The Joy of Music Festival: A Brief Introduction

One of the major events organized by the Society is the triennial Hong Kong International Piano Competition which has already been held twice (in 2005 and 2008), with the next one scheduled to take place in October 2011.
It has always been the aim of the Society that the competition should be a musical event and not a “musical race”. Thus it becomes important that once the competition is over, the intervening two years to the next competition should act as a continuity and link between these triennial events. That is how the Joy of Music Festival was born, taking place in these two intervening years between competitions and featuring members of the jury of the competition in recitals and masterclasses as well as recitals by the first prize winners of the competition. In addition to these artists connected directly with the competition, the Society also invited other world-class artists such as the guitarist Alvaro Pierri and also featured the chamber ensemble drawn from the LCO (The London Chamber Orchestra) which has a standing residency in Hong Kong as well as acting as the orchestra in the first competition in 2005.
For this Festival the Society wishes to highlight the following events:

• The Masters Series, sponsored by Lady Kadoorie, featuring major artists in performance and also masterclasses open for free to music students in Hong Kong and in the PRC. In this Festival (in alphabetical order) Gary Graffman (piano), Alvaro Pierri (guitar) and Pascal Roge (piano) will perform and give masterclasses.
• The Winners Series, sponsored by Teresa Li-Lai presenting first prize winners of major international piano competitions. In this Festival the Society presents the first prize winners of the Society’s past Hong Kong International Piano Competitions, Ilya Rashkovskiy (2005) and Jinsang Lee (2008) in solo piano recitals.
• The LCO (London Chamber Orchestra) Chamber Group in residency in Hong Kong. As in past Festivals, the Chamber Group will perform by themselves as well as play together with some of our featured artists. The LCO is one of UK’s premier chamber orchestras, unusual in its composition as it brings together in independent association some of the best players from the major orchestras in the U.K.

In the following pages you will find details of the individual performances as well as the timetables for the piano and guitar masterclasses.

Dr Andrew Freris
Chairman
The Chopin Society of Hong Kong Ltd