No music gets your blood pumping and your heart swooning like Carmina Burana—earthy and bawdy, tender and breathtakingly beautiful!  Framed by the great hymn to the fickle goddess of fate, this concert hall favourite celebrates the pleasures of spring, life, and love with immense forces that include stellar vocal soloists, the HK Phil Chorus and Hong Kong Children’s Choir, and conducting sensation Karina Canellakis (“the results were brilliant under Canellakis” L.A. Times) leading the Orchestra.

 

Haydn's Clock Symphony No. 101 completes the programme.
 

Details at www.hkphil.org

Concluding for this season the HK Phil’s two-year traversal of Mahler’s symphonies, Maestro Yu Long leads the composer’s sunniest and most approachable: the Fourth, whose ethereal last movement describes a child’s vision of heavenly life—overflowing bowls of tasty food, 11,000 maidens dancing, singing angels joining in the jubilation, and St. Cecilia and her kindred musicians—radiantly portrayed by soprano Rao Lan (“Her voice is phenomenal in size, nuances and coloration” Süddeutsche Post).

 

Sharing the programme is the amazing 13-year-old Serena Wang in Mendelssohn’s bravura Piano Concerto no. 1. The concert is opened by an overture of dancing fairies and romantic lovers, all beautifully crafted in Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night's Dream Overture.
 

Details at www.hkphil.org

Any child’s dream concert—the three most beloved pieces of classical music for kids, all on one fantastic programme at the HK Phil: Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf; twin-sister pianists and Hong Kong natives Chau Lok Ping and Ting rendering Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals; and Britten’s magnificent Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, with “Kiss Kiss Kids” radio personality Chu Fun as storyteller throughout the afternoon.

 

Details at www.hkphil.org

Be swept along…from dim Buenos Aires clubs where couples sway to sensuous rhythms to the Cultural Centre’s stage! The HK Phil is joined by tango dancers moving to Astor Piazzolla’s sultry “new tango,” infused with elements of jazz and modern classical music. Ksenija Sidorova, praised as “superbly subtle and virtuosic” (The Arts Desk), solos in the pulsing Bandoneón Concerto nicknamed “Aconcagua” for South America’s highest mountain peak—and you’ll hear why.
 

Details at www.hkphil.org

There are few opportunities to experience Beethoven’s “Triple Concerto” because it requires three superb soloists; but the Storioni Trio fits the bill with an interpretation hailed byGramophone as “intelligently balanced, beautifully played.”

 

Maestro van Zweden also leads one of Shostakovich’s most tumultuous works, composed in the midst of World War II; reflecting the suffering of the Russian people, the composer holds out hope that “all that is dark and oppressive will disappear; all that is beautiful will triumph.”
 

Details at www.hkphil.org

With Mahler’s Sixth—a tour de force for virtuoso orchestra—Maestro Jaap van Zweden and the HK Phil invite you to continue its exploration of Mahler’s symphonies.

 

The concert opens with the world premiere of a new commission by the young American-Chinese composer Conrad Tao, the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Composer-in-Residence for the HK Phil's 2016/17 season.

 

Details at www.hkphil.org

Maestro van Zweden immerses you in the drama of Brahms first symphony —from the opening’s pulsing rhythm to the jubilant finale’s noble horn calls and brass chorales - then acclaimed violinist Ning Feng (“impresses not only with his technical skill but also with a warm, inspired and consistently full and lyric tone” Pizzicato magazine) returns to capture both the virtuosic passages and sultry Gypsy rhythms of Bartok's second violin concerto.
 

Experience the magic, melancholy, and mystery of Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony— “Winter Dreams”—as you travel through a snowy Russian landscape. Lawrence Foster also leads the HK Phil and violinist Akiko Suwanai, the youngest-ever winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition, in Walton’s concerto—evoking his love for Italy in the lyricism of the solo violin and the shimmering, sensual sonorities of the orchestral accompaniment. In the intriguingly titled opener, Hong Kong-born composer Raymond Yiu portrays vibrant London through a series of colourful orchestral tableaux.