“You play, you listen, you dream at the piano, you dream of the sound,” Wong says of the task of transcribing Liszt. “Then you suddenly realise that this connects with that, or you understand how to make a certain sound brighter or more sonorous. So many ideas come from playing a piece slowly, by playing the passages to yourself and thinking deeply,” he says.

For Wong, the music continues to evolve with each new player: “The first thing that you do is accept that what you do may not be ‘correct’. It is a really empowering realisation when you understand that whatever you do could still be surpassed. That is my starting point.

“There has to be an element of play involved,” he adds. “I think that play is more important than striving to be faithful or simply interpreting. I like to play with the material like a kid who’s playing with Play-Doh or wooden blocks, to get to know the physical elements of the music.” 

The work of the performer – and in his case, also the transcriber – is transformative rather than interpretative, Wong notes. “I am always looking forwards, towards the future. The player is taking the composition somewhere else, not trying to keep it where it was. You are transforming these notes, metamorphosing them. I think that is really the key,” he says. 

“Liszt wrote down a lot of his music as prompt sheets for his own improvisations, and they were not meant to be taken literally. I try to understand what he thought, and then, while recording, I try to take it somewhere else. A performance should not become a victim of convention and the dots and lines on the page. It is very important to break away from that,” he says. 

Wong brings a musicological approach to his work, researching the history of a composition, reading any notes that the composer made, and examining different transcripts and arrangements. He learned this approach from another of his inspirations, the Italian Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924). Busoni was a composer, pianist, editor, teacher and a writer who wrote about aesthetics. 

“Busoni inspires me,” Wong says, explaining that the Italian absorbed elements from different cultures, and was very open to everything that he encountered. “He thought that music was very multifaceted, and I think that, too. He thought that everything originated from a single source, and if he created something, it belonged to everyone, not just him. That is an idea that I have brought to my music. He has been viewed as teacher, because of his Bach transcriptions, but he also stimulates you into creating new work.”

The Goldberg Variations are named after their presumed first performer, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. Bach wrote the work – an aria and 30 variations – in 1741, for harpsichord. Busoni transcribed them in 1916 for piano, and his transcriptions are one of the foundations of Wong’s recording. Busoni’s transcriptions encourage a freer interpretation of Bach’s work.

“Liszt was someone who was really excited about the instrument and exhausted all the possibilities of the piano,” Wong says.

“He is like a manual for how to write well for the piano. He found new sonorities, new things, in the piano. But it doesn’t matter what instrument you play Bach on. It is about the well-crafted interrelationships between the instrumental voices, and the pacing of the harmony,” Wong says.

“The lesson I learned from Busoni about Bach is that what has already happened has happened. It’s as if he said to me, ‘So what are you going to do, Chiyan?’ I learned that I should not get too excited about how it had been done before. I am coming into the history, the conversation, at a different time. I have to reinforce everything that Bach has done and make sure it doesn’t seem dry. It must not be something that is just for the textbooks,” he says. 

The Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major by Maurice Ravel, which Wong will perform with the Hong Kong Phil, illustrates his idea that the performer should have an objective approach to the music.

Concert pianists should appear detached – they should not throw themselves around the keyboard, he says – and their performance should be geared to igniting passion within the audience, rather than exhibiting that passion themselves.

“The Ravel provides a perfect example of how to do this,” he says. “It’s all about concealment. [Igor] Stravinksy said ‘Ravel is the clockmaker of composers’. Ravel’s grandfather made clocks – think of beautiful watches which conceal all of their mechanisms. That concealment is a quality of Ravel’s music. Ravel also adds a sly smile which says ‘I’m just making it seem effortless.’ Ravel always knew where to stop. This is the kind of music that I am really drawn to.” 

The Ravel will be a timely performance for Hong Kong audiences, he adds.

“Hongkongers have been through so much, and this concert is intended to be a cathartic experience for them,” Wong says.