A National Day Celebration with an East meets West Dizi Concerto by
Guo Wenjing and Belioz’s Symphonie fantastique

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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Meggy Cheng
Director of Marketing 
Tel: (852) 2721 9035
Email: meggy.cheng@hkphil.org 

Flora Fung
Media Relations and Communications Manager
Tel: (852) 2721 1585
Email: flora.fung@hkphil.org

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[1 August 2017, Hong Kong] The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s (HK Phil) Principal Guest Conductor Yu Long sets off an awesome display of musical fireworks for the National Day Celebration Concerts with Berlioz’s action-packed Symphonie fantastique and Guo Wenjing's Chou Kong Shan, a rare concerto for dizi and orchestra featuring renowned dizi virtuoso, Tang Junqiao. The HK Phil brings traditional Chinese culture into the concert hall with two evenings of east meets west on 15 & 16 September in the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall. 

“her (Tang Junqiao) virtuosity in a nearly unlimited breadth of timbres...”
--- The Washington Post

The concert opens with Chinese composer Guo Wenjing's concerto for dizi (bamboo flute) and orchestra Chou Kong Shan, a colourful symphonic portrait of Tang dynasty poet Li Bai’s descriptions of Sichuan. The concerto is demanding on the dizi player, with extremely long notes evoking vast mountains and short notes mimicking the sound of babbling brooks. Guo Wenjing claims that Tang Junqiao has opened up Chou Kong Shan by showing that the work, which he used to believe could only be performed with a bamboo flute with eight holes, can be played equally effectively on a six-hole bamboo flute.

The Symphonie fantastique is French composer Hector Berlioz’s most famous work, and set new demands on orchestral writing and playing. Berlioz had been scorned by Irish actress Harriet Smithson with whom he was helplessly infatuated and, plunged into a deep depression, he eventually released himself by conceiving this work in which the disconsolate artist took opium and dreamed of his beloved in five scenes. This vividly colourful work makes an appropriately explosive musical display and showcases any orchestra to maximum, exhilarating effect.

16 Sep performance is sponsored by: Wing Lung Bank

A National Day Celebration will be held on 15 & 16 September 2017 (Fri & Sat), 8PM, in the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall.Tickets priced: HK$480, $380, $280, $180 are now available at URBTIX. For enquiries, please call +852 2721 2332 or visit www.hkphil.org.

Artists
Yu Long, conductor [full biography]
Yu Long is the Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the China Philharmonic Orchestra which he co-founded in 2000, and the Music Director of the Shanghai and Guangzhou Symphony orchestras. All three ensembles tour internationally and feature alongside the world’s top soloists. Maestro Yu is also the Founding Artistic Director of the Beijing Music Festival, as well as Artistic Co-Director of the MISA Festival, bringing classical music to the young people of Shanghai. He was appointed the Principal Guest Conductor of the HK Phil from the 2015/16 concert season.

Tang Junqiao, dizi [full biography]
Tang Junqiao is a renowned player and educator of bamboo flute. As a guest solo flutist, she has been invited to perform at dozens of international music and art festivals, and has performed in hundreds of concerto and special concerts. She has performed traditional Chinese music for more than 30 foreign state leaders, and is the only Chinese player of folk music who has ever been invited to regularly cooperate with world famous orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, London Symphony and Bamberg Symphony in the performance of a number of concertos for Chinese bamboo flutes. Her performance has made Chou Kong Shan one of the most frequently performed bamboo flute music pieces worldwide.
 

A NATIONAL DAY CELEBRATION
15 & 16 | 9 | 2017
FRI & SAT 8PM
Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall
HK$480 $380 $280 $180
Tickets are now available at URBTIX
For ages 6 and above

Artists

Click the thumbnails to download press photos

Yu Long	Tang Junqiao	The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra Photo Credit: Cheung Chi Wai/HK Phil

Programme

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra
Music Director: Jaap van Zweden
Principal Guest Conductor: Yu Long

The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HK Phil) is recognised as Asia’s foremost classical orchestra. The orchestra presents more than 150 concerts over a 44-week season and attracts more than 200,000 music lovers annually.

Jaap van Zweden, one of today’s most sought-after conductors, has been the orchestra’s Music Director since the 2012/13 concert season, a position he will continue to hold until at least 2022. In addition, Maestro van Zweden will also be the next Music Director of the New York Philharmonic starting with the 2018/19 season.

Yu Long was appointed Principal Guest Conductor with the HK Phil for a three-year period commencing with the 2015/16 season.

Under Maestro van Zweden, the HK Phil is undertaking a variety of initiatives including a four-year project to perform and record the complete Ring of the Nibelung (Richard Wagner). The orchestra is in the third of this four-year journey, performing one opera annually in concert. The performances being recorded live for the Naxos label are winning rave reviews internationally; and mark the first performances by a Hong Kong or mainland Chinese orchestra of the entire Ring cycle.

Also under van Zweden, the orchestra has toured to Taiwan, Europe and Mainland China. The orchestra just completed an ambitious five-city tour to Seoul, Osaka, Singapore, Melbourne and Sydney in April and May 2017 in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the HKSAR.

Conductors and soloists who have recently performed with the orchestra include Yo-Yo Ma, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Ning Feng, Matthias Goerne, Lang Lang, Yu Long, Yundi Li, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Yuja Wang and the late Lorin Maazel.

The HK Phil promotes the work of Hong Kong and Chinese composers through an active commissioning programme, and has released recordings featuring Tan Dun and Bright Sheng, each conducting their own compositions, on the Naxos label. Its acclaimed community engagement programme brings music to tens of thousands of children annually. A recording was issued free to schoolchildren throughout Hong Kong of Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Leopold Mozart’s Toy Symphony.

The Swire Group has been the Principal Patron of the HK Phil since 2006. Through this sponsorship, which is the largest in the orchestra’s history, Swire also endeavours to promote artistic excellence, foster access to classical music and stimulate cultural participation in Hong Kong, and to enhance Hong Kong’s reputation as one of the great cities of the world.

Thanks to a significant subsidy from the Hong Kong Government and long-term funding from Principal Patron Swire, the Hong Kong Jockey Club and other supporters, the HK Phil now boasts a full-time annual schedule of classical music concerts, pops concerts, an extensive education programme, and collaborations for staged opera with Opera Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

The orchestra was originally called the Sino-British Orchestra. It was renamed as the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in 1957 and became fully professional in 1974.

SWIRE is the Principal Patron of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra is a Venue Partner of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre.