Chopin, Joy of Music Festival, Music Festical, Piano, Guitar, Music Competition Chopin, Joy of Music Festival, Music Festical, Piano, Guitar, Music Competition Chopin, Joy of Music Festival, Music Festical, Piano, Guitar, Music Competition
Chopin, Joy of Music Festival, Music Festical, Piano, Guitar, Music Competition

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

The Chopin Society of Hong Kong Ltd organizes every three years a major International Piano Competition. Three competitions have been run so far, in 2005, 2008 and 2011 and they have established the competition as a major event in Hong Kong’s musical calendar.

To ensure continuity between these triennial events, the Society organizes the annual Joy of Music Festival in the intervening years, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010 and also to coincide this time with the last Competition in 2011.

The essence of the Joy of Music Festival is, of course, music, played by the past first prize winners of our Competition, by members of the jury of the Competition, by musicians which have participated in the Competition and by specially invited artists.

The Festival also has an important educational element, usually in the form of free master classes in piano and guitar. These are open to the public and, now, attracting advanced students from all over Asia and China in particular, thus enhancing Hong Kong’s status as a major musical and cultural centre in Asia.

The aims of the Festival for this year are not different and the following paragraphs are, but the briefest summary, of what this Festival has in store.

We have the three first prize winners from our past piano competitions, Ilya Rashkovskiy (2005), Jinsang Lee (2008) and Giuseppe Andaloro (2011) playing solo and with the London Chamber Orchestra (LCO) Chamber Group, in residence in Hong Kong for the Festival, and participating artists in the 2005 competition. The LCO Chamber Group will play a separate evening of chamber music.

We celebrate the tradition and excellence of pianism in Hong Kong in conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of the opening of the Hong Kong City Hall by gathering together under the same roof and in the same evening a very representative group of local and of other artists, all whom have played in the Concert Hall over the last 50 years. Appearing in this performance will be Gary Graffman,
Yeeha Chiu, CiCi Chieh Chang, Angela Au, Ka Ling Lee, Rachel Cheung and Li Zhong Xin.

In another evening presentation, we showcase rising local artists, Lok Ping and Lok Ting Chau, performing pieces for two pianos joined by percussionists Raymond Vong and Emily Cheng for one of the pieces to be performed.

Guitar (Alvaro Pierri) and cello (Richard Bumping) also come together in this Festival in an evening of guitar solos and rarely performed duo pieces for guitar and cello.

The educational part of the Festival this year is rich in its offerings and its diversity:

There will be, of course, the popular master classes by Gary Graffman in piano (who incidentally also performs in the 50th anniversary recital) and in guitar by Alvaro Pierri.

Jeremy Siepmann, author, teacher and foremost musician, will help open our ears to music in more ways than one during five sessions on the essence of the structure of music and how to listen to it.

The legendary pianist Glenn Gould (1932-1982) is featured in two unique programs.
One focuses on a book about Gould’s pursuit of the perfect piano and is presented by the authoress of the book, Katie Hafner joined by Glenn Gould’s personal tuner, Verne Edquist, who will fly specially from Canada for the occasion.

But then Glenn Gould himself takes the stage in a “re-performance” of his celebrated Goldberg Variations through the technological magic of the Yamaha Disklavier Pro driven by a special software which ‘re-performs” the celebrated work. This is the nearest we will all get to hearing Glenn Gould’s actual playing on a piano rather than from a recording.

In a separate session, Glenn Gould will be joined, so-to-speak, by Rachmaninoff, Albeniz, Granados and Gershwin all of them playing their own compositions on an actual piano.
These are not sound readings, this is an actual piano played in the manner, style and fashion of these famous pianists. The magus and presenter behind all this is John Q. Walker of Zenph Sound Innovations who helped create this amazing technological feat.

 

Enjoy !

Dr Andrew Freris
Chairman, the Chopin Society of Hong Kong.

 

 
 
 
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