Flier
Love & Passion
| Performance Date: | November 22, 2001 |
| Venue: | Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall |
| Soloists: | Katusha Tsui-Fraser, Soprano Alex Tam, Tenor |
| Conductor: | Jerome Hoberman |
| Program: | Love Bade Me Welcome (Hong Kong premiere) |
| John Tavener (1944- ) | |
| Die Geselligkeit, D. 609 | |
| Franz Schubert (1797-1828) | |
| Two Songs | |
| Robert Schumann (1810-1856) | |
| Four Quartets, Op. 92 | |
| Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) | |
| Love Songs (Asian premiere) | |
| Libby Larsen (1950- ) | |
| Catulli Carmina (Hong Kong premiere) | |
| Carl Orff (1895-1982) |
Morde me! O, bite me! Basia me!
O kiss me!
[from Prelude]
Odi et amo... I hate, and yet I love.
Why do I, you may well ask? I do not know,
but I feel it, and it tortures me! [from Act I]
~ Catullus (84-54BC)
The HKBC's concert "Love and Passion" examines Love, both secular and sacred. The centrepiece is the Asian premiere of Carl Orff's "Catulli Carmina", the sequel to his enormously popular "Carmina Burana". This rarely performed work, second in Orff's "Trionfi" trilogy, is the most controversial of the three, due to its explicit Latin text.
"Catulli Carmina" (1943) is based on seven poems by the classical Roman poet Catullus, known for his celebration of profane (as opposed to sacred) love. Catullus, friend of Cicero and Julius Caesar, is most famous for turning life into art, by documenting his passionate, tragic affair with the promiscuous wife of the Roman Consul. Orff uses Catullus' elegant and earthy poems -- considered among the finest love-poems ever written in any language -- to present "Catulli Carmina" as a play within a play, bracketed by a chorus of rapturous young lovers and cynical old men.
Musically, "Catulli Carmina" develops the methodology of "Carmina Burana" by using an ensemble of four pianos and a large percussion section instead of an orchestra. Orff aimed to radically simplify music through a concentration on melody and vigorous rhythm, as a means toward direct communication with the audience.
The vivid or eerie scoring ... delights and surprises with nervous ostinato, evocatively placed punctuation and rolling waves of piano chromatics imitating wind instruments. Listeners will instantly recognise Orff's distinctive staccato (even ostinato) choral writing of "ah"s and "ha"s, as well as other rhythmic devices.
~ Chia Han-Leon
The programme will also feature the Asian premiere of Libby Larsen's 'Love Songs' (1997), based on poems by 20th-century American women poets Muriel Rukeyser, Jeanne Shepard, Bessie Smith, Willa Cather and Angelina Weld Grimke. Larsen, 51, has been called "the only English-speaking composer since Benjamin Britten who matches great verse with fine music so intelligently and expressively (USA Today)." More about this prolific leading contemporary composer.
The concert opens with a selection of Romantic part-songs by Schubert, Brahms and Schumann, and "Love bade me welcome", a rare secular work by the contemporary and very popular British composer John Tavener, couched in his familiar style which owes much to Greek Orthodox chant.