Prison Yard Festival: Music from within

West to east meanderings

Prison Yard Festival: Music from within

Ligeti 100

West to east meanderings

Date & Time

30 Nov 2023 7pm – 8:30pm

Location

Prison Yard

Price

$380

General

Bach’s instantly recognisable Toccata and Fugue in D minor opens this concert, not in its usual form as an awe-inspiring wake-up call on “the King of Instruments” but in a stark, pared-down version for a lonely unaccompanied violin which nevertheless evokes suspense and grandeur as the potency of Bach’s music transcends its instrumental setting. Violinist Wang Liang then invites his Hong Kong Philharmonic colleagues to join him to transform the mood from austere drama to the warm autumnal glow of Brahms’s serene and introspective Clarinet Quintet.

The mood lightens as Hungarian Béla Bartók shares some of the rich discoveries from his massive research project – a series of musical field trips to remote communities of Romania, Transylvania, Serbia and beyond, captured in all their raw authenticity on primitive gramophone recordings like a kind of sonic archaeology, and published in various guises – here in the composer’s arrangement for two fiddlers. Clarinettist Lorenzo Iosco returns to close the concert with Göran Fröst’s witty adaptation of the Klezmer tunes, filled with fiendish clarinet licks and cadenzas to bring the evening to an exhilarating end.


Programme

Bach | Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 (arranged for solo violin )
Brahms | Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115 
Bartók | Selections from 44 Duos for 2 Violins, Sz . 98 
Traditional Fröst| Klezmer Dance No. 3

Performed by Wang Liang (Violin), Gui Li (Violin), Kaori Wilson (Viola), Richard Bamping (Cello), Lorenzo Iosco (Clarinet)

Duration: 1 hour 3 minutes without interval


Ticket Discounts

Patrons may enjoy one of the below discount schemes for each purchase where applicable:

  • 40% off for Senior citizens aged 60 or above, people with disabilities and their minder, full-time students. Available on a first-come-first-served basis.
  • Members of TK FAN are entitled to 15% off on regularly-priced tickets. Download the Tai Kwun App to get the promo-code now.

Prison Yard Festival Package Discount

  • Each purchase of standard tickets for concerts on 2 different dates (10% off)
  • Each purchase of standard tickets for concerts on 3 different dates (15% off)
  • Each purchase of standard tickets for concerts on 4 different dates (20% off)
  • Each purchase of standard tickets for concerts on 5 different dates (25% off)

Remarks

  • For wheelchair user, please purchase tickets via URBTIX www.urbtix.hk

  • Latecomers will be only be admitted at suitable time

  • Recommended for ages 6 and above


Biography

Wang Liang
Gui Li
Kaori Wilson
Richard Bamping
Lorenzo Iosco

Violin

Wang Liang is currently Second Associate Concertmaster of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. He has given numerous solo performances in major concerts, including The Red Violin movie-in-concert (2021) with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra at Le French May Arts Festival and at 2021 Joy of Music Festival, where he performed Saint-Saëns’s Violin Concerto No. 3 and La Muse et le Poète at the invitation of the Chopin Society of Hong Kong. In 2023, he performed The Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto with the Ponte Orchestra. In the summer of 2022, Wang was invited to be the soloist and concertmaster of the Young Musicians European Orchestra in Italy. In 2021, he completed and released the recording of 24 Caprices for Solo Violin by Paganini on his website.

In addition to performing, Wang is passionate about music education and charity work, and has given masterclasses at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. He currently teaches at the Hong Kong Baptist University. Born into a musical family in Shenyang, Wang received full scholarship to study at Central Conservatory of Music, where he learned under the tutelage of maestro Lin Yaoji.

Wang plays a 1788 Joseph Gagliano violin, donated by the Ladies Committee of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Society.

Violin

Gui Li has been studying the violin since she was five with her grandfather as her very first violin teacher. She made enormous improvements after a major training at Wuhan Conservatory of Music (Middle School Section) and won the Second Prize at the National Violin Competition in the Mainland (Hubei Province) and the Best Performance of a Chinese Composition for solo violin. She then gained a Bachelor’s degree from The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (APA) with a full scholarship and became a Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Orchestral Fellow of the Hong Kong Philharmonic in 2006.

During her time as a student, Gui Li was an active musician both inside and outside school. Besides taking part in different school concerts and solo recitals, she joined different local orchestras and participated in various masterclasses by world-renowned violinists and teachers, such as Joseph Silverstein, Charles Castleman, Lin Cho-liang and Kurt Sassmannshaus. Also, she was the recipient of a number of scholarships from the APA, including the Chan Chung On Violin Performance Merit Award, The Academy Non-Local Scholarship, Duchess of Kent International Scholarship and The Dorset Foundation Weinrebe and Hosier Scholarship. Moreover, she led a quartet to tour Thailand, as representatives of the APA.

Viola

Born in Yokohama, Japan, violist Kaori Wilson started her musical training at the age of 4 at Toho School of Music for Children. She then received full scholarships to study in a number of institutions, including Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, Queensland Conservatorium in Brisbane and The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

Kaori Wilson has been Assistant Principal Viola with the Hong Kong Philharmonic since 1996.

Cello

Richard Bamping has been Principal Cellist of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra since 1993. He has performed with many of the finest musicians of recent history — Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Leonidas Kavakos, Mstislav Rostropovich, Carlo Maria Guilini, Valery Gergiev, Leonard Bernstein, Lorin Maazel, Sir Colin Davis and Claudio Abbado, to name but a few.

Bamping has performed many of the staples of the solo cello repertoire with orchestras from Europe to the Far East. He has a great passion for playing chamber music with friends and colleagues whenever he gets the chance.

Bamping’s cello, dated 1674 was made in Cremona by Andrea Guarneri and is one of only nine surviving examples of his work.

Clarinet

Lorenzo Iosco is an Italian clarinettist and conductor, currently a member of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. He studied the clarinet at the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory and graduated with distinction. He then became a member of Madrid Opera House Teatro Real and later London Symphony Orchestra.

As a clarinettist, Iosco has worked extensively with many orchestras including Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of renowned conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Simon Rattle, Andris Nelsons and Esa-Pekka Salonen. For chamber music, he has performed all major clarinet repertoire in Europe and Asia. Performance highlights include his London Wigmore Hall debut in 2013, and performing as well as recording with the LSO woodwind ensemble.

He is the founder and artistic director of Ensemble Ubertini, a chamber orchestra based in Tuscany. In 2021, he made his conducting debut with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Since then, he has been repeatedly invited to lead the orchestra for various musical programmes.