Prison Yard Festival: West to east meanderingsTai Kwun

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, Turkey 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 tune Let’s Be Happy, 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 (arr. violin solo)
Brahms | Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115 (1891)
Bartók | Selections from 44 Duos for 2 Violins, Sz . 98 (1931)
Traditional (arr. Göran 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

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Remarks
For wheelchair user, please purchase tickets via URBTIX www.urbtix.hk
Latecomers will not be admitted