The Hong Kong Arts Festival was launched in 1973, aimed at enriching the cultural life of the city. In 2015, it celebrates its 43rd festival with a programme which features many star quality international performers, whilst promoting local creative talent.
Leading the international brigade are Christian Thielemann and his Staatskapelle Dresden. They bring two programmes of central European classics which are staple parts of their repertoire. In their first concert, Strauss’ Metamorphosen is paired with Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony. Metamorphosen, a study for 23 strings, is subtitled “In memoriam” and Strauss was lamenting the devastation caused by the bombing of Munich in World War II; he even quotes the funeral march from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony near the end of the work. Bruckner’s Ninth was left incomplete, the third movement earning the title of Bruckner’s “farewell to life”. Thielemann is renowned for his Strauss and Bruckner and this should be a very special opening concert.
Their second programme contains Liszt’s symphonic poem Orpheus, more Strauss – Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) – plus the Siegfried Idyll, Wagner’s birthday present to his wife Cosima. It was first performed on Christmas morning 1870, by a small ensemble of the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra on the stairs of their villa at Tribschen… a pretty perfect start to any birthday! In it, Wagner uses themes he would later use in his third Ring opera, Siegfried.
Orchestrally, the other big hitters in this year’s festival are Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In their opening concert, Mahler’s mighty Sixth Symphony is the sole work. Starting with a fierce, menacing march, the symphony is perhaps Mahler’s most personal, sometimes attracting the nickname “The Tragic”. That first movement also contains a lyrical, soaring theme which his wife, Alma, claimed represented herself. The final movement is punctuated by three hammer blows, said to represent three key events which hit Mahler at the time: the death of his daughter Maria Anna, the diagnosis of his (to be fatal) heart condition and his forced resignation from the Vienna Opera. On revising the symphony, Mahler removed the third hammer blow, but some conductors reinstate it.
Their second programme pairs John Adams’ City Noir – a work Dudamel and his orchestra premiered – with Dvořák’s Symphony no. 9 in E minor “From the New World”, composed while Dvořák was working in New York… an East Coast counterpart to Adam’s West Coast concert opener.
The Bolshoi looms over the operatic and ballet stage at the festival. The Bolshoi Opera brings Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride, given its Asian première here. It is based on Lev Mey’s story about Marfa Sobakina, daughter of a Novgorod merchant, who died shortly after her wedding to Tsar Ivan IV (the Terrible). Already promised in marriage to her childhood sweetheart Ivan Lykov, she’s selected from a line-up of over two thousand as the Tsar’s third wife. However, events are complicated further as she’s also lusted after by Grigory Gryaznoy, a henchman in the Tsar’s bodyguard, or Oprichniki, who were responsible for the torture and murder of hundreds during Ivan’s reign. Throw in Gryaznoy’s jealous ‘ex’, a dodgy German pharmacist, a love potion and poison and you have the suitably implausible ingredients of a classic opera plot. Productions are ten a rouble in Russia (it’s currently in the repertory of six Moscow companies), but it’s a rarity elsewhere. The Bolshoi’s production, new in 2014, boasts lavish sets based on Fyodor Fedorovsky’s famous designs for its landmark staging from the mid-20th century.