Catching up on my concerts.

I do not know why, music seems to have a mysterious ability to move the human soul in a way that no other form of human art can. It seems to have the ability to turn the key on an invisible lock hidden deep somewhere within the niches of our unbelievably intricate neural circuits and in a trace let fly all our fears, despair, hopes and exhilaration and all other kinds of moods in between. Nowhere has this truth become more blindingly obvious to me than when I attended a concert of the HKPO on 29th September, 2012. The resonances are still with me even as I write.

The program that evening was quite varied. First we had a piece completely new to me. It was composed by an extremely talented young American-born Chinese Conrad Tao who had been giving piano concerts since age 4 and is now doing a joint program by Columbia University and Juillard School in New York where he is learning the violin. He wrote a piece called Pangu, a Chinese myth about the creation of our universe. According to this myth, the earth began with the hatching of an egg which took some 18,000 years after which another 18,000 years was required to separate light from darkness, the earth from the sky. Our universe is the literal embodiment of Pangu: his eyes are the sun and moon, his breath the wind, his voice the thunder and his body is our mountains and valleys. It was a very innovative piece and unlike some of the other "contemporary" composition, not completely devoid of melodic motifs which are repeated from time to time. There is some very original use of percussions to create the moods and rhythms of creation. Even my usual concert companions whose taste cannot be described as "universal" like it!

The second piece was a by now very "classic" work done by Chan Gang and Ho Yim Ho in the early days of the new China, the one movement Butterfly Lovers violin Concerto. What surprised me was the way it was performed by Lin Neng, another rising star from the PRC who came from Sichuan and has since won a number of important international prizes, including the Paganini prize for violin playing. I like the way he handled the violin, always with restraint and sensitivity and yet perfectly natural and unforced, a bit like Nathan Milstein. I like in particular the way he uses the bow to give some almost erhu like sound of Chinese strings which makes the piece peculiarly Chinese in feel.

The last piece of the evening was a completely different matter again. It was Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, written at a time when Beethoven has lost the greater part of his hearing. It was in a way a very rousing piece with a very insistent first movement which gives the mood to the entire symphony, a second movement which is very soft, slightly grim and yet calm and not completely hopeless, with a very Slavic rhythm and feel. Its third movement is something different again. There is a certain lightness which quickly developed into something rather more forceful. We can actually feel Beethoven's stubborn will to life and to create. Then in the final movement, we find Beethoven bursting forth in his strident march towards the climax. The HKPO under Jaap van Zweden gave an excellent performance.  As expected, it drew a very well deserved ecstatic applause from all and sundry. I'm so glad I didn't miss the concert. It was an unforgettable experience.