Performer: Yip Wing-sie

Yip Wing-sie and the HK Sinfonietta show admirable qualities in their Beethoven cycle. François-Frédéric Guy plays a splendid Third Piano Concerto but Anne Queffélec is disconnected from the orchestra in the Fourth.

The Hong Kong Sinfonietta intrigues with the world premiere of Lam Lai's There is no place like home (beta), impresses in Shostakovich’s brooding Chamber Symphony, while Pavel Kolesnikov proves a fine soloist in Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto.

Hong Kong Sinfonietta's Cellomania program showcased the young Turkish cellist's towering talent with a potpourri of show-stoppers.

The Soldier’s Story illustrated a thematic integration of ideas in a programme that was as diverse as it was bold.

A mixed evening, where Mozart's concerto lacked melancholy and Debussy's Faune inspired neither curiosity nor otherworldliness.

Stravinsky and Arvo Pärt’s modernism trumps Rachmaninov’s romanticism with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. 

Christoph Poppen, new jury co-chair of the Hong Kong International Conducting Competition, argues that the competition valuable because it allows young conductors to meet one another, in what is an otherwise lonely profession.

With five of the symphonies, the Violin concerto and four of the piano concertos, Beethoven lovers aren't going to go short in Hong Kong.