Fan Wei
Fan Wei is Professor of Clarinet at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and Doctoral Supervisor, Director of the Woodwind Teaching and Research Office of the Orchestra Department of the Central Conservatory of Music.
He graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1995 and later taught there.
In 1996, the China National Symphony Orchestra was established. As a national symphony orchestra that brought together outstanding Chinese and overseas orchestral musicians, the CNSO’s artistic level represented the highest level of the orchestral performing arts at the time in China. Fan Wei was principal clarinet player with the CNSO since its founding. As the youngest principal of the orchestra at that time, he gave an interview with China Central TV, which attracted much attention.
In 1999, Fan Wei was named a national first-class performer.
In 2000, the establishment of the China Philharmonic Orchestra became another landmark cultural event in the history of professionalization and internationalization of symphony orchestras in China since the CNSO. Fan Wei had been principlal clarinet player with the CPO for no less than 20 seasons. He performed about 800 concerts and opera performances in more than 1,000 works, including the historical Chinese premiere of Mahler's Symphony No.8 “Symphony of a Thousand” in 2003 with nearly 1,000 people, and all of Beethoven and Mahler’s symphonies, as well as numerous works by other composers including world premieres of new works by contemporary composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki, Peter Ruzicka, Tan Dun, Ye Xiaogang, Guo Wenjing, among others.
He has been working with conductors including Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Charles Dutoit, Seiji Ozawa, Christoph Eschenbach, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Okko Kamu, Yehudi Menuhin, pianists Martha Argerich, Fou Ts’ong, Lang Lang, Mikhail Plevnev, Gary Graffman, Anatol Ugorsky, Gerhard Oppitz, Kun Woo Paik, Emanuel Ax, violinists Isaac Stern, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Silverstein, Augustin Dumay, Sara Chang, cellists Mischa Maisky, Lynn Harrell, Yo-Yo Ma, Jian Wang, Julian Lloyd Webber, and vocalists Cheryl Studer, Renée Fleming, Plácido Domingo, Sumi Jo.
From February to April 2005, as principal clarinetist of the China Philharmonic Orchestra, Fan Wei participated in a grand world tour, performing in 22 cities in the United States, Canada, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, the United Kingdom, Germany and other countries during more than 40 days.
Fan Wei performed with the China Philharmonic Orchestra in its debut recordings for Deutsche Grammophon. And in the 100-cd collection of the China Philharmonic Orchestra featuring 213 works from 105 concerts, Fan Wei was principal clarinet player in most performances.
Fan Wei's performance combines virtuosity, beautiful timbre and rich musical expression, together with his profound experience, those makes him maintain a high degree of cooperation with orchestral colleagues, he has benn winning high praises from conductors and orchestra musicians.
Since 2019, Fan Wei has been teaching at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing as well as being guest principal clarinet player of the China Philharmonic Orchestra. From 2021, he began to hold the post of Director of the Woodwind Teaching and Research Office of the Orchestra Department of the Central Conservatory of Music.
Fan Wei is good at discovering students' potential in teaching, emphasizes teaching students in accordance with their aptitude, and adopts different teaching methods according to students differences, so that students potentials can be continuously developed. In addition to teaching activities, Fan Wei has been serving as a jury member for major competitions domestic and abroad all year round. The clarinet textbook Learning Music from Famous Teachers: Clarinet, which he recorded and published for the Central Conservatory of Music and Beijing Universal Audiovisual Publishing House, was listed as a key publishing project for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.
