Piazzolla's Tango on Stage

A clear view of the HK Philharmonic with social-distancing

Last night, for the first time in over a year, I attended a concert by the Hong Kong Philharmonic in the Concert Hall of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre.

The concert, called "Piazzolla at 100!" featured the works of Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla, who would have been 100 on March 11. He is best known for his tango music, the most famous piece is Libertango.

When concertgoers entered the Cultural Centre, they had to either use the LeaveHomeSafe app, or write down their contact details. Seating inside the concert hall was quite spread out, with four people sitting together, separated by several seats and another set of four. 

The first three rows were blocked off, so I essentially sat in the first row! What a treat!

Piazzolla would have been 100 years old this year

All the orchestra members were masked except of course those playing wind instruments, who were separated by plexiglass partitions. Musicians usually sit in pairs sharing music, but now were spread out and each had their own music stand.

Argentine conductor Mariano Chiacchiarini, who is based in Germany, went through the 21-day quarantine in Hong Kong to lead a few concerts, including one on Brahms last week. I was surprised to see him come out with one of those plastic see-through masks, but realized he needed to show his facial expressions more clearly to the orchestra members.

He is very energetic and knowledgeable about Piazzolla, who was born in Argentina, but then moved to New York with his family when he was four years old. There he was exposed to tango through his father's records, and learned pieces by Bach on a bandoneon, a button accordion.

The first piece, Tangazo starts off slow and then becomes a very robust tango style. Piazzolla, Chiacchiarini explains, liked to use a lot of percussion in his work, even having the double bass musicians hit their instrument like a drum, or knock on it, while violinists make a funny squiggly sound, and even one that sounds like a quirky whip.

Tango purists did not like Piazzolla was doing to the music, and the conductor said that even taxi drivers refused to pick up the composer in protest, but he didn't mind -- he felt he was helping tango music not only gain a wider audience but also developed it further.

Piazzolla first learned music on the bandoneon

The second piece, The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, which is inspired by Vivaldi's Four Seasons, except Piazzolla's version starts with Summer, then Autumn, Winter then Spring. Here they played Winter and Spring. Originally it was only supposed to be played by a few instruments, and Piazzolla wrote it like a violin concerto, with the solo by the HK Phil's concert master, Jing Wang. 

He came out in a black T-shirt under a black jacket that had a dazzling silver spine at the back. One could tell he was itching to play and got a warm applause afterwards.

The orchestra also played music by Piazzolla's teacher, Alberto Ginastera called Estancia: Four Dances, op. 8a. When Ginastera was 25-years-old he was commissioned by the New York City Ballet's precursor to write a ballet score based on Argentine country life.

He wrote a one-act ballet where a city boy falls in love with the daughter of a cattle ranch owner, but he can only win her heart in a dancing contest with local cowboys. This piece had a very lively finish and we could imagine how the dancing went down in the competition!

Next up, some tango! Raymond Chu and Lily Cheng are well known in Hong Kong for their tango dancing and they came on stage -- very narrow due to the social-distancing of the musicians -- for them to dance. They seemed to look down on the ground often at first, perhaps a bit nervous about how much room they had to dance around in.

Lily Cheng and Raymond Chu danced the tango

But it was nice to see them dance to music by Piazzolla's contemporaries, like Gerardo Matos Rodriguez, and Julian Plaza. Chu and Cheng made it fun. In Piazzolla's Libertango, Cheng comes out on stage, but Chu hasn't arrived. Chiacchiarini turns around and she signals to him, Can you dance with me?

And he obliges and they twirl around a bit before Chu finally emerges on stage. Chiacchiarini points to his watch as if to say, "You're late!"

Check out this video of him conducting Libertango at the Lucerne Festival last year with fantastic tango dancers.

Afterwards the audience couldn't stop clapping for an encore (which sadly was a slow piece), but nevertheless, was a wonderful way to cap off a tough week for me work-wise and left me hoping to attend more concerts again in the future.

Piazzolla at 100!

Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall, April 16

Piazzolla: Tangazo

Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires: Winter, Spring

Ginastera: Estancia: Four Dances

Matos Rodriguez: La Cumparsita

Plaza: Nocturna

Piazzolla: Libertango

Zhang Daqian's Masterful Style

On Route Switzerland-Austria, 1965

 

This afternoon I managed to catch the last day of a special exhibition of Chinese painter Zhang Daqian's work at Sotheby's Hong Kong. This year marks the 120th anniversary of the artist's birthday.

Dunhuang painting, 1942

Entitled "Zhang Daqian: The Master", the show features nearly 60 works from the artist's family and prominent private collections, many of these pieces either rarely or never before seen in public. Many of them are works that he gave to his daughter, Chang Hsueh-liang.

When I arrived at Sotheby's in One Pacific Place in Admiralty around 3pm, the place was already packed with people of various ages, eager to examine the artist's paintings and calligraphy. Strangely not all the works were captioned in English which were otherwise very helpful for me to further understand the paintings.

Nevertheless the pieces show an array of Zhang's styles that ranged from intricate line drawings to his famous splash ink paintings that verge on abstraction. He definitely pushed Chinese painting forward, still keeping with traditional philosophy, but very contemporary at the same time.

Zhang was born in 1899 in Neijiang, Sichuan province and learned traditional Chinese painting from several teachers, including his mother. He copied the works of ancient masters, refining his skills in painting landscapes, birds and flowers, and figures.

In the early 1940s he went to Dunhuang, Gansu province for three years, copying the Buddhist grotto paintings that deeply inspired him to learn more about art from the Tang dynasty. His observations of Tang-dynasty figures were later integral to developing his style.

The lotus is a favourite subject for Zhang, this painted in 1973

However, because of the impending revolution in China, Zhang left China in 1949 and went to live in places like Argentina, Brazil, California, and Taiwan. He became exposed to modern Western art developments, like the Abstract Expressionists, and even met Pablo Picasso. It was then that he began developing the splash ink style and using vivid mineral colours.

The exhibition has Zhang's line paintings from when he was in Dunhuang. There's a dynamic painting of a girl dancing with ribbons and it comes alive with elegance and grace. Another shows a woman presenting an offering in a flowing robe.

A particularly impressive painting is called Spring Clouds Amid Autumn Landscape done in 1948. He gave this painting to a friend of his (he had many friends he gifted with art) who turned 50 years old, and this particular painting is so detailed it's mind-boggling to think he painted every single pine needle on the trees and every wave in the sea. Not only does it show his attention to detail, but also his ability to paint so finely.

And of course Zhang is well known for his lotus paintings using the splash-ink style. The leaves are lively from his large brushstrokes, and yet anchored by the deliberate lotus flower stems that are detailed with dots on them. It's more about the leaves than the flowers themselves.

A screen of a landscape painting for Zhang's daughter

There is a screen that he gifted to his daughter Chang when she was getting married. It features an abstract landscape that spreads across several panels. Chang wrote that her father seemed sad about her leaving home soon and it took him a long time to finish the screen, as if hoping that if he didn't finish it, she wouldn't leave. But eventually he did finish it and her brother brought it over for her wedding.

The landscape paintings -- of places outside of China are very interesting because they are painted in a Chinese ink brush style, though viewers are encouraged to use their imagination. One called On Route Switzerland-Austria looks more like a Chinese landscape, but it has a brilliant colouring from the blue-green palette, evoking greenery, but also there is contrast from a waterfall in the distance that creates a giant mist further down, or are they clouds? that create a backdrop for the chalets on the mountains.

A woman Zhang painted that's printed on the foam of a coffee

What a treat to see all these paintings. I also got a cup of (cold) coffee -- with one of Zhang's paintings printed on the foam! A few of us took pictures of each other's coffee cups. One woman didn't want to drink her coffee to ruin her print-out of a woman's face. Eventually she did drink it...

Playing the Tango

The members getting a standing ovation from some audience members

Over the Christmas holidays my friend YTSL asked me to go see a Tango-themed music concert in January. I said sure, as I like Tango music. We went this evening to see Viva Tango! The music of Schifrin and Piazzolla at the City Hall Concert Hall and weren't disappointed.

It was put on by the Beare's Premiere Music Festival, formerly known as the Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival, with Beare being a well known violin dealer based in London that specializes in antique stringed instruments.

The ensemble of musicians was diverse -- Cho-Liang Lin from Taiwan, who is also artistic director of the music festival, Argentine-born cellist Pablo Aslan who lives in New York, Alex Brown also from the US, Hector del Curto from Argentina and plays the bandoneon, kind of like an accordion, clarinetist David Shifrin from New York, and Satoshi Takeishi from Japan on percussion.

The ensemble played very well together

It was nice having Aslan introducing the music because he gave some context about why a piece was composed or what the composer was like and he would tell it in a funny way.

Another interesting tidbit is that the clarinetist Shifrin is the second cousin twice removed of Lalo Schifrin, who not only composes tango music as he's from Buenos Aires, Argentina, but he is also know for composing music scores, including Mission Impossible, Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon, Dirty Harry, and wrote many arrangements for the Three Tenors concerts.

So the clarinetist and the composer, their grandfathers were brothers. One went to the America, the other to South America.

The first half of the concert was dedicated to Schirfrin's music starting with a classic tango style -- Tango del Atardecer, that set the tone for the evening. Perhaps it was just missing some dancers doing the tango on stage, but really the music was so engaging that it was fun to watch them play -- and play very well together.



The third piece, Tango Borealis was slow but had a wonderful soft, elegant finish. The pace picked up with Malambo de los Llanos. Apparently the Malambo is a dance and Hector the bandeoneon was asked to demonstrate a few steps for us which was fun to watch.

After the intermission we were then introduced to Astor Piazzolla's music that started with Michelangelo 70 that was not a tribute to the Renaissance artist, but to a bar that Piazzolla and his band played at.

Piazzolla was born in Argentina then moved to New York and was exposed to a variety of music that is what makes his so eclectic, but still very much in the style of tango.

We were particularly enamoured with the piece Oblivion that was so beautifully performed with a light touch at the end. Here's a sample of Piazzolla playing the piece himself on the bandoneon:



The audience was just as thrilled to hear the music as we were -- though it was not completely full -- and the ensemble were probably pleased to see Hong Kong enjoying the music too. It wasn't too hard to twist their arm to do an encore for us and cellist Aslan joked that we really came to the concert to hear the piece of music they were about to play -- Mission Impossible by Schifrin!

It was funny to hear a small six-piece band play the theme song on a violin, a clarinet, piano, bandoneon and a cello! But here's Schifrin himself performing it in 2011. By the way he received an honorary Oscar in November for his contribution to soundtracks over the decades.



What I enjoyed about the concert was that it was a fusion of tango, jazz, and a bit of classical all rolled up together that made for a memorable evening.

Viva Tango! The Music of Schifrin & Piazzolla
Concert Hall Hong Kong City Hall

Schifrin: Letters from Argentina
Tango del Atardecer
Pampas
Tango Borealis
Danza de los Montes
Tango a Borges
Malambo de los Llanos

Piazzolla: Selected Tangos
Michelangelo 70
Verano Porteno
Adios Nonino
La Muerte del Angel
Oblivion
Libertango