Horn Showcase

EVENT DESCRIPTION

City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong (CCOHK), under the baton of chief conductor Vahan Mardirossian, presents Horn Showcase with Hong Kong hornist Harry Chiu as the featured soloist. Harry Chiu will perform some of the best classical and romantic showstoppers of the solo French horn repertoire.These include Mozart’s Concerto for Horn No. 3, a work written for Mozart’s close friend Joseph Leutgeb, who was an extraordinary horn player and the owner of an enticing cheese shop!

Harry Chiu will also perform on both the modern and the natural horn in the romantic-styled Villanelle for Horn and Orchestra by French composer Paul Dukas. Romantic summer idylls for orchestra dominate the rest of the programme including Arthur Honegger’s Pastorale d’été, a musical snapshot of a resort village in the Swiss Alps and Zoltán Kodály’s A Summer Evening, a work with calm and gently flowing themes that evoke the memory of a pleasant European summer evening.

Artists
Harry Chiu, Horn

Vahan Mardirossian, Chief Conductor

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong (CCOHK) holds a unique position as one of Asia’s leading chamber orchestras. Members are professional musicians experienced in playing a diverse range of music styles and genres including Baroque, Classical, Contemporary, East/West Crossover, Tango, Jazz, Cinema and Orchestra Theatre.

Established since 1999, CCOHK has performed with many world-class artists including Sir James Galway, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Dame Emma Kirkby, Sir Thomas Allen, Sir Neville Marriner, Michala Petri, Christian Lindberg, Sarah Chang, Philippe Entremont, Julian Lloyd Webber, Edgar Meyer, Branford Marsalis, Richard Galliano, Sharon Isbin and Dawn Upshaw. The orchestra has also collaborated with celebrities including Hayley Westenra, Richard Clayderman, Robin Gibb, Dame Edna Everage and Canto-pop stars Sandy Lam, Hins Cheung, Hacken Lee and Jacky Cheung.

Additional highlights include concerts with the Vienna Boys’ Choir, The American Boychoir, the Warsaw Boys Choir, the Swedish Voices Chamber Choir, the King’s Singers and the Swingle Singers. On tour CCOHK has been invited to perform in Italy, Taipei, Beijing, Chengdu and at the 20th China Shanghai International Arts Festival. In Hong Kong, CCOHK’s engagements have included Hong Kong Ballet, French May Arts Festival, RTHK Radio 4’s televised Christmas Concerts in the Park, the World Harp Congress and The Hong Kong International Piano Competition.

A keen supporter of contemporary music, CCOHK has performed for Musicarama and at the Hong Kong Contemporary Music Festival, and has commissioned new works by Mao Yuan, Daniel Binelli, Dobrinka Tabakova and Richard Harvey. The orchestra’s CDs include world premiere recordings on four internationally acclaimed releases on the NAXOS, Orchid Classics, Forgotten Records and OUR Recordings labels. CCOHK’s passion for building young audiences for music has inspired the evolution of several new and fully staged musical productions and extravaganzas. Credits include Magnificent Mozart, The Star Bach, Vivaldi Unmasked, The Bonn Man, Haydn & The Prince, WILD (The Musical) and Bug Symphony, winner of the Public Choice Award at the YAMawards in Portugal 2017. At the helm of CCOHK’s artistic planning is CCOHK’s founder Leanne Nicholls who was awarded for Community Service in the HKSAR’s Chief Executive’s 2022 Honours List for her contributions to the development of classical music in Hong Kong. Chief conductors include French conductor Jean Thorel (2008 to 2016) and Armenian conductor and virtuoso pianist Vahan Mardirossian (since 2019).