The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HK Phil) is celebrating its 50th anniversary this season with a major tour of eight cultural cities across five European countries. Led by its Music Director Jaap van Zweden, the tour presents an exquisite programme featuring the First Symphonies by Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler, as well as the Ninth Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich.
Pianist Alexandre Kantorow, winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition, will perform Sergei Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. The concerts will open with Asterismal Dance, a new work by Hong Kong composer Daniel Lo, commissioned by the HK Phil to celebrate the 50th anniversary. European audiences can experience HK Phil in Dresden (Kulturpalast) on 24 Feb, Zurich (Tonhalle) on 26 Feb, Toulouse on 28 Feb, Aix-En-Provence (Grand Theatre) on 29 Feb, Rotterdam (De Doelen) on 2 Mar, Basel (Stadtcasino) on 3 Mar, Rome (Sala Santa Cecilia) on 5 Mar and Brussels (Bozar) at the opening concert of the Klara Festival on 8 Mar.
The HK Phil is recognised as one of Asia’s foremost classical orchestras. Jaap van Zweden, one of today’s most sought-after conductors, has been the orchestra’s Music Director since the 2012/13 season, a position he will hold until the end of the 2023/24 season. He is also the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic (NY Phil) and becomes Music Director of the Seoul Philharmonic in 2024. Under his leadership, the orchestra successfully completed a four-year journey through Wagner’s Ring Cycle. The concert performances were well received. The live Naxos recordings garnered praise from critics and won the Gramophone Orchestra of the Year Award 2019 – the first orchestra in Asia to receive this accolade.
The HK Phil has toured extensively across Mainland China, including cities such as Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. Its last appearance in Europe was in 2015, with concerts in Vienna, London and Berlin, and other cities. The orchestra undertook a major tour in 2017 to Seoul, Osaka, Singapore, Melbourne and Sydney. In the 2023/24 season, the orchestra collaborates with international stars, including Rudolf Buchbinder, Seong-jin Cho, Yo-Yo Ma and Lang Lang, and conductors such as Paavo Järvi, Tarmo Peltokoski and Vasily Petrenko. The orchestra is also touring Korea, Thailand and Singapore this season.
In 2019, at the age of 22, Alexandre Kantorow became the first French pianist to win the gold medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition, where he also won the Grand Prix, which has only been awarded three times before in the competition’s history. He has received numerous other awards and has been invited to perform worldwide at the highest level.
Daniel Lo Ting-cheung is one of the most active composers in Hong Kong. His works cover a wide range of musical genres, from orchestral pieces to sound installations. Asterismal Dance for orchestra is a scherzo fantastique, brimming with a sense of eager and energetic rhythm. The composition does not adhere to the common forms of classical music but unfolds a series of musical materials of distinct characteristics nonlinearly. These materials traverse different instrumental sections of the orchestra, like the scattered stars in the sky. As the music progresses, the musical materials constantly conjure up different forms, varying, expanding and overlapping in many ways, intertwining into a dance as complex as the galaxy.
The tour is supported by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices in Brussels and Berlin of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
