Dvorak in Hong Kong

One of the highlights at the HK Arts Festival this year is the long awaited appearance of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly, its musical director since 2005 and a Knight of the Dutch Lion, a Knight of the Italian Grand Cross and the holder of the Alexander von Zemlinsky Award and the Orphée d'Or "Prix H von Karajan" for his musical achievement. I went there, as usual, with Mr Chu and some of his close friends. It was an all Dvorak programme.

Mr. Chu thought Chailly would do the more popular New World Symphony. He did not. Instead, we had the Carnival Overture, Op. 92, the Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53 and Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70.

The first piece, the 4-movement Carnival Overture is the second of a cycle of three overtures that Dvorak composed in 1891 through which he intended to depict Nature, Life and Love but were later renamed respectively Nature's Realm, Carnival and Othello. It was supposed to depict the arrival of a lonely wanderer to a country festival held at the outskirts of a city at twilight. This is evident from the way the piece boisterously opened. It has a fun-filled folk melody. But there is also a very soft and romantic string melody about a pair of young lovers but eventually, the festival atmosphere takes over the piece again and ends in a very enthusiastic and exciting climax. Dvorak considered them his best orchestral work, although by that time, he had already finished his Symphony No.9

We next had the Violin Concerto in A minor, played by the young looking and slim Leonidas Kavakos who won the Sibelius competition in 1985 and then the Paganini prize in 1988. He is a fine musician and is himself also the artistic director of the Camerata Salzburg 2007 to 2009 and conducted some  Bach and Beethoven symphonies for them at the Musikverein, Vienna. According to the programme notes, he plays a 1724 Abergavenny Stradivarius  The violin has a very mellow, smooth and mature tone. I do not know if it was because of where I was sitting, with his back towards me on stage left, I found that his play was very very restrained and the music seemed to lack a bit of passion where I expected some. It was a very subtle sound that the smallish student- like violinist  produced. He rewarded the enthusiastic applauses of the audience with a most peculiar encore piece which was originally written for the guitar: Albeniz's Asturias. He brought back happy memories of my student days in France when the tremolo of the guitar used to resound in my room whenever I had a free moment. But coming from a violin, the piece has a completely different feel altogether, especially where the periodically emphasized bass notes serve to punctuate the phrasing as well as to act as counter points to the strings of high notes played often in tremolo were bowed instead of plucked.  

After the intermission, the concert continued with Dvorak's Symphony No. 7 in D minor. This is a symphony commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society first premiered in London in October 1885 after Dvorak had successfully conducted there his Stabat Mater. It's a rather sad symphony written shortly after he death of his mother, to whom he is very attached. Some critics think that the slow pace of the symphony may be connected to his mother's recent death. It is certainly a symphony full of melancholic darkness punctuated by occasional flashes of hope. This is evident from its sombre opening but Dvorak manages to create two principal motifs which were played successively by the other sections of the orchestra. The first movement in D mnor sonata and allegro maestoso, has plenty of low notes and some very subtle emotions with a meandering melody. The second movement, in F major poco adagio,  has a steady beat to it and ends really quietly. The third, a D minor scherzo in vivace, poco meno mosso,  is much more romantic, light hearted and lively with the principal theme recaptured a number of times by various sections of the orchestra but the final movement in D minor explodes in allegro from the minor into a major key in tragic triumph. It was excellently played. The applause is well deserved. And we had  two generous encores from an obviously happy Chailly, whose conducting style is very restrained, often using merely his fingers and his hand instead of using arm movement to indicate where the various sections of the orchestra should start and stop and whether to play louder or less forcefully : the very romantic Slavonic Dance No. 2 and the very lively and folksy Slavonic Dance No 7, both of which drew tremendous further applauses from the audience. It was a most pleasant way to spend a busy Monday evening.

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Dvorak's Symphony No. 7 , 1st movement

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Dvorak's Symphony No. 7 , 4th movement