Friday, December 21, 2018 | 12

CHINA DAILY | HONG KONG EDITIONMusicA

Playing to the home crowds the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra moves
into the middle third ofits landmark 45th season,a certain welcome theme can bedetected, with several high-profile
home performances giving key
platforms to Chinese composers
and soloists. Meanwhile, the ensemble’s musicians are preparing to go
on a somewhat symbolic journey
through the cities in Guangdong
province on the Chinese mainland.
On Jan 13, the HK Phil will travel to the Zhuhai Huafa and CPAAGrand Theatre to present a concert entitled “Discover ClassicalRomance” two days after performing the same approachable programat Tsuen Wan Town Hall in the New
Territories. With the clear intentionof enticing new converts to classical music, the program presents
Mozart’s famous Don Giovanni
Overture and the melodious Sinfonia Concertante alongside the lateromantic Symphony in E by Hans
Rott, a classmate of and inspiration
to Mahler. Shanghai-born principal
horn Lin Jiang will undoubtedly
prove one of the star attractions.
While there was no formal
announcement, HK Phil’s chief
executive Michael MacLeod has
shared details of a coming concert
in Guangzhou in early March. Thatsuch engagements come as increasing attention is paid to growing
opportunities for regional integration seems notable. “We are verymuch looking forward to sharing
our finest music-making with theaudience in the Greater Bay Area,”
added MacLeod.
At the Guangzhou concert,
MacLeod promises an appearance
from Rachel Cheung, the Hong
Kong pianist who won the AudienceAward at last year’s career-making
Fifteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held in Fort
Worth, Texas.
Cheung is perhaps the brightest
star among the homegrown talents
on display in this season’s programming. On May 10 and 11 the pianist
will perform again alongside theHK Phil, this time at its usual homein the Hong Kong Cultural Centre,
presenting Ravel’s Piano Concerto
in G under HK Phil music director
Jaap Van Zweden’s baton. The same
program will see the maestro conduct the world premiere of a newand specially commissioned workby the Hong Kong composer Wong
Chun-wai.

Local talent
The line-ups follow what appears
to be a growing trend for showcasing home-grown composers. Earlierthis year, the HK Phil presented
its second performance of Hong
Kong composer Austin Yip’s Metamorphosis, a piece premiered andcommissioned by the orchestra during its 2016/17 season. Yip’s work
preceded Shanghai-based soloist
Wang Zhijiong’s National Day performance of China’s best-loved classical export, The Butterfly Lovers
Violin Concerto, penned by Chen
Gang and He Zhanhao.
These premieres build on the success of a competition for local composers held last year, Van Zweden
told China Daily at the start of theseason. “What we try to do is locate
in our series the local talent which is
absolutely necessary for the futureof Hong Kong music-making,” said
the Dutch maestro, who also serves
as music director at the prestigious
New York Philharmonic. “Today, we
have local talent making an interna-Yu Long conducting a solo rendition of Samuel Barber’s CelloConcerto, Op 22 by Alban Gerhardt at a recent concert.

tional career.”
Cheung and Wong may be looking to the growing wave of Chinese soloists and composers whotake centerstage in this season’sprogram. Earlier this year Guilinborn violinist Jing Wang performed
Brahms’ Violin Concerto, whileJanuary will see performances byleading pianist Zhang Haochen, a28-year-old prodigy from Shanghai
who won the Van Cliburn in 2009
and was called on to replace Lang
Lang at the China NCPA Orchestra’s Carnegie Hall debut when thesuperstar’s arm was injured. In HongKong, Zhang will perform Rachmaninov’s physics-defying Piano Concerto
No 1 on January 18 and 19.
Zhang’s key work and Chen’smusic will both symbolically follow
the baton of Yu Long. Hailed as the“most powerful figure in China’s
classical music scene” by The NewYork Times, Yu Long commands
widespread recognition for his roleas artistic director and chief conductor of the China PhilharmonicOrchestra. The 54-year-old figurehead has previously been called on
to conduct several of the world’s
most storied ensembles — including the Munich Philharmonic andOrchestre de Paris — without wavering in his domestic commitments,
where he is also chairman of theArtistic Committee of the Beijing
Music Festival, music director of theShanghai Symphony Orchestra andGuangzhou Symphony Orchestra,and vice president of the ChineseMusicians’ Association.
Midway through his fourth year
as HK Phil’s principal guest conductor, Yu Long finds time for four
appearances this season, the firstof which took place last weekend
when he pointedly opened theprogram with a piece loaded withmeaning. Taking broad jingoisticcues from the drama of cinema,
Guo Wenjing’s driving Riding on
the Wind was written 21 years ago tocelebrate Hong Kong’s return to themotherland and premiered underYu’s own baton on July 1, 1997.
Such regional programming
marks a significant departure for anensemble founded in Hong Kong’s
colonial days and one that has built
its reputation on interpreting theEuropean-centric classical canon.
On the global stage, the HK Philhas been making headlines lately

HK Phil’s principal guest conductor Yu Long chose Guo Wenjing’s Riding on the Wind to open the first of
his four appearances this season at Hong Kong Cultural Centre last week.

thanks to the recent release of its
Der Ring des Nibelungen boxset,
which collects all four parts of Wagner’s epic opera cycle over 14 discs,
recorded in the city during the past
four years. The HK Phil has previously faced criticism for not doing

more to reflect Hong Kong’s uniquegeography, but MacLeod says theorchestra is dedicated to showcasing local talent.
Being “the biggest arts group in
the city and also Asia’s foremost
classical orchestra”, the HK Phil,MacLeod adds, is committed to promoting the work of composers fromboth Hong Kong and the Chinese
mainland, as well as having talented
local musicians perform their works— “locally, nationally and internationally.”

Audiences called the shots in 2018

FilmS
By ELIZABETH KERR

You can always tell what was
happening in the world by themovies that flooded its theatersthat year. Japan has been wrestlingwith the Fukushima meltdown foryears, and Daiichi rears its head ineverything from Shin Godzilla toagitator Sion Sono’s The Land ofHope. UK director Ben Wheatley’s
fractured family drama Happy
New Year, Colin Burstead could beread as a Brexit analogy.
The biggest single factor influencing traditional Hollywood
blockbusters now is how to guarantee a release in the Chinese
mainland. In 2013 Marvel’s Iron
Man 3 became the first giant film
to shamelessly pander to Chineseaudiences, which went as well asmight be expected. The only people
surprised that useless extra characters and scenes with zero narrative
impact would be met with scorn
were those at Marvel. Nonetheless,pandering reached a fever pitch
in 2018. Pacific Rim: Uprising —the sequel made only because thefirst film proved lucrative in China— failed by desperately trying tofind a way to make the Chinese
tech industry save the world. Itlost sight of basics like storytelling
and Chinese audiences didn’t fall
for it. Escape Plan 2: Hades wasa Sylvester Stallone vehicle with
no Stallone and cynical amountsof Huang Xiaoming. Slightly better was The Meg, which pandered
in a more amusing, goofy way andIts 45th year sees the HK Phil turnits gaze closer to home, with Chinesemusicians featuring prominently in
its concerts, writes Rob Garratt.

ssianich A
RyCrazearned more RMB because of it.
The most egregious example ofthe year was Dwayne Johnson’s
Skyscraper, whose splashy PR
stops in Hong Kong and Beijing
couldn’t save a bad movie. Its earnings stalled at $98 million, half ofwhich came in the opening weekend.
Notably, James Wan’s Aquaman
opened in China ahead of mostmarkets, including the UnitedStates, and most definitely marches to the beat of its own creativedrum. It has no Chinese characters shoehorned into the narrativeand no extended sequences set in
Shanghai. Aquaman follows its
own (nonsense) story logic andstays true to itself, and Chinese audiences recognized that. They wereso unconcerned about being pandered to that they bestowed thefilm with $190 million in a week.
Hollywood has yet to learn that its
best tactic is respecting Chineseaudiences’ singular tastes.
Elsewhere the fallout from theHarvey Weinstein scandal contin-

ues to rain down, now fallingon the South Korean and Indianindustries, and #TimesUp and#MeToo are trickling into the final
product we see on screens — or
don’t, as the case may be with theprestigious Venice Film Festival.
Earlier this year Venice refused
to sign a gender parity protocol,
which Cannes and Locarno did,
and which events like Toronto andSundance are actively addressing.
Festival director Alberto Barbera
told The Hollywood Reporter hewould quit before accepting quotas. He blamed the industry for alack of films by women and added,“It’s not up to us to change thesituation.”
Against this landscape Gary
Ross’s Ocean’s Eight — the Times
Up Ocean’s film — proceeded to aggressively drop the ball. Cast withthree of the world’s most powerfulactresses, an international pop starand endowed with roughly a dozen Oscars, BAFTAs, Emmys andGolden Globes, Ocean’s was so lazyand low energy it was as if the castand crew didn’t even bother with asowWidscript.
The zeitgeist wason its side,so no one had
to try, it seemed.
Wrong. December’s
Widows is aboutmuch more than gender politics, but in the
grand scheme of things,
it’s everything Ocean’s Eightshould have been.
Finally: representation. The
idea that there are not enoughblack, brown, LGBTQ, Asian, female, or old people on screens is
as old as the hills. When a movie
about black women on vacation(Girls Trip) or a shimmering gay
romance (Call Me By Your Name)
are hits, Hollywood boardrooms
erupt with confusion. Representation isn’t just about seeing the selfon screen: it’s about good business.

When Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman earned a truckload of money lastyear, it was proved that audiences everywhere put story and character
first and that the hero didn’t have to be a straight white man.
Black Panther had Avengers’ associations on its side, but
it’s also one of the Marvel series’ most distinct entries.
Bland teen rom-coms got a jolt of fresh blood withLove, Simon, which swapped out two boys forthe usual boy/girl mechanism. Hong Kong
got in on the act with the transgenderdrama Tracey, a modest success. Andlove it or hate it, only 40 percentof Crazy Rich Asians’ audience
was Asian-American on opening weekend, meaning themajority was not. Asianpeople are not thekiss of death for amovie. Bad filmmaking is.

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