On the last stop of its European tour, the China National Center for the Performing Arts Orchestra opened the Elbphilharmonie Summer Festival to a hall that, after weeks of quiet in summer break, pulsed with life again. Outside, the northern German summer evening glowed in soft hues, and inside, under Myung-whun Chung’s assured yet unhurried direction, music unfolded with the same luminous vitality.
Qigang Chen’s Wu Xing (The Five Elements) was an ingenious curtain-raiser. This contemporary miniature suite, tinged with Eastern flavour, alternates jewel-like sonic precision with rustic nostalgia. Each movement – barely two minutes long – offered just enough time for its character to blossom before vanishing. The score’s rich percussion palette and prominent brass and wind writing provided a clever showcase for the orchestra’s sections. Chung shaped a soundscape both sculpted and spontaneous, each miniature glinting like a polished stone. If there was one drawback, it was that some musical ideas seemed on the verge of fuller development when they abruptly ended, leaving the listener wanting more.
Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major followed in a reading that favoured cultivated poise over overt virtuosity. Bruce Liu, seated on a simple-backed chair rather than a normal piano stool, played as a true ensemble partner, conversing intimately with the orchestra through a finely cultured touch. If at times his sound did not project with the utmost brilliance, it carried instead a noticeable steadiness and gravitas, a maturity well beyond his years. Chung, too, seemed to relish this dialogue: from time to time leaning back casually against the rail of the podium, listening with unhurried delight to Liu’s phrasing.
The second movement’s extended opening solo was a highlight: Liu’s phrasing unfolded with unhurried naturalness, evoking the patina of old film stock – restraint, slightly grainy, yet warmly human. In the movement’s closing pages, his dialogue with the winds achieved a quiet transcendence. The toccata-like finale was delivered with nimble precision and propulsive energy, perfectly in step with the orchestra’s buoyancy. It may not have been a display of dazzling vitality, but it impressed through refined taste, balance and musical integrity. Liu’s encore, a Chopin Nocturne, was all elegance, its grace stemming from an exquisite equilibrium between the hands.
After the interval, Romeo and Juliet revealed another side of orchestra’s capability. They transformed into a seasoned opera pit ensemble, playing with the narrative instinct of drama. Chung, dressed in loose trousers and radiating ease, gave the ensemble space to breathe naturally. He painted Prokofiev’s scenes in bold, cinematic strokes: the sinister rigidity of mechanistic rhythms, the languorous sweetness of the love themes, the biting wit of Mercutio’s music. Moments of high drama seemed to conjure vivid images: the lovers’ first meeting bathed in moonlight, the cold geometry of feuding clans, the suffocating stillness before tragedy strikes.
Beyond the picturesque, the orchestra conveyed the drama’s inner tensions – danger, tenderness, inevitability – through layered dynamics and finely shaded textures. At moments, those undercurrents seemed to echo the work’s own fraught history within the cultural politics of the 20th century.
The ovation was immediate and unanimous, the audience cheering until Chung and the orchestra responded with a spirited Carmen Prelude. The Elbphilharmonie crowd clearly embraced this first concert of the Summer Festival, just as the China NCPA Orchestra seemed to savour the triumphant close of its European journey. As the summer night lingered gently over Hamburg, the performance left an afterglow that made one all the more eager for the new season to begin in just two weeks’ time.
