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23
Thu
Sep
2018
20:00 |
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$420, $350, $280, $200 |
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Concert Hall, Hong Kong City Hall |
BUY TICKET
Music
Encore Series: Violin and Piano Duo Concert by Janine Jansen and Alexander Gavrylyuk
Programme Cancellation
Due to health reasons, violinist Janine Jansen is unable to perform in Hong Kong and the concert and pre-concert talk will be cancelled. Ticket-holder(s) of the concert please keep the original intact tickets for refund at the locations during the period specified below:
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Date: |
29 September – 20 October 2018 |
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Venue: |
URBTIX Box Office of Hong Kong Cultural Centre URBTIX Box Office of Hong Kong City Hall (Opening Hours of the above Box Offices: 10am - 9:30pm daily) |
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Note: |
Refund arrangement has to be done on or before 20 October 2018. Late application will not be accepted. |
For enquiries, please contact us at 2268 7321 during office hours. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.
Watch Her Listening, Hear Her Conversing
Ernest Wan
In the 2017–18 music season, which concluded not long ago, Dutch violinist Janine Jansen was a Perspectives Artist at Carnegie Hall in New York City. This means she got to curate for that venerable institution a series of concerts in which she performed, with colleagues of her choice, music of her choice ranging from old classics to a recent concerto written for her. How did she come by such an enviable privilege? It was all because of the single recital she had given there three seasons earlier, which was so impressive that Carnegie Hall deemed this major star in Europe worthy of a bigger reputation in the United States than she had enjoyed thus far — worthy, therefore, of a prominent showcase that would put her on the map for Americans. I can totally understand the Hall's basing their decision to invite her to present a Perspectives series on just that one recital, because I was there.
In that recital, with works by Prokofiev and Ravel on the programme, Jansen harnessed her formidable technique to create a wide range of moods from delicate intimacy to sinister suspense to turbulent violence, and gave the audience a ride on a roller coaster of complex emotions. For all her dazzling pyrotechnics in such a virtuosic showpiece as Ravel's Tzigane, she somehow never came across as showing off, but simply making good music: in the end, it was this natural musicality of her playing that I found most satisfying. Indeed, this explains why my favourite experience with Jansen was in fact not this recital of extreme contrasts but her rendition of something that calls for moderation and elegance more than does anything else: Mozart.
It was his "Turkish" Concerto. Right after her performance, I ran into a few fellow critics also in attendance. We normally would compare notes, but on this occasion we only exchanged approving looks and nodded our heads. One of them later wrote that he was just thinking to himself, "Things simply don't get better". What indeed is there to say other than that the performance showed that Jansen has everything — a luminous tone, impeccable phrasing, an unerring sense of flow, and good taste throughout? It really was as close to a perfect take on the "Turkish" as any that I have heard.
Still, something in that performance did stand out, and indeed it seems to be something that makes Jansen stand out among eminent performers of any instrument. It has to do with the peculiar way in which her listening contributes to her playing. This is plainly visible whenever her partners — whether a pianist, a trio of strings, or an orchestra — are playing and she is not. See how her posture and her facial expression constantly change as she listens intently to the music: it is as though every fibre of her being were taking in everything that is going on around her, and the sum total of this sensory input were being digested, until, when the time comes for her to enter, she makes a musical response so specific to the particular ambiance and nuances she has just assimilated, that one cannot imagine that the next time she plays the same piece she would do the exact same thing at that same spot.
Thanks to this spontaneity of response that comes from her absorption in the moment, Jansen's performances are not only singularly fresh and captivating, but display an uncommonly high degree of interaction, and have to them an unusually compelling sense of conversation, between herself and her partners, who can be anyone from a single accompanist to individual members of an orchestra. It seems clear, then, that her performances are always informed by her love for and finesse in chamber music, which may be illustrated by her having founded the International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht at the age of 25 and served as its artistic director for the next 13 years.
Hong Kongers will soon get to marvel at this seasoned chamber musician's extraordinary qualities that recently so impressed Carnegie Hall's event organisers and audiences alike, when she is joined by the acclaimed Ukrainian-Australian pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk in a recital at the City Hall in Central. On the programme is César Franck's only sonata, a perennial favourite, as well as works by that famous circle, or rather triangle, of Johannes Brahms and Robert and Clara Schumann. But I won't go into the details of the compositions here: for I would go hear Jansen no matter what she plays.
Phenomenal Pianist: Alexander Gavrylyuk
Keith Anderson
Praised as "a subtle sound magician" in a review in the Dutch De Telegraaf, Alexander Gavrylyuk was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine in 1984. He started his first studies of the piano when he was seven, and made his first concerto appearance at the age of nine. Four years later, at the age of 13, he moved to Australia, living for the next few years in Sydney. He has gone on to make a scintillating reputation for himself in a successful international career. This has involved triumph in various competitions, with a Gold Medal in 1999 in the Vladimir Horowitz Competition, followed by victory in 2000 in the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan and in 2003 he was named a Steinway Artist. In 2005, he won the Gold Medal in the 11th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv, Israel.
As a recording artist, Alexander Gavrylyuk has an enviable list of achievements. In 2011, he performed the complete piano concertos of Prokofiev with Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and the live was recorded. His other recordings range from Brahms to Mussorgsky and Rachmaninov. His concert career has taken him to the Promenade Concerts in London's Royal Albert Hall, when he was the soloist in the very demanding Third Piano Concerto of Rachmaninov. He includes all four of Rachmaninov's piano concertos in his repertoire, performed on tour in 2013 with Neeme Järvi and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. As a recitalist he has appeared at the Wigmore Hall in London, Musikverein in Vienna, Tonhalle in Zürich and Konzerthaus in Berlin. As a soloist, he has collaborated with many distinguished conductors and with orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, Moscow Philharmonic, Warsaw National Philharmonic and tBournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
Alexander Gavrylyuk has been greeted with very considerable critical praise throughout the world. He has found himself obliged, in the end, to base himself in Moscow, in response to the musical establishment there. As a concert pianist, he inevitably spends much time travelling – the fate of an internationally distinguished artist.
In their Hong Kong recital Alexander Gavrylyuk partners the Dutch violinist Janine Jansen, with whom, he has collaborated in recitals in America and Europe. Their Hong Kong programme offers music that makes great technical demands on both players, demands that Jansen and Gavrylyuk are well able to meet, in what promises to be a notable evening of music by two world-class musicians.
Ernest Wan is a writer and translator who specialises in music criticism.
Keith Anderson is a music critic.
TICKETING
DATE VENUE PRICE 23.09.2018 (Sun)
20:00
20:00
Concert Hall, Hong Kong City Hall
$420, $350, $280, $200