Two dragons of wonder

Saturday was a busy day. I had to work at the office even in the afternoon. But I was amply compensated. After work, I went to another concert of the HKPO under de Waart. As advertised, he was assisted by a pair of Chinese dragons with magical hands playing to the rhythms of two  hearts pulsating with burning passion for music: Cho Liang Lin, the famous violinist and Wang Jian an equally renowned cellist. It was a wonderful wonderful concert!

The first piece of the evening was a Passacaglia by Anton Webern, one of the two star students of Schoenberg. Although it was numbered Op. 1, it was in fact his 128th piece. It marked the end of a period of his compositional style before he veered in the direction of Schoenberg's 12 tone music. Passacaglia is a Medieval religious musical form, which Webern did a paper on as a student, first started in Spain and flowered later in Italy. It has 8 basic notes with variation in triple time, anchored by a strong recurring basso continuo. But in this piece, based upon a motif used in the fourth movement Brahm's Symphony No. 4,  Webern used 4/4 time or duple time in the march-like thread. There is a certain sadness which Webern said was associated with the death of his mother. There are a total of some 23 variations with nos. 12-15 in the major keys and  the rest in minor keys and the piece ends with a coda. I like this piece because the almost the entire peice was in minor keys and the phrases by the string sections gradually descend by half tones, stay there for a while before descending again with all kinds of assistance from the winds and the percussion section playing some apparently jarring notes which help to set off the smoothness of the strings and then towards the end suddenly rise by some high notes played steadily and continuously several tonal intervals higher but never ending on the home note, thus endowing  the music with a very weird kind of feeling, a little like the music of Mahler and Richard Strauss with a very rich texture to the sound. One gets the feeling that one is being left hanging in the air. It is difficult to describe. One actually has to hear it to feel it. It's not an easy piece to play at all because it requires probing the intentions of Webern carefully at each step. But the HKPO under de Waart did it very well.

The next piece was the highlight of the evening: Brahm's Double Concerto for the violin and cello in A minor, Op. 102. This is one of the best known of Brahm's works. It was written by him as a kind of olive branch to Joachim, the foremost violinist of his time because the latter filed for divorce with his wife Amalie on the ground of  her adultery and Brahms supported her and as a result the two never spoke to each other for 7 years. The reconciliation came about because a common friend Haussmann asked Brahms for a new work and he wrote it for both the cello and the violin which he didn't know much about. The programme note says that it has something of the warmth and intimacy of chamber music combined witth symphonic dynamism. I can't agree more. There is constant dialogue between the cello and the violin, more or less the kind of thing one hears in a jazz jamming session. The theme is started off by the cello first, then the orchestra and is taken up by the violin.  The second movement is very lyrical and the third rather more energetic and it ended as all music, with a final climax. It receieved tremendous applauses which lasted a full 5 minutes at the end of which the two soloists were so pleased that they played another Passacaglia by Handel. I got the feeling that I was listening to the wonderful guitars of Paco de Lucia, Al di Meola and John McClaughlin in Friday Night at San Francisco. Two players were obviously inspired by each other and each tried to throw in their best in answer to the vigorous play by the other ending in a simply marvellous and very spirited fireworks from each instrument. It was simply an absolute delight to hear them play.  I really feel sorry for those of my friends who didn't buy tickets for this one.

The final piece of the evening was Beethoven's No. 3 (the Eroica). This is another favourite of Beethoven. This symphony was originally supposed to be named "Buonaparte" but when Beethoven learned that he proclaimed himself Emperor and like the others would trample on the rights of man and become a tyrant,  Beethoven got so angry that he tore up the first movement and rewrote it and renamed it Sinfonia Eroica. The first movement opened with two chords with the main theme introduced by the cellos and basses. The third was prompted by thoughts of Prometheus being brought back to life by the god Pan, with hunting scene being introduced by three horns and the fourth also by another theme which is a variation of that of his Creatures of Prometheus. The HKPO played wonderfully, with absolute control and almost military precision in the entry and stopping of sound from various sections and in their tonal and volume control under the baton of de Waart. All my friends agreed that it was a superb rendition of the symphony. I'm so pleased wth the progress made by the HKPO!