Review: Joseph Moog and Hong Kong Sinfonietta - musical chemistry
Novel concert programme matched youthful, lyrical Webern with masterful late Haydn, and influence of both could be heard in orchestra and soloist’s interpretation of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2
Classical music programming has become so ossified that any deviation from the standard overture-concerto-symphony format is usually deemed radical or eyed with suspicion.
The Hong Kong Sinfonietta courted both on Saturday night at the Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall simply by placing Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 before the intermission and Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 afterwards.
To be fair, as the orchestra’s principal guest conductor, Christoph Poppen, explained from the stage, the Haydn symphony is on the short side while the Brahms concerto has both a four-movement structure and the integrated texture of a full symphony. Cynics, too, would note that delaying appearance of the evening’s soloist until the concert’s second half ensures most of the audience returns after the intermission.
The musical chemistry that this programming produced was surprising. Who knew that Anton Webern, usually considered the most austere of the early atonalists, could write a good tune?
Webern’s Langsamer Satz, his first writing assignment for Schoenberg and rediscovered only after Webern’s death, unfolds much in the manner of his teacher’s Verklaerte Nacht (Transfigured Night). Originally composed for string quartet (the title means simply, “slow movement”), the piece as arranged for string orchestra by the American conductor Gerard Schwarz places the young Webern fully in Mahler’s Viennese sonic milieu.
