Top Hong Kong Philharmonic musicians face test in Messaien's wartime quartet
A little-known quartet written in a POW camp challenges top HK Phil musicians in the first of two weekend concerts
Two concerts taking place this week at Tsuen Wan Town Hall under the auspices of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra have been specially curated by composer, conductor and pianist Bright Sheng.
On May 9, Sheng will conduct the ensemble in a programme featuring four pieces by young Hong Kong composers, followed by his own Tibetan Swing and Igor Stravinsky's Jeu de Cartes.
However, three of the orchestra's most prominent players will be absent that night. Violinist and HK Phil concertmaster Jing Wang, principal cellist Richard Bamping and principal clarinetist Andrew Simon have devoted the last fortnight to rehearsing intensively for Friday evening's concert in Tsuen Wan, a programme of 20th century chamber music.
"The idea is to show a composer using forces at his disposal par excellence, and that's Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time," says the troupe's director of artistic planning, Raff Wilson.
Messiaen composed the eight-movement piece during his time as a prisoner of war in Germany from 1940 to early 1941.
"With him were a violinist, a cellist and a clarinetist, and he had a piano. With this unusual combination of instruments he made probably the definitive 20th century chamber piece," says Wilson. "It seemed a good idea to balance what we are doing with the orchestra to show what a French composer in the 1940s did with a very limited palette, and how he created a great masterwork."