The Hong Kong Philharmonic opened its 40th anniversary season on Friday with music director Jaap van Zweden on the podium and newly appointed Jing Wang in the concertmaster's chair. The orchestra's first professional performance was on January 11, 1974. The programmes for the two occasions were remarkably similar - both featured an overture, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 5 and a symphony dating from almost the same year.
Soloist in the Beethoven concerto was Jean-Yves Thibaudet who has a deservedly fine reputation and an extensive discography which, interestingly, features nothing by Beethoven. He probably wishes he could draw a veil over his performance of the last movement with its potholes full of inaccuracies, which is a pity since the rest of his account held the ear.
His fluffs in the first movement were a small price to pay for the sense of spontaneity and urgency in a performance of symphonic proportions, with Thibaudet and the orchestra working hand-in-glove in terms of mood, blend and precision.
The piano's opening cadenza made an arresting maelstrom of what often sounds like warm-up finger work, while Van Zweden's subsequent attention to detail in the articulation of every phrase fully realised the constantly changing character of the music. The forward momentum he maintained made the monumental movement fly by.
That sense of unhindered flow was largely missing from Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No 9, From the New World, which is built on plainly heartfelt rather than intellectually chiselled music.