Review | Erkki-Sven Tüür and Olivier Cong’s chamber music, performed by Hong Kong Philharmonic players, a study in contrasts
- Chamber concert brought together works by two composers worlds apart – Estonian prog rock veteran Erkki-Sven Tüür and young Hong Kong counterpart Olivier Cong
- Tüür’s work is about contrasts – in tonality, tempos and modes – and so too is that of Cong, in elegiac mood here with references to his home as ‘a dying city’
Indie musicians with classical pretensions are nothing new. Jonny Greenwood’s orchestral soundtracks and Bryce Dessner’s symphonic output immediately come to mind – two art rock guitarists in arena-filling bands (Radiohead and The National, respectively) who have both previously been programmed by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
To that list we can add Hong Kong’s very own troubadour-turned-auteur Olivier Cong, who was paired in “The Wind with a Voice”, a left-field chamber concert staged by HKPhil on May 30, with Erkki-Sven Tüür, the Estonian composer whose early prog rock lineage doubtless inspired the intergenerational exchange.
Tüür, perhaps best-known for leading the band In Spe from behind the Iron Curtain, will also see the Asian premiere of his Symphony no. 10, ÆRIS, for Four Horns and Orchestra performed by the full orchestra on June 2-3.
The programme of “The Wind with a Voice” ping-ponged between the two men’s works and was divided by somewhat incongruous home videos each composer filmed of their hometowns – Hong Kong’s city streets cast next to a snowy Baltic wilderness, an MTR ride juxtaposed with a beautiful Tallinn castle, glowing evening sun intercut with urban alienation.
If these cute clips were designed to highlight how far apart the composers’ worlds are, then the musical programme was tasked with closing that gap.
Both men, for one, seemed particularly attuned to extra-musical cues.
Often first conceived visually in sketched form, Tüür’s early work draws from the contrasting shapes and tactile surfaces of buildings, in evidence here in the thrilling Architectonics VI (1992), where the instrumental families represent different “materials”: the unruly, atonally abstract woodwind section wrestles through growing fog clouds cast by the formal, modally melancholic strings (while the vibraphone, at times, attempts to keep score).
In the 63-year-old’s surreal Fata Morgana (2002), the contrasts are sly and multifarious – the telepathic trio darts easily between startling changes in tempos and tonalities, before stopping with deliberation at every page turn.
A programmatic sense pervades: fleeting moments of inner musical coherence appear designed to conjure the sense of mirage implied in the title. The piano periodically lays familiar footsteps, sparking a sensation of déjà vu.
Cong’s aesthetic confrontations are more wrought, more on the nose – strafing the chasms between technology and tradition, organic and recorded sound, music and verse.
Most arresting was “The Response” from Cong’s 2020 album City of Strange, which he has described as a collection of “short stories about a dying city”.
After a minute of apocalyptic string turmoil, Cong himself recited an eerie monologue from behind the synthesiser on stage, ending the with the couplet, “This is a city of strange, and I can never leave”.
Inspired by synthesised voices, “Solace” saw melodramatically mournful strings cry out over thumped descending piano chords, which the artist appeared to sample on the spot, before conjuring a haunting electronic heartbeat.
The concert closer, “A Prayer of Mine”, offered an oblique elegy for the composer’s own “tropical church” (Hong Kong again, of course) over minor chords and samples of wildlife calls, which perhaps proved one spoken word moment too many.
As the piece’s final notes rang out, the big screen sparked to life once more with an image of a snow-carpeted cabin that can only be Tüür’s home – suspicions confirmed when the visiting composer, seated two seats to my right, broke all the house rules to pull out his phone for a commemorative snap.
“Erkki-Sven Tüür and Olivier Cong – The Wind with a Voice”, co-presented by the Hong Kong Philharmonic and West Kowloon Cultural District. The Box, Freespace. Reviewed: May 30.
