Review | Van Gogh and Klimt artworks get torn apart to music based on Debussy, Gustav Mahler, Saint-Saëns and more in vibrant choral show
- Performed at the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Van Gogh in Me is a 70-minute multimedia display of music and visual art by the Netherlands Chamber Choir
- The moving production resonated long after it had finished; however, not incorporating the texts in the projections was a significant omission
“What’s the difference between music and painting? About 10 years,” a composer friend used to say.
His point was that, from 17th-century Baroque to 20th-century Minimalism, major societal trends were reflected on the canvas – along with sculpture and architecture – some time before composers found a way to express a similar sensibility in sound.
The Netherlands Chamber Choir brought that sentiment to the Hong Kong Arts Festival last weekend in their programme “Van Gogh in Me”, a vibrant multimedia display of music and visual art that continued to resonate long after its 70-minute duration.
Inspired by a joint exhibition of works by Vincent van Gogh and Gustav Klimt at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum in 2015, the ensemble’s chief conductor, Peter Dijkstra, and artistic director, Tido Visser, put together a musical playlist that pricked similar responses in the ear, using works by Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Satie, Schoenberg, Richard Strauss and a thoughtful pairing of pieces by Gustav and Alma Mahler.
From there, the project went into the hands of Fuse, a multimedia art studio that uses technology “to interpret the complexity of human and natural phenomena” – a description in the programme book that couldn’t describe its role here any better.
