Director’s Notes

Dear Friends,

On behalf of the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong I am delighted to announce our forthcoming concert tour in December 2007 to Italy, one of the major cultural capitals of the world. This occasion marks not only the first visit by a professional orchestra from Hong Kong to one of Italy's major festivals but also the first time a chamber orchestra of professional musicians representing Hong Kong has toured Europe. This important endeavour represents an exciting cultural milestone for Hong Kong in its development of chamber music both locally and on a more international scale. Moreover, the timing is pertinent with the building of a 800-seater chamber music hall in the West Kowloon Cultural District on the horizon.

On tour the orchestra will present Spirit of Two Strings - a unique programme of contemporary Chinese music to be premiered in Hong Kong at the Sha Tin Town Hall Auditorium on 30 November 2007 (Friday) at 8pm. All the works on the programme will also receive their European continent premiere on 8 December at the opening of the Orchestra Sinfonica Abruzzese (one of the major regional orchestras in Italy) concert season in L'Aquila and on 16 December at the closing concert of the "XIII Mostra Biennale di Liuteria nel Mezzogiorno" festival in Ascoli Piceno near Rome. Performances will also take place on 15 December in Vasto at the beautiful Rosetti Theatre built during the Victorian age in the 1800s and on 14 December in Ortona. These photos below give you a glimpse of some of the theatres we are performing at:

The "XIII Mostra Biennale di Liuteria nel Mezzogiorno" (The art of making stringed instruments in southern Italy) is a festival held every two years since 1983 in Ortona, a city fronting the Adriatic Sea and approximately 200km from Rome. The city is especially known for being the birthplace of Sir Francesco Paolo Tosti, the great Italian songwriter. The festival features a series of performances held in conjunction with an exhibition of stringed instruments by the most important Italian makers as well as an exhibition of folk instruments. The festival in which the CCOHK takes part will also feature a performance of Verdi's La Traviata by the Stagione Operistica Teramana with the world-famous Italian baritone Renato Bruson, a recital of Paganini caprices by the Italian violinist Ettore Pellegrino and an exhibition of stringed instruments with violins by Gagliano, viola d'amore from the Naples Museum and Chinese erhus by the award-winning Shanghainese erhu-maker Hu Han-rou. Ms. Hu has received numerous awards in the nation-wide Erhu-making Contest in China in 1999 and the Shanghai Dun-huang Cup Contest in Erhu-making in 2001. She will give week-long demonstrations of the art of erhu-making to be observed by students from all over Italy and Europe. More details on the festival can be accessed from http://www.istitutonazionaletostiano.org/IT/Attivita_dettaglio.asp?flgTipoAttivita=I&idAttivita=96.

A special highlight of the CCOHK's Spirit of Two Strings Italian tour concert will be a performance of the double concerto for erhu, violin and strings by the Shanghainese composer Situ Gang. Situ Gang, whose father founded the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, is currently based in San Francisco. His double concerto represents the first attempt in the history of music to combine the special characteristics and sounds of the western violin with those of the erhu in the form of a concerto. The CCOHK has also specially commissioned Mao Yuan, the eighty-one-year-old Beijing composer, to write a new arrangement of his perennially popular "Dance of the Yao People" and "Joy of Spring" for the tour. The programme will conclude with more sounds of the erhu – the instrument Tan Dun originally had in mind when writing the soundtrack for Ang Lee's Academy Award-winning film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. However the sound he imagined did not make it to the screen because the solo part was transposed for cello so that Yo-yo Ma could play it. Tan Dun's original intentions are thus more fully realized in his Crouching Tiger concerto for erhu and chamber orchestra, a concert work which he wrote subsequent to the film. The work was premiered in the USA by Karen Han in 2001.

Our featured soloists will be Hsin Hsiao-hung on erhu (who appears with the kind permission of the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra) and Ho Hong-ying on violin. Both artists share a common thread: they are principals of two of Hong Kong's major orchestras as well as keen promoters of modern Chinese music. I am also delighted to have Andrew Massey join us on tour as guest conductor. His conducting career includes appointments as assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra under Lorin Maazel, associate conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and music director of the Oregon Mozart Players and the Michigan Chamber Orchestra. I have fond memories of a concert we did with him back in 2004 in which he led us in a Hong Kong premiere performance of Rautavaara's concerto for birds and orchestra.

The CCOHK's tour to Italy is made possible with the collaboration of the "XIII Mostra Biennale di Liuteria nel Mezzogiorno", ISMEZ (Istituto Nazionale per lo Sviluppo Musicale nel Mezzogiorno), the Istituto Nazionale Tostiano di Ortona and with the support of the Arts Development Fund of the Home Affairs Bureau, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

I do hope to see you at the Sha Tin Town Hall on 30 November. Come experience the "hidden" talents of Hong Kong!

Leanne Nicholls
Founder & Artistic Director
City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong

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