreter of German art songs.” A student of legendary baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Goerne has performed a wide range of repertoire with van Zweden over the years, building a musical partnership that they now bring to Taiwanese audiences for the first time.

The concert opens with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Op. 62. Inspired by the Austrian dramatist Heinrich Joseph von Collin’s tragedy Coriolan, the work contrasts forceful and lyrical musical ideas, reflecting the protagonist’s conflict between vengeance, honor, and family. Goerne then performs ten orchestral songs by Franz Schubert and Richard Strauss, including Schubert’s An Silvia, based on a text from Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Strauss’s Morgen! 

All songs on the program will be presented in orchestral arrangements, rather than the voice-and-piano settings more commonly associated with Lieder. Schubert’s An Silvia and Des Fischers Liebesglück will be performed in orchestrations commissioned by Goerne from Alexander Schmalcz, his longtime pianist and collaborator. Goerne has said that the orchestral versions give the songs “a timbral dimension that the piano is incapable of reproducing.” 

The program’s second half features Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 70. Completed in 1945 at the end of World War II, the work defied expectations for a monumental “victory symphony.” Instead, Shostakovich wrote a concise symphony marked by lightness and humor, while moments of solitude and darker tension emerge beneath its brighter surface. 

The Evergreen Symphony Orchestra will perform with Jaap van Zweden and Matthias Goerne on Friday, December 11, 2026, at Weiwuying National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Concert Hall), and on Sunday, December 13, 2026, at the National Concert Hall in Taipei. For ticket information, please visit the official Evergreen Symphony Orchestra website or OPENTIX.