51st Hong Kong Arts Festival

EVENT DESCRIPTION

The Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF) is pleased to announce details of the forthcoming 51st HKAF in February and March 2023, with the return of live in-venue performances, complemented by diverse PLUS, outreach and education events. The 51st HKAF opens officially on 17 February 2023 at the Grand Theatre of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, with the Ballet of Slovene National Theatre Maribor’s performance of Radio and Juliet & Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), and closes on 18 March 2023 at the Concert Hall of Hong Kong Cultural Centre, with the Bamberg Symphony’s performance of a programme including symphonies by Dvořák and Brahms, led by conductor Jakub Hrůša.

“In its 51st edition, the Hong Kong Arts Festival is ‘Coming Back and Moving Forward’—we have sustained interest in the performing arts over the past few years with the presentation of online performances as well as rescheduled in-venue performances where possible; and now, we look forward to returning to concert halls and theatres for live performances in 2023. With Flora leading the organisation, I have no doubt that the upcoming Festival would be a triumph,” says Mr Victor Cha, Chairman of the HKAF.

“We are immensely appreciative of the support from the Leisure and Cultural Services Department of the HKSAR Government, which has been invaluable to the success of the Festival. We are also incredibly grateful for The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, which has been a steadfast sponsor of the Festival over the past five decades. Our heartfelt thanks also go to our partners, donors and sponsors, as well as participating artists, who have all made substantial contributions towards the Festival.”

Ms Flora Yu, Executive Director of the HKAF, officially assumes her new role today. “I am honoured and grateful for this opportunity to continue to serve the Festival in a new capacity,” says Ms Yu. “On behalf of the HKAF team, I am delighted to welcome many wonderful artists who will be coming to Hong Kong for the upcoming Festival, including Ballet of Slovene National Theatre Maribor, Jakub Hrůša with Bamberg Symphony, Laurence Equilbey with Insula orchestra and accentus, Handspring Puppet Company, Ricercar Consort, Natalia Osipova, Bruce Liu, Philippe Jaroussky, Cameron Carpenter, Esmé Quartet and Michel van der Aa.

“We are also pleased to showcase Hong Kong’s home-grown talent in the highly anticipated HKAF-commissioned production Table for Six on stage, as well as the long-awaited musical Yat-sen. Plus an exciting line-up of traditional and new Cantonese opera works awaits, including Cantonese Opera Classics Circa 2023, Love in the Bamboo Grove and The Painted Skin (Refined Edition). We hope our audiences enjoy the programmes at the 51st HKAF as much as we have enjoyed preparing for them.”

PROGRAMMES OF THE 51ST HKAF

The Ballet of Slovene National Theatre Maribor, led by multi-award-winning choreographer, Edward Clug, opens the Festival with two of his ingenious creations that re-imagine enduring classics—Radio and Juliet and Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), followed by Peer Gynt, a visually stunning dance-theatre masterpiece inspired by Ibsen’s classic play.

Jakub Hrůša is a conductor “on the verge of greatness”, and the Bamberg Symphony is one of Europe’s great orchestras. For the Festival Finale, they will explore the music of Brahms, Dvořák and Ligeti: composers who both celebrated and remade tradition.

Directed by Olivier-award-nominated Ben Duke, Lost Dog’s Juliet & Romeo presents a humorous and heartfelt duet in a unique blend of dance, theatre and comedy about love, loss and longevity.

Natalia Osipova, one of the most highly sought-after ballerina superstars in the world, makes a dazzling appearance in two programmes—Two Feet, a thrilling two-hour solo show which features Osipova at the height of her powers, and Force of Nature, in which she will be joined on stage by an all-star cast in a glittering array of dance ranging from classical to contemporary.

A stunning, bittersweet updating of the opera—Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse (The Return of Ulysses)—by William Kentridge, the Ricercar Consort and Handspring Puppet Company—an ancient tale retold with puppetry, animation and a live performance of Monteverdi’s ravishing score.

The musical Yat-sen vividly brings to the HKAF stage the volatile early life of the idealistic young student who became an important historical figure.

Pianist Bruce Liu rocketed to fame when he won the 18th International Chopin Piano Competition in 2021. His Hong Kong debut features works by Chopin, Ravel and Liszt: music to impress and enchant. Liu will also join forces with international award-winning conductor Wilson Ng and the world-class Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, and let their spirits soar—in Chopin’s radiant Second Piano Concerto and Elgar’s epic First Symphony.

Acclaimed British artist Mat Collishaw creates a cinematic parable of human survival in a world at odds with nature in Sky Burial: matching dystopian images to the serene music of Fauré’s Requiem, performed live by Laurence Equilbey, Insula orchestra and accentus. In their second concert, they use period instruments to put the sparkle and the danger back into an all-Beethoven concert—Beethoven on Period Instruments. Expect surprises, revelations and unfamiliar sounds as music’s greatest revolutionary is made new again.

Music unites, and music communicates. The HKAF assembles the award-winning Esmé Quartet, the Hong Kong Arts Festival Chorus, the Hong Kong Children’s Choir, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Wilson Ng in Voices of Hope and Togetherness—A Choral and Orchestral Gathering, to perform works by two of the world’s most respected contemporary composers.

Superstar countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and soprano Emőke Baráth become Orpheus and Eurydice in this dramatic, richly emotional retelling of the Greek myth, created from the music of three different 17th-century composers with the French period-instrument group Ensemble Artaserse in La storia di Orfeo. The power of music: born and reborn.
The Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra performs music from Cantonese operas, in The Stage Door on Mars.

Superstar organist Cameron Carpenter brings his punk style and outsize charisma back to the HKAF. His opening recital celebrates the music of JS Bach—Carpenter plays Bach, including his own stunning transcription of the Goldberg Variations—music of infinite possibility, played by an artist who knows no boundaries. The two Carpenter plays Silent Movies concerts come with colourful live accompaniments to Buster Keaton’s The General and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis—two all-time classics of silent cinema. The pictures are black and white, but the sounds are in Technicolor.

Dazzle—Esmé Quartet Recital features four outstanding young musicians, born in South Korea and now based in Germany, who have taken concert halls by storm. Discover why, as the members explore the richness of the European chamber tradition in emotionally charged masterworks by Haydn, Borodin and Schubert.

King’s Harmonica Quintet is world-famous for the prowess and joy of its music-making. Now it returns with a programme of classics old and new by Mozart and Shostakovich: prepare to be delighted and (above all) moved at Journey of the World Champion: King’s Harmonica Quintet 2023.

The organ has been called the “king of instruments”, and Hong Kong’s own Anne Lam is one of its finest performers. She joins the HK Phil Brass Quintet in The Joy of Brass and Organ, a concert of tuneful classics to entertain—and inform—listeners of all ages.

The Book of Water is a meditation on memory, nature and knowledge from the celebrated composer and stage director Michel van der Aa. The world premiere sold out at the Venice Biennale. It also features award-winning British actor Samuel West, acclaimed string quartet the Esmé Quartet live on stage, with actor Timothy West and British soprano Mary Bevan appearing via film projection. Don’t miss your chance to watch the Asian premiere!

Written by Sunny Chan and directed by Tong Wong, the much-anticipated Table for Six on stage is a new stage adaptation of the eponymous crowd-pleasing film set in modern-day Hong Kong. The story is anchored by the Chinese dining tradition of eating together and explores the intimacy and alienation of family ties.

The five-star documentary/live theatre hybrid show True Copy by BERLIN thrills the audience with the story of one of the most notorious swindlers in the art world, examining the hypocrisy inside the art world.

The “Godfather of Drama” Fredric Mao collaborates with the HKAF once again—this time in Cantonese Opera Classics Circa 2023 together with a stellar cast hand-picked by Mao himself performing three renowned excerpts combining opera traditions with a modern theatre vision.

An exquisite new Cantonese opera by award-winning playwright and screenwriter Raymond To Kwok-wai, Love in the Bamboo Grove explores various forms of love through the adventures of the descendants of the culturally and historically significant figures, the Seven Sages.

Helmed by esteemed Cantonese opera veteran Yuen Siu-fai, Virtues and Morality—Four Cantonese Operas is a quartet of original Cantonese operas that illustrate traditional Chinese values in an entertaining and accessible way through stories of loyalty, shame, etiquette and righteousness.

In the new HKAF production The Painted Skin (Refined Edition), a classic Chinese ghost story of romance, betrayal, sacrifice and forgiveness is brought to life by a talented artistic team including the playwright Tse Hue-ying, who triumphantly takes on two contrasting roles of the spirit and the wife.