Concert Hall, Hong Kong Cultural Centre Reviewed: April 15 This Hong Kong Philharmonic concert - staged with help from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts - should be titled The World of John Adams 20 Years Ago, because all the music performed was composed in the early 1980s. The US composer has now arrived at an even more versatile style, although he hasn't severed his link with minimalism (evidenced through the repetition of simple motifs). Nevertheless, the three featured works are important in Adams' oeuvre, and conductors Edo de Waart and Harmen Cnossen presented them convincingly to the audience, who was all seated in the balcony of the Cultural Centre Concert Hall for better acoustic effects. De Waart has a long history of collaboration with Adams, dating to 1978. It wasn't surprising that, whether he was conducting academy students in the string orchestra version of Shaker Loops or the combined force of the phil and the academy orchestra in the massive Harmonielehre, he displayed a sure grasp of the multi-layered textures and cleanly executed passages with dovetailed transitions and shading. The students' imprecision and tentativeness, the sweetness in parts of Harmonielehre, and the musicians' occasionally crass tone in that piece, failed to undermine the elegance of de Waart's conducting. Grand Pianola Music for winds, two pianos, percussion and three female voices was conducted by Cnossen, who didn't master the music as did de Waart, but maintained tight momentum. Shirley Ip and Lio Kuok-wai's pianism was admirable, but the voices, presumably backed by microphone, often drowned out the others. The piece isn't particularly appealing - its triumphant ending is meant to be ironic but remains unpalatably gaudy - although it at least demonstrated Adams' skill with ensemble tone colours.