The Best of Vienna Sound has come to HK!

Yesterday was a feast day. The Vienna Philharmonic has finally come to town! I heard it outside the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. Then I heard it inside. When I arrived at the official venue of the concert, I was surprised by the sound of music coming from the open space outside the concert hall. When I tried to locate the source of the sound, my eyes were met by a huge screen showing Herbert von Karayan in black and white, when he was much younger. In front of him were hundreds of people, both young and not so young, sitting on the ground inside an area cordoned off by some temporary metal stands. Next on the screen was an MC introducing the VPO, its history etc and was posing some quizzes to the audience on that venerable musical institution. I was enthusiastically beckoned to join the sitting crowd and was given a programme and a small grey bag as a souvenir. Out of curiosity, I went in and stayed for a while but the concert would begin in 10 minutes time. I had to leave. I was faced with a completely packed hall, something I hadn't seen for a very long time. The last time, it was Gergiev with the former Kirov orchestra. I had been looking forward for a long time to this concert the tickets of which I bought after waiting for almost two hours before they were on sale at an Urtix outlet. I am so glad that all my listless waiting had not been in vain.

The VPO arrived this time with two persons I had not seen before. The first was Matthias Goerne, a baritone. According to the programme notes, he was famous for his "warm baritone voice and his profound interpretation" since his opera debut in 1997 and had sung for such world class conductors as Gergiev, Maazel, Ozawa and Rattle and had 11 CDs under his name. He studied under Hans-Joachim Beyer, Elizabeth Scwarzkopf and Dietrich Fishcher-Dieskau and is now an honorary  professor of song interpretation at the Robert Schumann Academy of Music in Dusseldorf. The other was Christoph Eschenbach, music director of first the Philadelphia Orchestra and since 2008  that of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC.

We had a very varied programme. It started with a bang: the dramatic opening notes of Brahm's  Tragic Oveture Op. 81, said to be a companion piece to his Academic Festival Overture, more like a symphony than an overture because of its form, but also with lyrical elements as well. It continued with another very popular piece by Schubert, his Symphony No.8 in B minor (the Unfinished Symphony" ) with only two instead of the usual four movements, with part of a Scherzo, its main theme announced by the cellos and basses as was also its second theme but without any development section. True to its reputation, the VPO has its own special sound, unlike the sound of any other orchestra.I discovered its secret in the programme notes according to which, contrary to popular belief which attributes its different sound to the quality of its strings, what makes the difference is the quality of its brass: its clarinets have a special reed and special valves, narrower bores as have its bassoons, its trumpets, trombone, its tuba and its horns, all requiring different fingering and its flutes seldom use the vibrato.  As a result, its sounds are much brighter and richer in overtones and have a wider dynamic range. Under the energetic conducting of Eschenbach, a slim but muscular figure with a Yul Bryner type of polished bald head, with huge but slightly mechanical gestures and plenty of whole body movements, the VPO really delivered its uniformly golden sound in both pieces. In the soft passages, the sound was really delicate and in the strong passages, they delivered power but never barbaric power. To me, it is as if there is simply not the slightest "holes" in its sound and everything seems to tie in together as one differentiated but completely unified and co-ordinated sound, as a piece of golden embroidery. It was a joy to hear that sound.

The second half of the evening's programme switched to something rather more lyrical and in places rather military. Goerne sang for us the 11 songs of Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn) based on a collection of German folk songs which Mahler set to music. They are respectively: Der Schildwache Nachtleid (The Sentinel's Night Song, Rheinlegenchen (Little Rhine Legend), Wo die schönen Trumpeten blasen (Where the fine trumpets blow), Das irdissche Leben (Earthly Life), Urlicht (Primal Light), Lied des Verfolgten im Turm (Song of the Prisoner in the Tower), Verlorne Müh (Labor Lost), Des Antonius von Padua Fishpredigt (St. Anthony of Padua preaches to the Fishes), Lob des honen Verstandes (Praise of High Intelligence), Revelge (Reveille) and Der Tambourg'sell (The Drummer Boy). Goerne, a huge fellow with a round almost bald head with a matching body which would sway now to one side and now to another according to the music, sang with a voice which is so smooth and without rough edges that if not for its rich mellow near bass sound, it could almost be described as "feminine" and as there was no female singer, he sang both the male and female parts in some of the songs. The performance by VPO under Eschenbach and Goerne drew so much applause that we were delighted by two encores, including the traditional song which ends the Vienna New Year Concert, Strauss' Radetzky March. What a wonderful musical experience! I really don't know how long I will have to wait for another visit of the VPO. In the meantime, I shall have to be satisfied with the perfect sound I heard last night.