“Yan Liangkun & HKCO” concert will be held on 15 – 16 December, at 8pm, at the Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall.

    The great conductor Yan Liangkun, now aged 83, was born in 1923. He has been conducting choral, orchestral and Chinese music for almost seventy years and is still an active figure on the Chinese music scene. Both Yan Liangkun and Peng Xiuwen had gone through some of the hardest times in modern Chinese history. They were the best of friends as they had ridden out the storms and worked, side by side, in music for many decades. Peng Xiuwen spent all his life in efforts to lay the foundation for the Chinese orchestra, through conducting, arranging music, composition and education work which made him a giant of 20th Century Chinese ethnic music.

    On this occasion, when Maestro Yan was invited to conduct the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra again, he has obviously his old friend on his mind. The Orchestra will perform under his baton with all-time favourites in the legacy of Peng Xiuwen. They include the boisterous, happy and lyrical Drums in Celebration of a Bumper Harvest, the cinematic tone poem Transcendental Chanting from the Mount of Enlightenment, the award-winning The Flowing Water, and the tribute to Hong Kong after seeing the world-famous illuminations, Hong Kong – the City that Never Sleeps.

    Apart from the works of Peng Xiuwen, Guo Wenjing’s Two Melodies of West Yunnan with its distinct exotic charm will also be featured. And Zhang Qiang, the pipa artist from Beijing, will join with HKCO to perform Little Sisters of the Grassland.

    World premiere of Nine Dragons: Dance to Soar by Hui Cheung-wai, the 3^rd piece of Cadenza of Hong Kong, will be another highlight of the concert.

    Tickets for “Yan Liangkun & HKCO” concert are now available at all URBTIX Outlets at $220, 150 and 100. Half-price tickets are offered for senior citizens, people with disabilities and full-time students. Please refer to the programme leaflet for more details on discount schemes. Enquiries: 3185 1600; Booking Hotline: 2734 9009. Internet Booking: www.urbtix.hk; HKCO website: www.hkco.org .

─ End ─

Artists Biography

Yan Liangkun Conductor
Born in 1923 in Wuchang, Hupei, Yan Liangkun participated in patriotic singing activities under the mentorship of Xian Xinhai during the Sino-Japanese War when he was a teenager. He joined the Children's Theatre Group in 1938 and has picked up the baton since then. In 1942, Yan entered the National Conservatory of Music and studied theory and composition under Jiang Dingxian and conducting under Wu Bochao. He was admitted into the Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Music in Moscow in 1954 to pursue postgraduate studies in orchestral and choral conducting under the tuition of two renowned Russian maestri, Anosov and Sokorov. Yan conducted the premiere of the "Yellow River Cantata" sung by the Children's Theatre Group in 1940 and the premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in China in 1959 with the Central Orchestra under his baton. He has extensive experience in conducting a diversity of choral repertoires for concerts and was the coordinating conductor for "The East is Red", an epic in music and dance. In recent years, Yan has been invited to lead delegations and performing troupes on tour to North America, Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong where, apart from conducting, he also gives lectures.

Zhang Qiang Pipa
Zhang Qiang is a pipa recitalist and Associate Professor of Traditional Music, Head of the Centre for Pipa Research, and supervisor of the Master’s degree Programme for Pipa of the China Conservatory. He is also the Deputy Secretary of the Professional Committee on Pipa of the China Nationalites Orchestra Society. Zhang has given many pipa concerts (including those with his students) and talks in China and other parts of the world. He has appeared in international arts festivals, including the Edinburgh Festival, the Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary Music, the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Berliner Festwochen (Berlin Festival), and those held in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and in world famous venues such as the Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, the Philharmonic Hall of the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Goldener Saal of Musikverein in Vienna, and the National Concert Hall of Taipei. Zhang performs the pipa with virtuosity, showing his capable command of diverse musicality through his broad repertoire and sensitive interpretations.