Hooked on Music: Choreographer Yuri Ng
Credit: RTHK Radio 4

Just hate it when people calls me a DJ. A disc jockey is someone who selects and plays music to an audience, often associates with the world of pop music. My role as a radio presenter/producer in classical music goes far beyond that. For me, radio program is an art.

I present a bilingual (English and Cantonese) radio show, ‘Four for Classics with Jenny Lee’ (愛樂同盟), on the only classical music and fine arts channel in Hong Kong, Radio Television Hong Kong Radio 4. It is a two hours music program, at 4-6pm, Mondays to Fridays, with a wide range of segments every day. The music is computer generated and monitored by my colleagues, however, I often make sure that it is well balanced; from popular classics to unknown works, from vintage recordings to fun arrangements, from performance by international stars to that of our local talents.
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Beethoven
Minuet in G
Beethoven
“Moonlight” Piano Sonata no.14, C sharp Minor
Carl Maria von Weber
Der Freischutz, J277
Schubert
Winterreise, Op. 89, D. 911

Delacroix – Liberty leading the People

BBC Music Magazine asked ten critics to name the masterpieces they found most boring – a good trick to create buzz and drive forum discussions.

How then do you qualify a boring masterpiece? For that matter, if the piece is boring, how can it be considered a masterpiece to start with? Personally, I think all masterpieces can be boring, and most music can be masterpieces, all depending on who’s performing.
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The opening scenes of the Irene Langemann’s documentary Die Martins-Passion (Martins’ Passion, 2004) are exquisitely adequate in presenting the life of Brazilian pianist Joao Carlos Martins: a grand piano is hoisted up dozens of floors outside an apartment building in central Sao Paulo. The image is as surprising as it is poetic – the piano rises above buildings and treetops, while on the pavement a man directs the workers who are pulling the ropes, moving his hands like a conductor leading an orchestra. Music rising above the realities of the street and difficulties of life is an apt summary of Martin’s life and musical career. For over fifty years, Martins has known the peak of the international piano scene, depths of injury and depression and a wildly successful conducting job. As in the opening scenes of the documentary, the soundtrack to this journey is all Bach. In this first piece about Martins, I propose to write about his life, whereas the next one will focus on his playing.
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Reflections on the Advanced Cultural Leadership Program

Group photo of the 3rd ACLP

“The One-Armed Swordsman” (Dubei dao “獨臂刀”) is an old Chinese film depicting the life of a swordsman of the Golden Sword School. During a ferocious fight, the swordsman’s right arm tragically gets cut off, ending his career as a swordsman. Abandoned in a state of depression, he is rescued by a peasant girl who finds him unconscious in a nearby river. Upon his recovery, she hands him a half burnt kung-fu manual that inspires him to train himself into a master of a new one-armed swordsmanship.

Austrian-born Paul Wittgenstein was an ambitious young man who dedicated his life towards becoming an acclaimed pianist and musician. By the young age of 26, he was already playing with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra performing piano concerts for large audiences.

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I love Italy.

Italians have a particular sense of elegance – refined, understated and polished, with delicate attention to detail. They are probably the most sophisticated Europeans. Yet their food is unpretentious – simple but so heavenly delicious – not to mention the desserts and the wine. And, of course, there’s the culture – the architecture, arts, music and opera.

I haven’t been to Milan in years, and the last time I went, it was for a whirlwind one-day meeting with a fashion house. All my previous visits were for business, so I lacked the opportunity to explore the history of the city, much less spend an evening at a concert or opera.

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In the middle of the 18th century the last shadows of the Baroque faded into the more intimate, colorful and pastoral Rococo period. All of the art forms, particularly those in painting and music, emphasize the “artificial” disguised as the “natural”. But the 18th century saw a new philosophy begin to emerge in Germany, England and France – ‘The Age of the Enlightenment’ – with the writings of Burke, Paine and Hume, Kant, Hegel and Goethe, Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot, just to name a few. This new ‘Age of Reason’ influenced all subsequent artistic representation.

One primary aspect of interest in the new Age was its fascination with and absorption of the artist theory and practice of its ancient historical antecedents. The excavations of Pompeii, Herculaneum and the ancient Greek settlements in Asia Minor, as well as the Napoleonic revival of the ideals and scope of the Roman Empire, all nourished an international current of imitation of classicism: ‘Neo-Classicism’.

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There is an illuminating – if difficult to verify – account that, during the French Revolution, the harpsichords of the Paris Conservatoire were dismantled and used for firewood. Such stories are, sadly, recurring themes in times of instability: proud intellectuals burning their books to stay warm during the siege of Sarajevo form a recent image. However, there is something so symbolic about the burning of the harpsichords during the Revolution: an image of an instrument that was falling out of favour being destroyed in the event that marked the birth of Modernity. Indeed, all throughout that most modern of centuries, the 19th, the harpsichord was overshadowed by the pianoforte (the modern piano) and it was not until the early twentieth century that it began to make a comeback.

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