Concert Hall at Hong Kong City Hall. Front Stall (Seat G10, HK$150.)
Program
I was by myself some evenings during this trip, so I
looked at the Urbtix website and found this concert which was somewhat
interesting.
This is an ensemble of 12, from the UK, and Hong Kong is
the last leg of their Asia tour.
Their specialty is Renaissance polyphonic music, and for
tonight all their numbers were a cappella (not sure if that’s the term used
with this period.) Someone in the group probably had perfect pitch as one could
hear notes hummed before each song.
The songs were all composed during the 16th
century, except for one that was recent (but still somewhat in this period
style.) In any case, the lines and the
harmony were easy to follow along, and they sounded nice. There are period instruments and period
techniques (for example, not much vibrato in the strings,) I wonder if there
are period singing techniques.
Not all 12 singers were needed for some numbers, so they
got rotated out to rest their voices. Still,
it has to be taxing to perform more than 1:30 hours of music, without
amplification. But they did as well at
the end as they did at the beginning.
An all-Renaissance program (if that’s what it’s called)
to me is like an all-Mozart or all-Baroque program: a bit much. Not that I didn’t enjoy the music, but it
ceases to be novel after 30 minutes, and then it begins to sound the same. To be fair, that there are stories in the
lyrics make things a bit more interesting.
The songs were in Latin, English, and French. A couple of them were part of a work by William
Byrd who worked for a Protestant king but was secretly a Catholic, so he used
the lyrics to express his opposition.
The Huw Watkins lyrics were from a Shakespeare play, where the word
“turtle” meant a turtledove.
The concert is produced by Premiere Performances, which
also produced the Hong Kong International Chamber Concert series every
January. We attended one concert this
year. The series has since been renamed.
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