This concert by the Hong Kong Philharmonic was a celebration of musical youth. Not only did 20-year-old pianist Helen Huang perform Mozart's D minor concerto, but 12-year-old percussionist Mark Lung was one of the soloists in a work by John Chen. Playing as a duo with his percussionist father, Lung Heung-wing, his performance of Chen's Dragon Wings No 4 was impossibly cute. Dressed in matching braces and bow ties, father and son partnered each other with absolute precision, co-ordinating a joint cadenza for drums and engineering their gestures with uncanny accuracy. As a piece of music, Dragon Wings was a sprawling collection of cliches and second-hand melodies; its only merit was the way it allowed the soloists to show off their symbiotic musical relationship.
Huang's performance of the Mozart concerto may have presented more musical challenges than Chen's piece, but it lacked any of the charm created by the percussion duo. Her sound was unforgiving and harsh, and although she scarcely put a finger out of place, the lack of imagination crippled the concerto. The performance sounded mechanical and mannered, and the orchestral accompaniment was no better, as Samuel Wong's conducting missed the poetry and drama of Mozart's music.
The orchestra was on much more convincing form in excerpts from Busoni's Turandot Suite. Wong tore into the music's garish chinoiserie, and the orchestra's brash sound suited Busoni's vulgar exoticism. Wong has been the orchestra's music director for three years, and he seems to be striving for the polish and sheen of the great American orchestras. But he has a long way to go to match his models in subtlety and range. Whenever the music demanded lyricism or poetry, Wong could manage onlyaffected gestures.
Unfortunately, he chose one of the most lyrical symphonies in the repertoire to complete his programme: Dvorak's Sixth. Wong's relentless speeds made the work an uncomfortable experience, and the sound he produced from the orchestra lacked any weight or depth. He played the symphony as a superficial showpiece rather than a musical argument, an approach that dislocated Dvorak from his precursors in the symphonies of Brahms and the folk music of Bohemia.
