Favourites return for Hong Kong Philharmonic’s new season

Pianist Yuja Wang, cellist Jian Wang and conductors Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach and Vladimir Ashkenazy are all back, and Jaap van Zweden leads orchestra in Wagner’s Götterdammerung and a Bernstein celebration

Reading Time:2 minutes

Chinese pianist Yuja Wang will play during the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s new season. Photo: DG Norbert Kniat

Published: 5:54pm, 28 Apr 2017Updated: 5:54pm, 28 Apr 2017

Some of the biggest names in classical music – conductors Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach and Vladimir Ashkenazy, pianist Yuja Wang and cellist Jian Wang – are returning for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s new season.

The starry 2017/18 programme line-up will also feature a concert staging of the fourth and final part of Wagner’s operatic Ring Cycle, Götterdammerung, and two concerts to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein –all to be conducted by the orchestra’s music director, Jaap van Zweden.

Popular Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi, best known for his scores for animated features by Hayao Miyazaki such as My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, will return for two performances after his sold-out debut with the HKPhil in 2010.

Jaap van Zweden, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s music director.

Van Zweden said of the new season line-up: “For me every night is a highlight with this orchestra. It is such a joy to work so hard with them, and see that the orchestra is growing every week.

“My personal highlight is of course Götterdämmerung to close the fantastic series of the opera, which put us in the international music scene. I’m so proud of this and I knew that this is going to be a great success.”