Basel Chamber Orchestra

The performance will run for about 1 hour and 45 minutes including a 20-minute intermission.

Members of the audience are strongly advised to arrive punctually.  Latecomers and those who leave their seats during the performance will only be admitted and allowed to return to their seats respectively during the intermission or at a suitable break.  The presenter reserves the right to refuse admission of latecomers, or determine the time and manner of admission of latecomers.

The programme does not represent the views of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.

The presenter reserves the right to change the programme and substitute artists.

Fanfare from Act III, Scene III of Lohengrin
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) (trans. Andreas Ottensamer)

In Lohengrin, the “romantic opera in three acts” Wagner completed in 1848, the eponymous hero is the mysterious knight of the Holy Grail who arrives, on a boat drawn by a swan, to defend Elsa von Brabant, who has been falsely accused of murdering her younger brother, the child duke.  The knight comes to her rescue, marries her, and protects her country and its people, on the sole condition that she never asks his name or origin.  The Basel Chamber Orchestra opens this evening’s concert with an arrangement, for two each of horns, trumpets and drums, of the music that ushers in the final scene of the opera.  This is a lively fanfare that sounds as the Brabantine nobles and troops assemble at dawn on a plain by the Scheldt and prepare to go to battle under Lohengrin’s leadership, before they are stunned by the announcement the knight turns up to make that he now has to return whence he comes, for in the bridal chamber the previous night Elsa has already broken her vow and posed the forbidden question.

Pastorale d’été, H. 31
Arthur Honegger (1892-1955)

Lumped together with five French composers in a group known as “Les Six”, Arthur Honegger was quite the odd one out in that he was born to Swiss parents and lived and worked in both France and Switzerland.  Also setting him apart from other members of the group was his abiding fondness for German music in general and that characteristically German art of counterpoint in particular.  This fondness is very much in evidence in Pastorale d’été, which he composed in August 1920 while vacationing in Wengen, a village at the foot of the Jungfrau in Switzerland.

Scored for strings and just five winds, this light and simple work perfectly captures the idyllic mood of that locale, and has been popular from the start.  Indeed, the audience at its premiere decided to award the composer a prize.  As Honegger wrote the next year in anticipation of that occasion, “the concert is on 17 February and the public will vote for one of the pieces, which will then win the Prix Verley, worth 1500 francs.  It’ll be fun because the counting of the votes will take place in public.”  The day came, and the work proved “a huge success.  I won the prize with 374 votes out of a total of 700…  I had to go and take a bow to the audience, who were yelling.”

The halcyon atmosphere of the Pastorale is established at the outset by balmy string figures, which then support a lazy melody in the horn, one that is soon restated in canon.  The vif et gai middle section introduces two melodies, a flowing one first played by the clarinet — an unmistakable tribute to Beethoven with its resemblance to the opening tune of the “Pastoral” Symphony — followed by a more vigorous one first played by violins.  The music crescendoes to a climax in which both melodies are presented simultaneously.  In the reprise of the halcyon music, the lazy melody is combined with the “Beethoven” tune; the latter reappears at half speed in the flute near the dreamy close.

Piano Concerto No. 4 in G, Op. 58
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

  I. Allegro moderato
  II. Andante con moto
  III. Rondo: Vivace

Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto was among the numerous masterpieces he completed in the period from 1806 to 1808.  The composer was the pianist at the premiere in March 1807, at a private concert at his patron Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz’s house in Vienna, on which occasion the Fourth Symphony and the Coriolan Overture were also introduced.  He played the solo part again in the concerto’s first public performance in December 1808, at another all-Beethoven concert, which lasted four hours and also included, among other items, the premieres of the “Pastoral” and C-minor Symphonies and the Choral Fantasy — a crowning extravaganza of the fruits of this fertile period.

Of Beethoven’s piano concertos, the Fourth is the most lyrical yet the most innovative.  It starts with the huge surprise of the soloist playing alone; concertos heretofore invariably began with orchestral music.  Equally surprisingly, this opening five-bar phrase with its repeated tonic chords, dolce and piano, is answered by a passage played by the strings, pianissimo, that begins with repeated chords of distant and seemingly irrelevant B major.  The mysterious quality engendered here by subdued dynamics and adventurous harmonies is to characterise much of the concerto’s spacious first movement.  One of its melodies, initially appearing in the first violins and accompanied by plucked cellos and basses, strolls to one unexpected harmonic region after another, and in all three sections of this sonata-form movement there are brief hushed passages in remote keys that seem to come out of the blue.  Elsewhere, however, there is no shortage of sparkling keyboard writing, while loud, harmonically stable orchestral passages radiate healthy vigour.

The dialogue between piano and strings at the beginning of the work turns into outright confrontation in the E-minor middle movement, where all other instruments are silent.  Stark octaves in dotted rhythms played by the strings, forte and sempre staccato, are pitted against the fully harmonised hymnlike utterance of the piano, soft, legato, molto cantabile and later molto espressivo.  It is clear which side at length prevails: the strings are reduced to a pianissimo pizzicato note, whereupon the piano embarks on a cadenza that climaxes in a fortissimo trill and chromatic scale fragments, before it subsides to allow the strings, as though mollified, to conclude with quiet chords.

Relief from such dramatic intensity next comes in the form of a light-hearted Rondo.  It begins with a whisper — in C major rather than the home key of G — but soon, at an unexpected moment, bursts into a fortissimo tutti, with trumpets and timpani making their first appearance.  Among other humorous touches between this opening and the presto coda are the pianist’s failed attempts, shortly before the cadenza, at reprising the dolce episode: twice he tries in the wrong keys, only to be interrupted and corrected by the orchestra!

Symphony No. 4 in A, Op. 90, “Italian”
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

  I. Allegro vivace
  II. Andante con moto
  III. Con moto moderato
  IV. Saltarello: Presto

Despite its immense popularity and its canonic status in the repertoire, Mendelssohn’s A-major Symphony is at once a familiar and an unfamiliar work.  The composer conceived it probably in late 1830, during his travels in Italy, and conducted its premiere in May 1833 in London.  He was dissatisfied with it, however, and revised its last three movements the following year.  He produced no revised version of the first movement, not because he was happy with it, but because he thought it would have to be rewritten!  Not surprisingly, he did not allow the symphony to be published, and when that eventually happened, posthumously, in 1851, the London score was used.  The 1834 revisions — quite substantial, especially in the finale — were simply ignored, and have remained little known to this day.

Even though he titled the finale “saltarello”, a hopping dance he had seen in Rome, Mendelssohn referred to the work as “Italian” only in private communication from the first months of its composition.  Not until years after his death did audiences start to find all sorts of supposedly Italian qualities in the work, which came to be known as the “Italian” Symphony.

Thus, the ebullient opening movement conjures up a carnaval romain — indeed it shares the same key, metre and high spirits as the overture of that title by Berlioz, whom Mendelssohn met while in Rome.  The Andante in D minor, with its “walking bass” accompanying a chantlike melody, suggests a religious procession such as the composer described on his journey — and indeed it has been compared with the “Marche des pèlerins” from Berlioz’s symphony Harold en Italie, and even published separately as “Mendelssohn’s Pilgrims’ March”.  Associating the third movement, a graceful minuet, with Italy proves more difficult, however; the horn calls in the trio section, in particular, are evocative rather of a German forest.  The title of the breakneck A-minor finale leaves little room for dispute as to the movement’s Italianness, but opinions differ on whether it really is a saltarello, or a tarantella, or whether it contains both of these dances.

Leaving aside the question whether the symphony should be regarded as a set of “postcards” from Italy, its four movements have in common a distinct feature that is purely musical.  This concerns new thematic material introduced while each movement is well under way: the subject of a fugato passage in the development of the first movement, the warm major-key subsidiary theme in the second, the aforementioned sylvan music in the trio of the third, and the legato, pianissimo dance in the middle of the fourth.  In each case, it returns towards the end in juxtaposition with the principal material.
 

Programme notes by Ernest Wan
(Ernest Wan is a culture and arts writer and translator who specialises in music criticism.)

Basel Chamber Orchestra

DATE

VENUE

PRICE

25.06.2024 (Tue)
20:00

Concert Hall, Hong Kong City Hall

$700, $550, $450, $350

BUY NOW

DATE

25.06.2024 (Tue)
20:00

VENUE

Concert Hall, Hong Kong City Hall

PRICE

$700, $550, $450, $350

BUY NOW

Tickets available from 30 April at all URBTIX outlets, self-service ticketing kiosks, on internet, by mobile app and telephone.

(Maximum 20 tickets per purchase per person on the first day of ticket sale and maximum 40 tickets per purchase per person from the second day onwards.)


Half-price tickets available for senior citizens aged 60 or above, people with disabilities and the minder, full-time students and Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) recipients (limited tickets for full-time students and CSSA recipients available on a first come, first served basis).

“Great Music” Package Discount
For each purchase of standard tickets for ‘Basel Chamber Orchestra’, ‘Violin Recital by Ray Chen’ and ‘Piano Recital by Víkingur Ólafsson’, the following concession applies:
10% off for any 2 programmes, 15% off for all 3 programmes.

“Great Music” Group Booking Discount
For each purchase of standard tickets for ‘Basel Chamber Orchestra’, ‘Violin Recital by Ray Chen’ and ‘Piano Recital by Víkingur Ólafsson’, the following concession applies:
10% off for 4 – 9 tickets, 15% off for 10 – 19 tickets, 20% off for 20 or more tickets.

Patrons can enjoy only one of the above discount offers.


Programme Enquiries: 2268 7321
Ticketing Enquiries and Customer Service：3166 1100
Telephone Booking：3166 1288
Internet Booking: www.urbtix.hk
Mobile App: URBTIX

The Basel Chamber Orchestra is deeply rooted in the city of Basel – with its two subscription series in the Stadtcasino Basel as well as its own rehearsal and performance venue, Don Bosco Basel.  With world tours and more than 60 concerts per season, the Orchestra is a popular guest at international festivals and in Europe’s most important concert halls.

As the first orchestra to be awarded the Swiss Music Prize in 2019, the Basel Chamber Orchestra stands out for its excellence and diversity as well as for its depth and consistency.  Its interpretations are deeply immersed into the relevant thematic and compositional worlds: in the past with the “Basel Beethoven” or with Heinz Holliger for the “Schubert Cycle”.  Or as with the long-term project “Haydn2032”, the study and performance of all Joseph Haydn's symphonies up to the year 2032 under the direction of Principal Guest Conductor Giovanni Antonini and together with the Ensemble Il Giardino Armonico.  Since the 2022–23 season, the Orchestra, under the direction of early music specialist Philippe Herreweghe, has dedicated itself to all of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's symphonies.  The Orchestra frequently collaborates with selected soloists such as Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Franco Fagioli, Isabelle Faust and Kristian Bezuidenhout.  The Orchestra presents its broad repertoire under the artistic direction of the first violins and the baton of selected conductors such as Nodoka Okisawa, Heinz Holliger, René Jacobs and Pierre Bleuse.

The concert programmes are ranged from early music on historical instruments to contemporary music and historically informed interpretations.  An important element of the work is the future-oriented education programmes in large-scale participatory projects involving creative exchange with children and young people.  The creative work of the Orchestra is documented by an extensive and award-winning discography.

The Clariant Foundation has been the presenting sponsor of the Basel Chamber Orchestra since 2019.

Information provided by the Orchestra

Andreas Ottensamer is considered one of the leading instrumentalists and performs as a clarinet soloist in the major concert halls around the world with orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra under Mariss Jansons, Sir Simon Rattle, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Daniel Harding and Lorenzo Viotti.

In 2021, Ottensamer gave his debut as a conductor and has been awarded the Neeme Järvi Prize of the Gstaad Conducting Academy.  He studied conducting with Nicolás Pasquet and took masterclasses with Riccardo Muti, Jaap van Zweden and Johannes Schlaefli.  He has assisted François-Xavier Roth with the London Symphony Orchestra.

In the season 2022–23, Ottensamer made his Asian conducting debut with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and KBS Symphony Orchestra, and collaborated with orchestras such as the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, Prague Philharmonia, Gulbenkian Orchestra and Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra.  In the season 2023–24, he is giving his debuts with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Métropolitain, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, Basel Chamber Orchestra, etc.

Ottensamer has an exclusive recording partnership with Deutsche Grammophon since 2013, making him the first ever clarinettist on the Yellow Label.  For his album Blue Hour, he partnered with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Mariss Jansons and received his second Opus Klassik Award as "Instrumentalist of the Year".

Ottensamer is the Artistic Director of the Bürgenstock Festival in Switzerland.  Since 2011, he has held the position of Principal Clarinettist with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Information provided by the Orchestra

Kyohei Sorita won the Second Prize in the 18th International Chopin Piano Competition in 2021, more than half a century since a Japanese won this same prize.

In 2020, Sorita gave his debuts in Paris and at the Musikverein Wien in Vienna to much acclaim.  His orchestra collaborations include the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Tonkünstler Orchester, RAI National Symphony Orchestra, Warsaw National Philharmonic, Russian National Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, and he played under the baton of conductors like Robin Ticciati, Sebastian Weigle, Yutaka Sado, Andrea Battistoni, Andrey Boreyko and Mikhail Pletnev.

In 2012, Sorita became known to a wider audience overnight when he won the First Prize, the Audience Prize and three other special prizes at the 81st Japan Music Competition.  He subsequently studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and then at the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.  In addition to invitations to St. Petersburg, where he made his debuts with a solo recital and with the Mariinsky Orchestra as part of the Russian International Music Festival, his debut recital at the sold-out Suntory Hall in Tokyo followed with great success in 2016.

Since then, Sorita has become one of the most sought-after pianists on the Japanese concert scene.  He plays chamber music regularly and is the Founder, Producer and Conductor of the Japan National Orchestra.  In 2019, he launched his own label.  He also produces a music salon “Solistiade”, connecting young musicians and music lovers.

Information provided by the Orchestra

An Exquisite Orchestral Journey

Date: 25 Jun 2024 (Tue) 

Time: 6:45pm

Venue: Committee Room North, 7/F, High Block, Hong Kong City Hall

Speaker: Jimmy Shiu (Music Practitioner)

Conducted in Cantonese.  The talk will run for about 1 hour.

Admission free on a first come, first served basis.