Joining Music Director Jaap van Zweden were some familiar faces who had appeared in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in the same or different roles, and new faces appearing for the first time.
The Hong Kong Philharmonic's concert this weekend featured two long works by composers who were contemporaries and who struck up a friendship late in their career.
The day after Lorin Maazel conducted the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem last month, an estimated 140,000 fans read the blog post he wrote entitled “When Will We Stop the Slaughter”.
For the 40th anniversary season opening gala of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, it was fitting that Music Director Jaap van Zweden should have chosen Bright Sheng’s Shanghai Overture, which was originally commissioned by the composer’s alma mater, the Shanghai Conservatory, for its own 80th anniversary in 2007.
The première of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was a roaring success, literally. There was such commotion among the audience that the dancers could hardly hear the music, despite the determined effort of conductor Pierre Monteaux to keep going.
Ferdinand David, the concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra when Mendelssohn was conductor, must have been quite a virtuoso for the composer to have written his Violin Concerto in E minor for him.
Former Hong Kong Philharmonic Music Director David Atherton returned to his hometown on Saturday to lead the orchestra in a concert entitled “The King of Instruments”, a reference to works on the programme involving the organ, an instrument rarely heard in the symphony hall.
Although Mendelssohn and Elgar lived in different eras and composed in very different styles, a common thread runs through their works featured in Hong Kong Philharmonic’s performance on Saturday – all of them draw their inspiration from the British Isles.As well-heeled youngsters in the 19th century were wont to do, Mendelssohn embarked on a tour of Europe as part of his education.
Michael Francis is the go-to conductor to replace fellow maestros at short notice. The newly appointed Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor to Norrköping Symphony Orchestra in Sweden stood in for Valery Gergiev with only 12 hours’ notice, and for John Adams with even less, in performances with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2007.
In terms of Mozart’s piano concerti, K482 is known less for its intrinsic musical quality than its predecessor (K467) and its successor (K488), but it is more famous due to the unusual circumstances of its public introduction.
Verdi’s La Traviata is frequently listed as one of the most often programmed operas worldwide. Since it premiered in 1854, it must have greeted audiences around the world tens of thousands of times.
It’s not often that Beethoven gets second billing in a concert, but Jaap van Zweden’s inaugural programme as Music Director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra on Saturday gave this impression. Two student compositions with strong Chinese heritage stole the limelight this evening, which was also the orchestra’s celebration of China’s National Day on 1 October.
“Cultural melting-pot” is a term so often used to describe Hong Kong that it has become a cliché. On Saturday, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra provided a living example of how the city relishes a mixture of cultural influences in a programme of works by French composers incorporating clear foreign influences, predominantly from Spain.
The central character in Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes is a fisherman outcast contending with the wrath of his community. The score for the Four Sea Interludes, extracted from it, weaves often threadbare orchestral parts into a menacing mosaic of moods in the story and conditions which the characters have to battle.
Overshadowed by far better-known and more frequently performed companions in his oeuvre, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 2 in G and the Manfred Symphony have received their fair share of criticism. Their length and stylistic oddities require strong force of will to pull off in performance – some performers (such as pianist Alexander Siloti) have gone so far as to make their own amendments.
To celebrate the 50th birthday of the City Hall Concert Hall on March 2nd, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra chose a programme of short but diverse works with undulating emotional appeal. Star soloist for the evening was cellist Yo-Yo Ma, returning three and a half decades after his debut here.Under the baton of Lan Shui, the evening began with Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture.
I went to the concert with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra on Friday with some pre-conceived ideas about how they should play the two works on the programme, and came away satisfied that the performance more than met expectations.Having heard Mozart's Piano Concerto no.
It sounds almost like heresy to describe a Beethoven composition as “light”, but it would be appropriate for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert on Saturday. His Symphony No. 6 in F, Op. 68, Pastoral, was like soufflé to the crème brûlée of Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Wagner’s Tannhäuser overture.
In the relay race of Russian Romanticism, Rachmaninov clearly took the baton from Tchaikovsky and made a dash for the finishing line. In transcribing some of Tchaikovsky’s works, he would have imbibed much of his genius, but he took the Romantic tradition into the 20th century in a new direction without losing its essence.
The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra clearly wore its heart on its sleeves in naming the opening concert for the 2011/12 season “Heaven and Earth”. There could be no mistake in matching the works to the title. Saturday’s performance showcased the versatility and maturity of the orchestra in handling sharply divergent artistic intentions. When they wrote their Symphony No.
The pictures in the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance on Friday, dubbed “Pictures from Russia”, were clear, perfectly hued and daubed with rich colour. The command that conductor Carolyn Kuan held over the Orchestra produced an evening of electric excitement.
It is bold for an Asian orchestra to tackle a programme of works with a strong and vibrant ethnic character. We got far more than we bargained for in the concert titled “Bravo! Piazzolla” by the Hong Kong Philharmonic on Friday, not only in terms of the generous encores but more so of the quality of performance.
Giving its concert on April 9th the subtitle “Sing Mozart Sing” and promoting it with a tongue-in-cheek portrait of the mischievous genius with his mouth half open in a wry smile, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra probably intended the audience to expect an evening of cheerful and light entertainment. The programming suited this intention down to a tee.
Edo de Waart, Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, chose for his contribution to the 2011 Arts Festival works by two Germanic composers spanning the late Romantic and early modern periods who were almost exact contemporaries. Richard Strauss coincidentally was born seven years before and died seven years after Alexander von Zemlinsky.
