Having opened the new season with an all-French programme last week, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HKPO) launches this Friday into A Symphonic Century, an Austro-German package highlighting some of the orchestral milestones of the 19th century.
Throughout the rest of this month, works by Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Bruckner and Mahler will illustrate how the symphony orchestra expanded in size and the expressive potential to accommodate composers' new visions.
This special series is split into three concert programmes titled Titan, De Waart's Bruckner and The Valkyrie.
If there's one work that doesn't quite fit the template, however, it's Berg's Seven Early Songs, written for voice and piano between 1905 and 1908 and orchestrated 20 years later. The piece is one of the three works in this week's Titan concerts.
Edo de Waart, artistic director and chief conductor of the HKPO, admits to advocating its inclusion. 'What's significant from my point of view,' he says, 'is that the soloistic parts are vocal and this is very much an expression of where my greatest love lies - the voice.
'We'd been talking to [soprano] Dagmar Schellenberger about the songs before and she said she would love to sing them. It fits beautifully because Berg comes right out of an extension of Mahler.'