Ravel’s La Valse (The Waltz) is one of my favorite pieces of classical music. Recently it received two performances by two local orchestras under two Chinese conductors. On February 25&26, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta under Yip Wing-sie featured it as the main attraction in a program—part of the 40th Hong Kong Arts Festival — titled La Valse Remembered; two weeks later (March 9&10), the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra under guest conductor Shao-jia Lu (呂紹嘉) featured it as the first piece in a program whose main attraction was the pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin. Both performances made a strong impression on me.
The HK Sinfonietta program is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the City Hall as a gesture of celebration and remembrance. The choice of this Ravel piece is, in a way, quite apt, since Ravel composed it also as a musical memory of the Viennese waltz. In the HK Sinfonietta performance, it received a new and very innovative choreography from Yuri Ng (伍宇烈), one of the most talented choreographers in Hong Kong. The piece was first played as an orchestral piece and then repeated as a multi-media demonstration. It was thoroughly enjoyable. The music was ineluctably dramatized by Mr. Ng’s clever arrangement of six male dancers dancing in the background upstage, while showcasing the two principal dancers in the foreground (one being Mr. Ng himself) as if recalling the phantom splendors of the past. Thus thematically, dance and music become a perfect fit.
It is not easy in this day and age to recall the genuine glamour of a Viennese past save for the annual New Year’s concerts staged by the Vienna Philharmonic which sometimes include ballet sequences in their DVD releases. The effect is often so glamorized as to look like commercial advertisements (for the city itself). At considerable remove in time and space, this waltz form — together with its loaded cultural references to Austro-Hungarian sophistication and decadence — may look quite alien to Hong Kong audiences. Ng made a daring experiment. What is lacking, it seems, is a certain nightmarish quality, which can be achieved perhaps with more video effects of light and dark shadows or by putting the background dancers as distorted figures on a screen. (But I am not a choreographer.)
A side attraction was added before the concert, as a gesture of commemoration of City Hall’s 50th anniversary. The six male dancers, dressed in shaded wood-colored costumes (perhaps as a veiled tribute to the wooded panels of this dated concert hall?), were placed at separate spots in the hall and on the stairway to greet the audiences as they came in. Most of the audience paid not attention or feigned not to notice their presence—perhaps too embarrassed to know what to do? I found only one family who dared to have a photo taken with one dancer or feigned not to notice—their presence. A clever experiment, nevertheless, to remind all of us that art, especially performing art, can be experienced everywhere and not only on stage.
In his solo sequences Yuri Ng wore a tuxedo and had his hair bleached white and transformed himself into a distinguished gentleman — but from where and when? It doesn’t matter. I found myself strongly identified with this white-hair image and recalled the days when I was young and could swirl in a waltz whenever I had a chance.
Musically, Ravel’s La Valse, with its broad tempo shifts — very slow in the beginning and gradually reaching a frenzied climax at the end (the phantom dancers are supposed to dance to neurotic exhaustion)—is not easy to conduct or to play. The work is both an orchestral showpiece and a test-piece for the conductor’s skill. Yip Wing-sie gave a thoroughly competent rendition. For my taste, however, there could be more neurotic intensity (for instance, can be found in Dutoit’s recording with the Montreal Symphony).
An added bonus to this concert was the debut of the young Japanese violinist, Sayaka Shoji, who gave a clean-cut yet dramatic performance of Sibelius’s violin concerto. Altogether the evening’s program became a genuine highlight of this year’s Hong Kong Arts Festival.
The HKPO this year did not choose to join the Arts Festival, as it had done in past years. I don’t know why. Was it because of Maestro Edo De Waart’s absence? Instead, it offered a concert with guest conductor Shao-jia Lu right after the festival was ended. By sheer coincidence, the program likewise included Ravel’s La Valse. Shao-jia Lu’s interpretation of this work is more elastic and nuanced, although the HKPO did not seem to respond well to his initial slow tempo. Still, a guest conductor is bounded to have a harder time to get an unfamiliar orchestra to play for him. But on home ground Lu has turned his own orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan (NSO), into a top-notch ensemble — one of the very best in Asia — after he assumed the post of its musical director only two years ago.
Together with the piano soloist, Lu has chosen a program of four unusual pieces this time: Besides the Ravel piece, we heard Franck’s Symphonic Variations, Richard Strauss’s Burleske, and Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra. This is a refreshing change from the unusual warhorses of Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky. Hemelin has long been known for his unusual programming. He dispatched these two “minor” pieces by Franck and Strauss with cold aplomb. But the evening’s highlight, in my view, is the Lutoslawski. What a brilliant composition! The piece is in every way (except length) comparable to Bartok’s Concerto; it is also intended for the display of orchestral virtuosity. The HKPO, after their poorly prepared and rough-edged performance as Yo-Yo Ma’s accompaniment “machine” only a week before, redeemed itself with a spectacular rendition of the piece—especially the woodwinds in the second movement. But the real credit must go to Shao-jia Lu. This Taiwanese conductor who, like Yip Wing-sie, was also a winner of the Besancon conducting competition (as well as two other prizes), is now rapidly emerging at the very top rank of conductors of Chinese origin. Yet he is still relatively little known in Hong Kong. Isn’t it time for Hong Kong to invite him back with his own orchestra in the near future?
Performances Reviewed:
La Valse Remembered
25 February 2012, 8:00pm
Concert Hall, Hong Kong City Hall
Great Performers: “Hamelin, The Piano Wizard”
9 March 2012, 8pm
Concert Hall, Hong Kong Cultural Centre
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