Mozart & Mahler in Hong Kong

The HKPO concert last Saturday was wonderful. It was made so by two artists: Osmo Vanska conductor and Paul Lewis, pianist and of course by our beloved HKPO. Vanska was a clarinetist turned conductor and have been the musical director of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra of Finland since 1988, its Conductor Laureate and was chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Orchestra 1997-2002  and became the Musical Director of the Minnesota Orchestra since 2003. He has recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies under BIS and has just started another series on Beethoven's Piano Concertos. Paul Lewis is one of the best pianists of his generation, won numerous prizes and awards and since 2011 has been engaged in a project to perform all the more mature works of Schubert's last six years.

The evening's programme conisted of two familiar pieces. We first had Mozart's Piano Concerto No 23 in A K488. It was the 23rd of the 27 that he wrote. First started in 1784, it was revised it in 1786 when the original oboe parts were given to clarinets. The work has a very melodious and jaunty first movement in Allegro and one of the saddest second movements I have heard in Adagio but the mood changed quickly to Mozart''s habitual gayness in the third in Allegro. The pianist Paul Lewis has a very full and rich tone on the piano instead of usual light and sunny piano style of Mozart and yet he is always quite masculine in his approach. Sometimes, when he didn't have to play, he would still play the theme being of the orchestra upon his keyboard but in silence. That's how involved he was! He is an excellent pianist and has an extremely versatile style of playing the strong and the weak notes. But somehow I could not find that sparkling lightness which I have come to associate with Mozart's music. Some of my friends said that that he wasn't at his best that night. I wouldn't know because that was the first time I heard him. But I think his reputation is well deserved.

The next piece of the evening was Mahler's No. 5 in C sharp minor. This symphony has 5 movements in stead of the usual four and was written at a time when Mahler was at the height of his career. Yet the song began with a trumpet sounding a funeral march theme which Mahler heard accidentally.  Hence it has a melancholy air about it. This is very different  from the second movement which is full of unabashed conflict whilst the third is very very long indeed and embodies a whoile gamut of  emotions. The fourth movement is one of the most moving of Mahler's symphonies whilst the fifth is full of joy. In this symphony Mahler builds inorganically motifs from some of the songs which he loves instead of merely quoting them like those from his own song cycle Des Knaben Wunderhon. 

I do not know why, the HKPO concerts seem to be getting better and better as they come under the baton of different conductors. A most enjoyable evening indeed.

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