Review: Ensemble Intercontemporain/Matthias Pintscher - worth the wait
Group founded by Pierre Boulez make Hong Kong debut with concert of seven contrasting works spanning over a century, including one inspired by 2015 axing of four Mid-Levels banyan trees
The Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain, purveyors of fine European modernism for more than four decades, finally made it to Hong Kong on Sunday evening at the City Hall Concert Hall. Better late than never, though their long-delayed debut resulted in a backlog of more than a century of sonic exploration packed into an extensive two-and-a-half-hour programme.
Appearing under the banner of the New Vision Arts Festival, the Ensemble led with the “new”, with most of the music before intermission hailing from the 21st century.
Charles Kwong’s Lachrymae, the ink barely dry from its premiere in last summer’s soundSCAPE Festival in Tuscany, was both the most recent work and the winner of the Ensemble’s “call for scores” initiative among Hong Kong composers.
Kwong’s piece was a thorough contrast to Franco Donatoni’s Tema (Theme) for 12 instruments, which opened the evening. A better title for the work might be “Fragments”, since it sounded as if conventional melodies had been sliced and reassembled like a William Burroughs cut-up novel.
