The Allegro Singers turn 50

"Let’s call them the Allegro Singers: always go, go, go; never stop!” said Moya Rea, one of Hong Kong’s busiest pianists at the time, after a performance more than 50 years ago.

“It was a concert of myself and my students in January 1964,” says Barbara Fei Ming-yee, 83, the Paris-trained soprano and founder of the Allegro Singers. “Moya accompanied my students in singing Hwang Yau-tai’s song Three Friends of Winter. Conductor Wilson Hsueh was very pleased with the performance and proposed keeping the singers and naming them the Ming-yee Chorus. Moya overheard that”, and came up with her alternative name, recalls Fei, the group’s music director.

In June 1964, the month the Beatles made their historic visit to Hong Kong, the Allegro Singers were registered as a non-profit organisation.

While the Fab Four’s story has slipped into the history books, that of the Allegro Singers is still unfolding, and their annual gala concerts, complete with newly commissioned works and their trademark cheongsams, are a highlight of the performing arts calendar. Nothing, including the founder’s near-fatal heart failure in 2000, has stopped the show, and tonight their 50th gala takes place in the Concert Hall of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre.

“Local choruses in the 1960s, such as the Cecilian Singers and Robin Boyle Singers, were mostly for expatriates. My teacher, Professor Chao Mei-pa, also had his own, the Crescendo Singers, which was a large choir joined by many celebrities, including the chief editor of the South China Morning Post,” recalls Fei. “But my group offered something totally different, presenting smaller but refined choral works sung by local Chinese singers and chamber works on Western or Chinese instruments.

“My objective is to impart taste and finesse for the audience through carefully structured themes and programmes. The format turned out to be hugely popular at the time, when life was simple and performances scarce,” she says.

“The level of performance was as high as their passion,” says Darwin Chen Tat-man, manager of City Hall in the 1960s. “Audiences were less picky or critical then, but more appreciative for the performers originally from China, like [the Allegro Singers].