HK Cultural
Center Concert Hall. Balcony (Seat M123,
HK$680).
Program
Piano Concerto
No. 1 in B Flat minor, Op. 23 by Tchaikovsky (1840-1893).
The Rite of
Spring by Stravinsky (1882-1971).
As Chung Chu
remarked on my Facebook entry, this was a great program. Indeed it is, with Yuja Wang as the soloist,
at that.
Perhaps I was
somewhat disappointed at the last HK Phil concert I attended (in April), and
perhaps my expectations were again quite high (I know these are
counter-arguments in a way), I was somewhat disappointed at the performance.
Working from
memory, it was a performance by Wang that brought out the Ravel Piano Concerto (in
F?) for me, and I was fascinated by how adept she was in performing an
arrangement of Mozart’s piece (the K.545 Rondo?). And I saw her performance of the Tchaikovsky
on YouTube which was really good. Today
was a few years later, so I was really looking forward to enjoy this war horse.
Wang did manage
to make the piece look easy; perhaps not “one day in the office” easy, but
there was certainly no anxiety that she might miss a note (not that I would
necessarily notice), or some other mishap.
After a
thunderous applause, she played as encore a piece that seemed to have moving
pedal points with embellishments around them.
Perhaps pianists would appreciate the virtuosity involved, I couldn’t
quite get the why and what of it.
My main issue with
the Tchaikovsky was how disjoint the piece sounded. Perhaps I exaggerate a bit, the performance
was like a series of unrelated themes or passages stitched together. The orchestra’s simply lurched from section
to section, with precision problems every now and then. My first encounter with van Zweden was a Hong
Kong Phil concert in 2012, when he was a few months in his post. My remark that his ego exceeded his
capability needs to be re-visited in light of his appointment to the New York
Philharmonic; however, while Hong Kong Philharmonic remains a competent
orchestra, it has not made great strides in the intervening years since took
over as music director.
That unease was
confirmed with the Rite of Spring performance.
The introduction by the bassoon was tentative, and it took me a while to
get over it. There were moments of
brilliance, but the performance was again marked by more disjointness (is this
a word?) than I would like.
The annotator’s
decision to include the “program” of the ballet in the Program Notes was
certainly very helpful. The young mother
sitting next to me was going through the program with her son as the music
progressed. By putting in references to
the instruments (e.g., “the horns dance cheerfully”) he made the music very easy
to follow along. The rest of the Program
Notes was pretty boiler-plate, though.
One gets
criticized for commenting on Wang’s sense of fashion; but if I walk on the
street with a beanie cap with peacock tail feathers attached (think Cher), am I
not inviting or even expecting remarks from others? After much thought, the most politically
correct way to say is Wang has the confidence to think she can pull it off with an outfit that would equally belong on a beach. Another thought is
many young girls were brought to this concert so they can be inspired by Wang, I wonder how many would want to grow up and emulate her fashion sense.
So happens I
also attended Hong Kong Philharmonic’s opening concert last year; there I debated if
I wanted to go because of the obscure piece on the program, and I ended up
really enjoying it. For tonight I had no
hesitation to get a ticket (and solicited Tim’s help to do so as the concert
was rapidly selling out), yet I ended up with a real sense of disappointment.
To put things in
perspective, I also bought a ticket to the chamber concert this coming
Wednesday where Wang will be performing with HK Phil musicians. And of course overall I think the concert
is worth the money and the time.
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