Burnt Tibetans and Wizards

 

The 40th Hong Kong Arts Festival is, as many such festivals must be, a many-headed beast. Some of the greatest current superstar performers in music, such as Nigel Kennedy and Karita Mattila, suddenly appear on a stage before you, do their bit, bow a lot and then bugger off to their snug hotel rooms in order to be up and ready to catch the next-day’s flight to another gig in Shanghai, Seattle or Sydney. Some wonderful surprises have popped up, such as the renaissanced renaissance L’Arpeggiata (previously mentioned) and the Malian performers Tinariwen (who the Memsahib saw and very much enjoyed whilst I was away in Bangkok with an august body of singing gentlemen). And then there’s all the ballet, theatre, quartets, soloists, opera, Chinese opera and choralyness... phew!

 

Anyway, enough preamble. Last night’s concert dubiously entitled The Piano Wizard Hamelin was itself a chimerical beast. What I had assumed to be a piano concert was instead made up of piano concerto, piano solo and orchestra all on its own. [Incidentally, I’m not sure the epithet ‘wizard’ is entirely accurate in that a wizard is a conjurer of primal forces not of his own (e.g. of nature), whereas the 51-year old French Canadian Marc-André Hamelin appears to be quite the product of his own hard work –whether through concerts, recordings or compositions.]

Whoever produced this one (which may not have been part of the actual Arts Fest) had as many hats on, but I was somewhat befuddled by the staging arrangements:

• Fully blacked-tailed massed ranks of the Hong Kong Phil Orchestra, under mystical wavy direction of Shao-Chia Lü, plays Ravel’s La Valse (reasonably well, if a little reserved –see this YouTube of Bernstein getting carried away)
• Warm applause
• Stage hands emerge to move about the 1st violin stations and wheel in grand piano
• Warm applause as Hamelin sits down to play with the Phil the uninspiring César Franck Symphonic Variations –see this YouTube of said work performed in China
• Warm applause (my Mum's favourite composer, but I nearly fell asleep)
• Hamelin exits and audience, shruggingly supposing it’s the end of the 1st half, exit to nonchalantly mingle holding weak G&Ts and potter about the impersonal, vacuous and intolerably boring atrium at the Cultural Centre (who did commission that awful, massive scupture in the atrium?)
• Orwellian ‘bing-bong’ sounds to command audience to return to the auditorium
• Warm applause
• Hamelin re-enters through orchestra to play Richard Strauss’ amazing Burleske, full of invigorating and playful orchestral and piano constructions –wow! One of the best things I’ve hear in this venue by the HK Phil, nobly and masterfully accompanied by Hamelin and worth the entrance fee alone. Someone pay their timpanist James Bonos a few more dollars or leave him an open tab at the bar –each stroke and note of this difficult piece brilliantly performed! Here's more YouTube to give you some idea
• Very warm applause
• Hamelin re-enters and announces that his encore is a short prelude by Leonid Sabaneyev which he completes with effortless finesse. Here's YouTube of Hamelin's performance (with notation)
• Warm applause as Hamelin finally bows and exits (presumably back to foyer bar to finish)
• Stage hands re-emerge to shuffle the piano about, add celeste and re-arrange the strings for the grand finale…
• Shao-Chia Lü conducts the HK Phil through Lutosławski’s astonishing Concerto for Orchestra. Just the best and grandest thing they’ve ever performed –ever! (crossed-fingers, quibbs, no come-back) 5 -yes, that's 5 percussionists, 2 harpists, at least three rows of double basses... Here's a nice YouTube example of the spooky 3rd movement.
• Four curtain calls –except there’s no curtain
• Exit audience, some, it must be said, a bit sharpish –if not rudely so!

 

Could someone please help make sense of all that movement? Don’t get me wrong, this was an excellent concert, but, surely, Hamelin could have made better use of the 1st half by necking a few pints in the foyer and then rolling onto the stage for the 2nd –after all, the biggest superstars always appear last on the bill.

Could someone also explain why so many fidgety little children were in the concert hall? What on earth they made of it all, I'm not sure. Perhaps they were the fruit of the HK Philharmonic's mighty loins come to see whether they really do play in an orchestra? Or maybe it was too-good a discount for kindergarten and primary school parents to ignore? Or maybe the HK public thought the word wizard in the title meant that through a puff of smoke a man in a funny long black robe and a sorting hat would materialise and make a succession of furry creatures disappear whilst hammering out Yankee Doodle Dandy?

We arrived in good time before the concert and decided to wander tourist-like around the ole Star Ferry environs. Ee, by-‘eck! The eternal view; ships in the harbour silently slipping past the backdrop of the eternal day that is neon Hong Kong Island, hundreds of visitors taking thousands of photos –it is the Hong Kong experience, the joyful memories that confirm happiness and fulfilment for millions.

Set back from the harbour frontage, however, was a candlelit vigil for Tibet in remembrance of 53 years of resistance to totalitarianism. A quiet, moving and quite sobering collection of images of people that have immolated themselves to protest the Han occupation of Tibetan lands, it served to show me that young Hong Kong people are not all self-serving rich kids intent on stocking up on quick-return shares or buying their next polished growling Mercedes. That a small bunch of well-meaning people should consider the fate of 26 Tibetan martyrs is testament to the growing conscience in Asia’s World City. Perhaps chanting Buddhist prayers and scripture may seem a futile, even insignificant gesture to you, but it carries a fearless idea –that some here believe that other people matter and are willing to be counted doing so.

Indeed, as if to unwittingly prove the point, plainly visible on the fringes of this small event were plain-clothed security, three from People's Republic of China and on the other side one from the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong (the bored Chinese were clearly not that bothered by the whole thing and were more keen on having a quick ciggy, the lone HK operative just looked a little confused and angry, probably because of them!). Presumably, no-one from the Tibetan Autonomous Region was able to be present.

Viva Tibet! Viva Hong Kong! Viva live music!