King's Harmonica Quintet, 10th Anniversary Concert, City Hall, December 12 The King's Harmonica Quintet became the world champions at the 1997 World Harmonica Competition in Germany in October.
Fresh from this outstanding success, they returned to Hong Kong to give a 10th anniversary concert.
The quintet was formed by five enterprising King's College students who wanted to bring the best of the Western classical musical repertoire to the harmonica band.
This they have achieved with remarkable success, with the bulk of their programme arranged by the members themselves. The most prolific of the musicians is Ho Pak-cheong, the lead treble harmonica player, who arranged four of the seven pieces.
The programme covered 300 years of classical music. Beginning with the Allegro movement of Vivaldi's Violin Concerto No 1 in E, better known as Spring from The Four Seasons, the group then displayed their virtuosity in movements from Borodin's String Quarters No 1 and No 2. The Pretissimo tested their technical skills, whereas the scaring beauty of the Notturno was beautifully played by Ho Pak-cheong and Chan Shu-keung.
For Grieg's Holberg Suite the quintet was joined by Poon Chung-keung whose additional tenor harmonica added weight to the more bucolic movements.
