Jockey Club Keys to Music Education Programme – Share the Stage with the HK Phil (22 Oct)

Download HERE

[16 October 2015, Hong Kong] Supported by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust with a donation of more than HK$6.3 million, the Jockey Club Keys to Music Education Programme – Share the Stage is an unique Hong Kong Philharmonic (HK Phil) project aimed at fostering emerging musical talents in Hong Kong, offering them an opportunity to be mentored by musicians from the HK Phil and to work with a world-renowned conductor on the stage of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall.

After an extremely competitive selection process, 48 young student musicians under the age of 25 have been selected to Share the Stage with the great conductor Maestro Christoph Eschenbach and the HK Phil. The project culminates in a public working session on 22 October, where the Share the Stage orchestra will rehearse and perform Ravel’sLa valse.

For this year’s project, Maestro Eschenbach has laid down the challenge of one of Ravel’s greatest masterpieces – an orchestral work which demands the highest virtuosity from its performers. La valse was originally conceived as a short ballet, but this music, a nostalgic and frenzied farewell to the gilded world of the Viennese waltz and the Belle Époque, is now more known as a concert work. It promises to make for a fascinating working session, when Christoph Eschenbach guides the young musicians through its stylistic and technical demands.

Young musicians from Hong Kong have shared their thoughts about participating in this project:

“It is a great honour to perform with Maestro Christoph Eschenbach, and I have to practise really hard for this. I’ve learnt a lot on how it is like playing in an orchestra and team work through the project.”

--- Philip Leung, Cello, First-time Share the Stage Young Musician

“Practising with the school orchestra has become easier after participating in the project. Since I now know what a professional orchestra requires, it has made my objective clearer.”

 --- Ma Man Ho, Flute, Returning Share the Stage Young Musician

“I’m more confident in my performance, and feel really fulfilled!”

 --- Yeung Man Yin, Violin, Returning Share the Stage Young Musician

Jockey Club Keys to Music Education Programme – Share the Stage with the HK Phil will be held on 22 October (Thursday) at 7:30PM in the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall. Free admission with tickets. For enquiries, please call 2312 6103.

Artists
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor [full biography]
Christoph Eschenbach is the Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Mentored by George Szell and Herbert von Karajan, it is very important to Maestro Eschenbach to pass on his musical knowledge and experience to young performers. He dedicates time each season to run master classes and orchestral academies for young performers, and this time to young people in Hong Kong.

About Jockey Club Keys to Music Education Programme
Exclusively sponsored by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust with a total donation of more than HK$6.3 million since 2012, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s flagship music education programme, the “Jockey Club Keys to Music Education Programme” promotes orchestral music and invests in Hong Kong’s musical future through purpose-designed schools concerts, ensemble visits, instrumental master classes and teacher seminars. It has so far benefited over 100,000 kindergarten-to-secondary school students.

Click the thumbnail to download photos
Christoph Eschenbach Photo Credit: Luca Piva	The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra Photo Credit: Philip Chiu
Share the Stage 2014	Share the Stage 2014

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

 

# # #