The HKPO's Opening Concert

The new HKPO concert season has begun. It began last week. I didn't have time to write about it because I was already photographing Taipei the morning after the concert last  Saturday.  Another concert is about to begin tonight. So I better do so before then.

The HKPO had a new guest concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich. According to the programme notes, he is the assistant concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra , the Concertmaster of the Lancaster Symphony and is a violinist of the Russia Quartet which won the 1996 Fischoff International Music Competition and co-founded the Monument Piano Trio in 2004. It also had a new guest conductor, Lawrence Renes, who has conducted numerous European orchestras like the Sinofonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundunk, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the WDR Sinfonieorchester, Deutsche Sinfonie-Ochester etc., He specializes in operas. That is good because the programme that night included Mahler's Songs of the Earth, which need no introduction. The two singers of the evening were Michelle deYoung and Stuart Wilson, both accomplished singers.

We also had another very popular piece that evening: Mozart''s Symphony No. 41, ("the Jupiter"), one of his most mature works.

Renes has a very energetic conducting style and both singers sang well. But I like Michelle deYoung better. She appeared in a lagoon like green dress and has a very good voice. The HKPO was as excellent as ever but perhaps a bit too loud in certain passages under Renes. Would it be different tonight, when Renes does Rachmaninoff?