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Festival to Give Glimpse of HK's Arts World
Just to name a few of the artists to participate the 2001 Hong Kong Arts Festival will give one enough reasons to expect a great festival£º Philip Glass, Kronos Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, the Buena Vista Social Club, Nana Mouskouri and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
From February 7 to March 11, the festival will offer the audience a glimpse of today's arts world in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Under the baton of Hartmut Haenchen, the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra will open the festival together with famous soprano Alexandra Coku.
Renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma will take part in two concerts performing with Orchestra Della Toscana and the Silk Road Ensemble from China respectively.
Philip Glass, a representative composer of the minimalistic school of music, will play his own music on the piano. Together with him is the Kronos Quartet, which is also a well-known name at the frontier of the contemporary music world.
However, they will not give a concert in Hong Kong. The circumstance in which they will perform is under the screen of the 1931 Tod Browning version film "Dracula." In this performance titled "Dracula £º The Music and Film," Glass's hauntingly beautiful music will make the film come alive, unraveling the heart and soul of this scary tragedy.
The most sought-after viola virtuoso in the world Yuri Bashmet and his Moscow Soloists will perform at the festival again after their last appearance in 1995. A special programme at their concert will be American composer Lou Harrison's "Pipa Concerto." The piece will feature Chinese pipa, a plucked string instrument with a fretted fingerboard, soloist Wu Man, for whom the piece was written.
During the festival a concert titled "A hundred Years of Erhu (a two-stringed bowed instrument) " will start the "Huqin (the general name of a family of two-stringed bowed instruments) Festival of Hong Kong," a serial programme organized by the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra.
At the concert, six renowned erhu soloists will review the erhu music of the 20th century.
Piazzolla, creator of tango nuevo, told the highly imaginative poet Ferrer in 1967, "You are doing in your poetry what I am doing in my music. We shall compose together." Two months later, Ferrer handed Piazzolla the haunting libretto of the tango operita "Maria de Buenos Aires," which was first performed in May 1968. At its core is Maria, who personifies Buenos Aires in its splendor and decay, passion and thwarted love.
Now the audience will see a new production, set in a desperate and destitute harbour bar. In the performance the fine musicianship of I Fiamminghi, which is widely acclaimed for its incomparable warm sonority and perfect musical expression, joins forces with the passionate artistry of Argentinian singing and tangoing.
During the festival some of the most treasured cultural heritages will be seen through fresh eyes in various theatre and dance programmes.
Directed by Eimuntas Nekrosius, a Lithuanian "Hamlet" will turn upside down everything one has known about Shakespeare's classic. In this production of three hours and 45 minutes, the title role will be played by Lithuania's most celebrated and charismatic rock singer, Andrius Mamontovas.
Goku is a new theatre adventure adapted from "Journey to the West" that combines Chinese, Japanese and Korean traditions.
In "Tristan Isolde," Wagner's daring saga of love is interpreted in new choreography by Marcia Haydee and Ismael Ivol.
Zhang Yimou's fans may feel sorry to hear the postponement of "Raise the Red Lantern, the Ballet." However, ballet lovers will not be displeased to see the replacement programme: Peter Schaufuss Ballet from Denmark will bring the artistic director Schaufuss' sensational piece "Midnight Express" (after the novel and movie of the same title) and his Tchaikovsky Trilogy (one night each of Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker) as the finale programme for the Festival.
Highlights of the festival also include the performances of the Percussion Ensemble of the Temples of Kerala and Yufuin Genryu Daiko, the White Oak Dance Project and McCoy Tyner Trio.
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