Beijing Concert – Mahler’s Second and Vaughan Williams’s Fourth

8 APR (Thu) & 9 APR (Fri)

“The whole thing sounds as though it came to us from some other world… one is battered to the ground and then raised on angel’s wings to the highest heights.” So Mahler described his Second Symphony. Seeking to embrace the whole of human existence – life and death, doubt and faith, punishment and reward – the Resurrection Symphony begins at the graveside of a “well-loved man”, as innocence and irony give way to the cry of faith in Primeval Light. The symphony’s apocalyptic final movement stands among the greatest visions of redemption and renewal in all music. Inspired by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s Die Auferstehung, which Mahler heard at Hans von Bülow’s funeral, it affirms a world beyond judgment, illuminated by love. Join Music Director Tarmo Peltokoski, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, China NCPA Orchestra and Chorus, and a distinguished cast of soloists for a truly transcendental experience.
 

Side-by-side Performance with the NCPA Orchestra

Programme

10 JUL (Sat)

“I don’t know if I like it, but it’s what I meant,” Vaughan Williams said at a rehearsal of his Fourth Symphony, a work that confronts the listener with fierce, dissonant music, hard-edged and refusing pastoral comfort. Tarmo Peltokoski, the HK Phil’s newly appointed Music Director, shapes the symphony’s relentless drive from its explosive opening to a finale of stark, defiant force. Esa-Pekka Salonen likewise embraces creative risk in his Cello Concerto, exploring new kinds of texture. In the spotlight is Finnish cellist Senja Rummukainen, who received a huge ovation for the work at the Salzburg Easter Festival, under Salonen’s own baton. The programme opens with Wagner’s Lohengrin: Prelude to Act I – subdued and sacred in its shimmering strings – a threshold moment that looks beyond German Romantic opera and completes the programme’s arc of artistic metamorphosis.    

Programme