Eastern Europe Postcards

It's feels good to be back to Hong Kong. There're concerts and films again. One such concert is that by the HKPO as part of its bieannal World Cultures Festival entitled "East Europe Postcards" under the baton of guest British conductor Martyn Brabbins. The pieces are a bit unusual. As far as I'm concerned, all but one of the pieces are new to me. So I came full of expectations. When I arrived, I met only one of the usual 8-10 regular concert companions with me. There were only 2 persons, including myself in the whole row of seats!
The first piece of the evening is Dvoràk's  (1841-1904) Polidnice or "The Noon Witch", Op. 108, a symphonic poem which he wrote at the end of his life, based on "The Garland" from a collection of Czech ballads called Kytice by Kare Jaromir Erben (1811-1870) published in 1853. The noon witch is based on a figure in ancient Czech folklore who seeks the spirit of a young child at noon. The action of the symphonic poem is supposed to be set at a peasant cottage in the Czech countryside when a child (represented by Ab sound of the oboe ) persistently tried to catch his mother's attention whilst she's busy with domestic chores. But her mother ignored him until she couldn't. This is done in the first movement in Allegretto. Then the child quietened down (in Andante sostenuto e molto tranquillo) but soon was wailing again and the stressed mother threatened the child that if he continued, she would call the Noon Witch to snatch him away. But the child didn't stop. To the horror of the mother and child, the Noon Witch appeared, represented by weird harmonies from the orchestra. The mother was frightened and begged the noon witch not to actually take child away. (3rd movement in Allegro) When the husband returned from hunting in the woods and found his wife on the floor, her child in her arms. In fear and horror, he tried to wake the child  but failed. The child had died. (Final movement in Andante Lento Maestoso). It was first performed in Prague in 1896. Here it is.

The second piece of music is completely different. It has an extremely contemporary feel about it: it's almost like an experiment in sound. It's Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski's(1913-1994) Cello Concerto with An Introduction, Four Episodes, a Cantilena and a Finale. It begins most peculiarly by the solo cellist repeating one note D and then starts mixing in and then abandoning various moods like gracious, martial, comic, elegant when various sections of the orchestra join in but then the brass would jump in as if wanting to stop them from developing and then the soloist returns repeatedly to its initial D note but after the fourth attempt to develop into something more coherent, the cello decides to go ahead and plays a beautiful slow Cantilena but then is interrupted by the brass again when it breaks down. However, the cello defiantly goes on to develop whatever it wishes to develop loudly and triumphantly drawing in the entire orchestra in the finale. It's not the usual type of cello concerto we're accustomed to but then in this piece we get to see how some contemporary composers try to break new grounds. It takes a bit of time to get used to of course. I remind myself that when Beethoven wrote his symphonies, his music was described by the critics of his day as "barbaric" and not music at all! Yet a 150 years later, his music has become "classics"!

After the intermission, we had a beautiful piece of music from one of my favourite contemporary composers Arvo Pärt (b 1935): Cantus in memoriam of Benjamin Britten (1977), who died the previous year. Arvo Pãrt grew up listening to Byzantine hymns and we hear the influence of such church music in almost every one of his work, the single melodic line/moitf which gets added to by other sections of the orchestra, building up step by step, retracing his steps or varying them. One gets an almost ethereal feeling listening to his music. One feels that heaven is never far away, something he is striving to but never quite reaches. In this piece, he resorts to the use of bells. The programme note says that he's "mimicking" bells "and/or their harmonic series" to create a "tintinabular style". It a sad piece. I'm not surprised. It's a memorial to a fellow composer. Pãrt says that when he composed this piece of music, he had feelings of guilt because he saw how pure the music of Benjamin Britten had been, something he himself was also trying to achieve although he  never met Britten.

The final piece of the evening is all different again. It's Béla Bartók Music for Strings, Percusssion and Celesta in Andante Tranquillo, Allegro, Adagio and Allegro molto. This work was written in the period 1935-40 when he was most productive. The seating of the orchestra is completely revised so that instead of having  the piano, the celesta and the harp at the left, they are placed in the middle and instead of the cellos on the right front, they were put to behind the first and second violins on the left so that we have the violins on both sides of the stage to achieve what has been called a balanced "sterero" effect . Some claim to see the use of certain mathematical formula called a "Fabonacci" series when Bartok wrote the music. But as far as I'm concerned, I only hear a piece of music with a great deal of complexity and interaction between the various sections of orchestra, with very strong rhythm, full of clashes alternating with strange harmonies and lots of harsh discords but not lacking in moments of joy and revelry although they always appear to end quite abruptly. Despite the unusual programme, the music is not as unpalatable as some of my concert companions who avoided it might have thought. It's such a pity that the concert played to a half empty hall. In fact, some of the music is quite overwhelming and some it quite beautiful in its own way.