City Hall Concert Hall
Reviewed: October 21
The Hong Kong Sinfonietta has established a reputation for introducing promising musicians - and composers - to local audiences.
On Friday, under the baton of Yip Wing-sie, the group premiered a work by Samson Young Kar-fai and collaborated with young cellist Li Wei in a work by Tchaikovsky.
Young, who was born in 1979, received his musical education in Hong Kong, Australia and the US. His new work How Perfumes are Transmitted by Feathery Telegraph, which opened the concert, takes its title from a line in the poem Bird by Pablo Neruda. It was a colourful piece juxtaposing screeching strings with percussion to create evocative aerial and odorous soundscapes, not to mention woodwind bird calls and resounding brass.
The charm might lie more in descriptiveness than cogency or profundity, but there was much talent in it.