Prison Yard Festival 2024
The 3rd edition of Prison Yard Festival returns this December with a stellar line-up of local and international musicians, bringing exquisite concert experience at Tai Kwun’s atmospheric Prison Yard and Laundry Steps. We are thrilled to present the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) as the ensemble-in-residence. Led by its Artistic Director Richard Tognetti, the ACO will present three distinctive programmes including a re-imagined Vivaldi’s Four Seasons featuring Egyptian-Australian Oud virtuoso Joseph Tawadros; an evening of beloved string works by Pavel Haas and Tchaikovsky; and an artist development programme featuring Hong Kong’s outstanding Cong Quartet.
The Festival strives to build up a tradition by engaging musicians to re-interpret a continuous concept every year. It welcomes the return of the chamber ensemble led by Hong Kong Philharmonic’s Second Associate Concertmaster Wang Liang. Together with seven other leading musicians, they will perform Romanian composer George Enescu’s thrilling Octet. Pianist Aristo Sham, a homegrown virtuoso who enjoys an established international career, presents a long-awaited recital under the last full moon before the Winter Solstice.
Each concert will be accompanied by an electrifying fusion performance jointly presented by Hong Kong New Music Ensemble and Padmabhushan Ustad Mushtaq Husain Khan Association, juxtaposing the Indian, Chinese and Western Classical musical traditions.
‧ 40% off for Senior citizens aged 60 or above, people with disabilities and their minder, full-time students.
‧ 15% off for Tai Kwun Fans with valid discount code.
‧ 10% off for appointed member with valid discount code.
‧ Available on a first-come-first-served basis.
Prison Yard Festival 2024 Package Discount
‧ Each purchase of standard tickets for concerts on 2 different concerts ( 10% off )
‧ Each purchase of standard tickets for concerts on 3 different concerts ( 15% off )
‧ Each purchase of standard tickets for concerts on 4 different concerts ( 20% off )
‧ Each purchase of standard tickets for concerts on 5 or more concerts ( 25% off )
Email: info@taikwun.hk
Australian Chamber Orchestra – The Ottoman Four Seasons【Prison Yard Festival 2024】
As the centrepiece in their Tai Kwun residency, the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) - a visionary gathering of local and international string virtuosos - offers a glimpse of the famed Venetian Republic plainly fashioned in their own image. Set at the crossroads of Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire, their Venice is an unrivalled financial hub and international marketplace limited only by access to the sea, a thrilling cultural centre where goods and ideas from Asia, the Middle East and North Africa freely intermingle with the best that Europe had to offer.
Interspersed with Vivaldi's evocative The Four Seasons, a timeless memorial of the era, is the music of the Egyptian-born, Sydney-based oud virtuoso and composer Joseph Tawadros, arranged for strings by the ACO's Artistic Director Richard Tognetti. Echoes of melodies and harmonies, along with similar rhythms and playing techniques, between the Arabic tradition and the Italian Baroque reveal once again that the further back you look in history, the more our cultures have in common.
Programme
Vivaldi's The Four Seasons
Music by Joseph Tawadros
Original Ottoman Baroque works
Duration: Approximately 2 hours with a 20-minute interval
Running in counterpoint with this year's featured juxtaposition of Vivaldi's Venice with the neighbouring Ottoman empire is a cross-cultural look at Hindustani vocal stylings marked by virtuoso rhythmic interplay. The Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, following last season's 100th birthday tribute to composer György Ligeti, joins forces with the Padmabhushan Ustad Mushtaq Husain Khan Association, Hong Kong's premier Indian arts organisation, in presenting six short performances at Tai Kwun's Laundry Steps. Three concerts feature Hong Kong-based father-and-son vocalists Ghulam Siraj and Mehdi Hasan as well as Najmi Khan, all esteemed practitioners of Rampur-Sahaswan Gharana, a vocal style tracing its lineage back 400 years to the reign of the Mogul emperor Akbar. Three additional concerts will pair Shehzad Khan, an accomplished Bollywood musical figure, with Indian instrumentalists and members of the HKNME to create a singular fusion of Indian, Chinese and Western Classical traditions.
Programme
05.12.2024 (Thu) 6pm-6:30pm | Indian Vocal Performance by Najmi Khan
07.12.2024 (Sat) 5pm-5.30pm | Fusion Performance by HKNME with Sitar, Tabla and Harmonium
08.12.2024 (Sun) 1pm-1.30pm | Fusion Performance by HKNME with Sitar and Tabla
08.12.2024 (Sun) 5pm-5:30pm | Indian Vocal Performance by Mehdi Hasan
09.12.2024 (Mon) 6pm-6.30pm | Fusion Performance by HKNME with Tabla and Harmonium
15.12.2024 (Sun) 5pm-5:30pm | Indian Vocal Performance by Ghulam Siraj
Australian Chamber Orchestra – Tchaikovsky's Serenade【Prison Yard Festival 2024】
On their way to Tchaikovsky's popular Serenade for Strings, the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) literally takes the high road, opening with Wojciech Kilar's Orawa, inspired by the music of Poland's mountainous Podhale region, before scaling Pavel Haas's String Quartet No.2 [arranged for string orchestra], From the Monkey Mountains, its subtitle referring to a popular tourist destination in the Moravian highlands.
From Kilar's minimalist tone poem evoking a frenzy of folk fiddling to Haas' mid-century spiking of melancholic Moravian melodies with a strong dose of jazz, the ACO finally arrives at Tchaikovsky's Serenade, a brilliant mesh of tuneful melody and waltzing rhythms that remains remarkably memorable even by the Russian master's lyrical standards.
Programme
Kilar│Orawa
Haas (arr. Tognetti) │String Quartet No.2, From the Monkey Mountains
-interval- (20’)
Tchaikovsky │Serenade for Strings
Duration: Approximately 1 hour 30 minutes including a 20-minute interval
Cong's Schubert Quintet【Prison Yard Festival 2024】
Fresh from their residency with the Australian Chamber Orchestra in October 2024, the Hong Kong-based Cong Quartet (winners of the 2022 Adolfo Betti Award at the Virtuoso & Belcanto Chamber Music Competition in Tuscany) once again unfold their local roots on a universal canvas. Opening with the Cong Quartet's reimagining of Hong Kong-born, Philadelphia-based composer Adrian Wong's Childhood Sweet, a quasi-impressionistic sampling of local desserts (from durian to herbal jelly and tofu pudding) originally written for solo piano, the evening culminates in Schubert's String Quintet, a mature musical statement far removed from the charming tunes of the composer's early Viennese salons. Joined by ACO Principal Cellist Timo-Veikko Valve, the Cong plumb the depths of Schubert's final musical thoughts, where dance-like joy mingles with late-in-life ruminations on mortality.
Programme
Performed by Cong Quartet
Guest cellist: Timo-Veikko Valve (Principal Cellist of Australian Chamber Orchestra)
Adrian Wong │ Childhood Sweet
Schubert │String Quintet, D.956
Duration: Approximately 1 hour 10 minutes without interval
Beethoven by Moonlight – Stories of the Night【Prison Yard Festival 2024】
What better way to conclude the last full moon before the Winter Solstice than with Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata? Pianist Aristo Sham opens the evening with that famous work's companion piece, Beethoven's Piano Sonata No.13 (both sonatas in that opus subtitled "Quasi una fantasia" for their free-flowing form). In between, Sham offers further glimpses at the moon through "night pieces" by Chopin and Ireland, as well as Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit (in part inspired by a Nocturne by Debussy).
After the interval, Sham delves into more clear-cut musical storytelling in a series of Ballades spanning more than 150 years, from Chopin's introspective outpouring that essentially established the genre to Brahms' youthful narrative-driven continuation of the form to Kaija Saariaho's dreamy, multi-layered miniature from 2005.
Programme
Piano: Aristo Sham
Beethoven │ Piano Sonata No. 13 in E-flat Major Quasi una fantasia, Op. 27 No. 1
Ireland │ Ballade of London Nights
Ravel │ Gaspard de la nuit
- interval – (20’)
Chopin │ Nocturne in C minor, Op. 48 No. 1
Chopin │ Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23
Brahms │ Ballade No. 4 in B major, Op. 10 No. 4
Saariaho │ Ballade (2005)
Beethoven │ Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor Quasi una fantasia (Moonlight), Op. 27 No. 2
Duration: 1 hour 50 minutes including a 20-minute interval