Noteworthy
by Jonathan Douglas and Ken Smith
Joint Publishing
Radio 4 is a Hong Kong treasure, managing to do more than richer, public broadcasters. And Noteworthy is a beautifully wrapped present to listeners to mark three decades of music.
The book comprises transcripts of conversations between 30 musicians and Morning Call presenter Jonathan Douglas. 'Hong Kong has been emerging as a kind of artistic test market, particularly for those projects in which east and west overlap,' says music critic Ken Smith, who provides afterwords to each of the 29 Douglas interviews. Tan Dun, for instance, previewed his 1996 opera Marco Polo in Hong Kong. And Yo-Yo Ma chose the city to prepare his Silk Road Ensemble for its European launch.
The 30th interview was conducted by the late Clive Simpson in the 1960s with Yehudi Menuhin, when eastern music mainly meant India. That undoubtedly changed for Menuhin, whose son-in-law was exiled pianist Fou Ts'ong, who says in his interview: 'China has never lacked talent, but at the same time the kind of materialism that has become the dominant value in China is really dangerous.'
This collection of interviews is a solid cross-section of the international artists who have performed in Hong Kong over the decades and runs the orchestral gamut, with plenty of insights into the artistry and the artist.
