A very Hot Antartica (熾熱的南極)

Two narrators at a concert? Yes, that's exactly what we had last Saturday: Michael MacLeod, the CEO of the HKPO and Rebecca Lee, founder and director of the Polar Museum Foundation. They were reading extracts from last journal of Robert Falcon Scott, the intrepid British explorer of Antartica who left New Zealand for that hitherto unknown continent of the world on 29th November, 1910 in a converted whale ship, His expedition arrived at the South Pole on 17th January, 1912 and but they all died on the return journey. He was the inspiration of Vaughan Williams' (1872-1958) Sinfonia Antartica with 5 movements, Prelude,Scherzo, Landscape, Intermezzo and Epilogue which he adapted from the music he wrote for the film Scott of the Antartic.

According to the programme notes, the prelude suggests the "hallucinatory visions at the limit of endurance" and the "terror an fascination" of such arctic conditions of ice, fog and blizzard and some foreboding of his destiny but the fanfare of trumpets were supposed to represent Scott's indomitable spirit. Scherzo was supposed to represent Scott's journey and the whales and penguins he saw there. The third movement Landscape was supposed to describe the bleak conditions of the Antartica and the indomitable human spirit. The organ in the music was supposed to represent the impassable "silent cataract" Scott encountered in the Antartica. The fourth movement's dreamy and romantic Intermezzo represented the presence of human warmth in the land of sub-zero. The final Epilogue recapitulates the initial theme of the Scott's determined march of first movement but he was finally overcome by the force of wind and blizzard, represented by bells, voices and a wind-machine. It was a magnificent piece of music, complete with brass, winds, strings, percussions and human voice in the form of the Hong Kong Children's Choir and soprano voice of Yuki Ip.

The Sinfonia Antartica was the climax piece of the evening. In the first part of the programme, we had another rarely heard short piece, the British composer Arnold Bax's (1883-1953) Tintagel, inspired by the ruins Bax saw there. It was a piece of music full of fantasy and romanticism. This was followed by the works of another composer rarely heard in Hong Kong, the Finnish Einojuhani Rautavaara's (b 1928) Cantus Acticus popularly known as Concerto for Birds and Orchestra. It was a concerto in which bird calls ( represented by a pair of flutes) are interwoven with the music amidst the desolate shores of the Gulf of Bothia, very close to the Arctic Circle.

Although none of the pieces played were familiar to me, the HKPO, together with the HK Children's Choir under the overall baton of Atherton gave us a very hot rendition of the north and south pole through the music selections of the evening. I have heard Rautavaar's music before. His music is always full of weird and unusual melodies and clashes which reminds one of the grey clouds and the sudden changes of weather and moods in the land where one doesn't see the sun for several months a year and then one never sees the sun sink below a certain level above the horizon for another several months of the year, a land of snow and ice and bitter blizzards and grey skies, but they are never so unusual as to be totally incomprehensible.  It's a completely new experience for me. Vauhan Williams is seldom heard too. But after hearing his Sinfonia Arctartica, I may look for his other music too.