26/02/2015
HONG KONG PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA'S FABULOUS CONCERT TONIGHT IN VIENNA
Tonight, Geyser will film the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jaap van Zweden, at the Musikverein (Vienna). The same concert was proposed in London two days ago, and it was truly amazing. Ning Feng is fabulous. A concert not to be missed, soon on Mezzo TV and MMedia TV, among many other TV networks in the world...
Hong Kong Philharmonic/van Zweden at Cadogan Hall, SW1
by Anna Picard
Published at 12:01AM, February 26 2015 (Classical Music, Arts Section, The Times)
"You can’t fake it with Beethoven. The feeling has to be there and the feeling has to be deep. The Hong Kong Philharmonic is a young orchestra, still bolstered by western players, most particularly in the woodwind and brass sections.
"This concert was part of their first European tour for 12 years but as the first bars of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto opened — so simple, so mild, so profound — the players visibly relaxed. Perhaps it was Jaap van Zweden’s calm, clear beat. Or perhaps it was the confidence of knowing that their soloist, Ning Feng, had the music so fully under his skin and in his soul that he had begun to shape his performance even before he lifted his bow.
"The orchestra had already demonstrated its technical facility in the shimmering textures of Fung Lam’s Quintessence, a piece perfumed with drowsy glissandi and icy chimes and fractured by brilliant shards of brass. There was a winey warmth from the bassoons in the Beethoven and remarkable delicacy in the pizzicato figures. Ning’s cool, slippery sound soared like a bird, the triplets beautifully shaped, the double-stopping in the Kreisler cadenzas pure and true, his vibrato lightly applied, just another colour in the palette.
"Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony highlighted the pungency of the Hong Kong woodwind and the high-gloss finish of the brass. Van Zweden’s reading was cold, bold and dynamic: a proper bombardment in an intimate hall more suited to the poetry of early 19th-century orchestral music than to a grand Soviet showpiece. The emotions were taut, the ensemble less so in the scherzo-like Allegro marcato. In the Adagio the cellos traced ghostly, grotesque trills. The finale was friction-burn fast, unruly and full-throated."
