Christoph Eschenbach Conducts the HK Phil – Brahms Symphony no. 1 and Gershwin Piano Concerto in F Featuring Tzimon Barto (23 & 24 October)

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[21 September 2015, Hong Kong] The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HK Phil) is excited to present one of the great conductors of our time, Christoph Eschenbach. A regular with the world’s greatest orchestras, Eschenbach will conduct the HK Phil for the first time, with guest pianist Tzimon Barto, on 23 & 24 October in the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall. In this programme, joy, jazz and majesty combine in the music of Dvořák, Gershwin and Brahms.

The concert begins with Dvořák’s exuberant Carnival Overture - originally it was called “Life” – which depicts all the fun and vitality of a fair as seen through the eyes of man who, while wrapped up in all the excitement going on around him, realises that the real joy of life comes from the beauty of nature.

Next, Tzimon Barto will perform Gershwin’s jazz-infused Piano Concerto in F. Christoph Eschenbach discovered Barto in 1988 and they have since performed together frequently. In addition to his career as a pianist, Barto is also a bodybuilder, writer, and is fluent in five languages. Come and see the skills this multi-talented musician will bring to play in his strong interpretation of this quintessentially American concerto.

In the second half of the concert Eschenbach will lead the HK Phil in Brahms’s Symphony no. 1. Evolved over a period of some 20 years, Brahms was originally daunted by the spirit of Beethoven in writing his first Symphony but the result was a triumph and stands as one of the great symphonies in musical history and an enduring favourite with concert audiences.

Classics: Christoph Eschenbachwill be held on 23 & 24 October(Fri & Sat), 8PM in the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall.Tickets priced: HK$780, $480, $380, $280 are now available at URBTIX. For enquiries, please call +852 2721 2332 or visit www.hkphil.org.

Artists
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor [full biography]
Christoph Eschenbach is the Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra and the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts. He is the former Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris, Philadelphia Orchestra, NDR Symphony Orchestra and Houston Symphony. Eschenbach has been awarded the Légion d’Honneur, Commandeur dans I’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Commander’s Cross of German order of Merit and the Leonard Bernstein Award from the Pacific Music Festival.

Tzimon Barto, piano [full biography]
Tzimon Barto appeared at the Vienna Musikverein and the Salzburg Festival at the invitation of Herbert von Karajan in mid-1980s. He has performed with nearly every major orchestra including the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden and NHK Symphony Orchestra.

Classics: Christoph Eschenbach
23 & 24 | 10 | 2015
FRI & SAT 8PM
Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall
HK$780 $480 $380 $280
Tickets are now available at URBTIX
For ages 6 and above

Click the thumbnail to download photos
Christoph Eschenbach Photo: Eric Brissaud	Tzimon Barto Photo: Eric Brissaud/Ondine	The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra Photo: Cheung Chi Wai/HK Phil

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra
Music Director: Jaap van Zweden

The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HK Phil) has recently returned from an extremely successful five-country, seven-city tour of Europe, with concerts in London, Vienna, Zurich, Eindhoven, Birmingham, Berlin and Amsterdam. Most concerts were sold out, there were standing ovations, and the reviews were universally positive. The concert in Vienna’s Musikverein was filmed for broadcast on TV. With a history stretching back to 1895, when it was formed as the Sino-British Orchestra, the HK Phil was re-named in 1957 and became fully professional in 1974.

Thanks to 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.

Conductors and soloists who have recently performed with the orchestra include Vladimir Ashkenazy, Ning Feng, Matthias Goerne, Lang Lang, Yu Long, Yundi Li, the late Lorin Maazel, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Yuja Wang and Edo de Waart, the HK Phil’s previous Music Director.

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 ten 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.

This season is Jaap van Zweden’s fourth as Music Director of the HK Phil. With him, the orchestra is undertaking major expansion and new projects, including the first-ever performances by a Hong Kong or mainland Chinese orchestra of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung. The four operas are being performed, one a year, in concert and recorded live for the Naxos label.

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.

The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra is financially supported by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
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

 

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