In six seasons, Jaap van Zweden has raised the profile of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, a profile set to rise further now that its Music Director is also at the helm of the New York Philharmonic. Their Ring Cycle, recorded over the past four seasons in Hong Kong, has garnered huge praise for the orchestral playing as well as van Zweden’s dynamic approach to Wagner’s scores. The 2018-19 season marks the orchestra’s 45th season, with a number of series encompassing classic masterpieces, star soloists, crossover and film scores.
Mahler always encourages capacity audiences wherever his music is played, but two big HK Phil concerts next season offer the chance to experience the music from a different perspective. The Mahler $200 special project sees tickets for the Ninth and Seventh Symphonies on sale for a uniform $200 across the board (around £19), so the promoters are keen to encourage audiences to use the opportunity to sit somewhere different, to experience music-making from a different angle. Why not sit in the Choir Stalls and watch van Zweden from face on? Or pick the best Stalls seats for an unbeatable price (top prices in the season can stretch to $580, $680 or $780, depending on the concert category or series)? Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony also appears next May, a symphonic blockbuster where the orchestra is joined by the forces of the Netherlands Radio Choir and soloists Karen Cargill and Ying Fang.
Jaap van Zweden conducts plenty of concerts over the season, of course, with plenty of big symphonies on the menu, including Bruckner’s mighty Seventh, Rachmaninov’s romantic Second and Tchaikovsky’s fateful Fourth. At the more classical end of the spectrum, there are Mozart’s last two symphonies, where No. 40 is part of an all-Mozart programme which opens with Symphony no. 1. Van Zweden also conducts the Hong Kong première of John Corigliano’s First Symphony, written to commemorate three friends of the composer who died because of AIDS. Its opening movement, entitled “Rage and Remembrance”, sets the tone.
To mark its 45th season, the orchestra welcomes back former artistic and music directors Edo de Waart and David Atherton. De Waart’s programme includes the Chinese première for John Adams’ Saxophone Concerto where the soloist is Timothy McAllister, who gave the work’s first performance in Sydney in 2013. David Atherton’s all-British programme includes Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto – often neglected in concert halls, but a big, muscular piece definitely worthy of ranking alongside the Beethoven and Brahms concertos – where the soloist is Augustin Hadelich. Atherton also programmes Holst’s ever-popular Planets. Long Yu (Principal Guest Conductor) pairs a rare concerto with a concert classic: Samuel Barber’s Cello Concerto, performed by Alban Gerhardt, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s colourful Arabian Nights suite, Scheherazade. Yu also conducts a nearly all-Rachmaninov bill, where Haochen Zhang is the soloist in the First Piano Concerto.