Review: Frank Braley and Hong Kong Sinfonietta

A blend of experimental work and all-time classics on Friday night left music lovers with mixed feelings, but their appreciation for home-grown artists was uniform.

The full-house audience rewarded with long applause Ken Lam's leading of the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. In his second appearance in just over two months - with a different orchestra, a rare practice in the classical music industry - the US-based conductor showed convincingly why he could be an exception.

Opening the concert was Home City, Dream City, a world premiere by Daniel Lo Ting-cheung, a fellow Hong Kong-born composer and now a doctoral candidate in Britain. A 15-minute work, it featured live orchestra performing alongside field recordings on tape, an experimental work that was original and full of surprises. It opened with an excerpt from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, which was taken over by sounds of traffic from the Tolo Highway, giving the effect of listening to music through earphones with incessant background noise.

The idea of blending urban noise with orchestral notes seems interesting. But it left the audience, and perhaps some players too, in wonderment.

Then, in the hands of Frank Braley, a French pianist with impressive originality, the autumnal mood many associate with Mozart's 27th Piano Concerto was absent. Instead, an exquisite lyricism in a leisurely tempo permeated the three movements.