Celebrating music and artists

The series “The Joy of Music Festival” is an integral part of the Chopin Society’s activities and acts as a linking event between our triennial Hong Kong International Piano Competitions. Since 2011 the Festivals have also acted as the focus of various musical events during the years of Competitions themselves.

The Festivals have now been established as an important fixture in Hong Kong’s busy musical calendar with the first Festival being held in 2006, and then followed by presentations in 2007, 2009,2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and by a special event in 2014.

These were eight Festivals of high quality piano and guitar solo presentations, exciting and innovative performances by our resident string ensemble, the Logos Chamber Group, both on its own and with piano, guitar and winds, as well as individual cello and piano special events.

Key features of these presentations have been the performances of the first prize winners of our Hong Kong International Piano Competition held in 2005,
2008 and 2011 and now scheduled for September 27 to October 13, 2016.

The Festivals also featured members of the jury of the Competition as well as invited local and international artists and first prize winners of other major international music competitions.

Another key feature of all the Festivals has been the outreach activities in the form of free master classes/workshops in piano and guitar as well as special lectures and presentations on aspects of music and of musical performances.

An important part of the Society’s activities has always been the showcasing and introduction of local young talented musicians to a wider audience.
In this Festival, seven carefully selected local music students of a variety of instruments have been each asked to give a sample, so to speak, of their art. They will be each playing a short 7 to 10 minutes solo performance before the start of the main seven evening presentations of the Festival. The Society is most grateful to our artistic advisor Eleanor Wong, for selecting these music students and helping us to arrange for their performances.

Our competition’s three first prize winners, Ilya Rashkovskiy (2005), Jinsang Lee (2008) and Giuseppe Andaloro (2011) will perform in solo piano events, but each of them will also combine with
the other two to play music for two pianos ! And all three of them will play piano quintets with our resident Logos Chamber Group.

The Logos Chamber Group, formed by top string players from leading UK and European orchestras has been associated as the official chamber group of our Piano Competition as well as appearing regularly in The Joy of Music Festivals.

The Group, augmented by local artists and with the participation of our three first prize winners, will join the world famous guitarist Alvaro Pierri in a spectacular evening of performance of popular guitar concertos specially arranged for strings, winds and piano by Alvaro !

As part of our presentation of first prize winners from other major international piano competitions, we will be presenting Federico Colli, the first prize winner of the 2012 Leeds Competition.

Adding to our usual outreach activities, there will be educational programs of piano and guitar master classes by, respectively, the three first prize winners of our piano competition and by Alvaro Pierri. There will also be two additional special presentations. Andrew Walter, senior restoration engineer from the world–famous Abbey Road Studios, and mastering engineer of all the Society’s CDs issued under its Alpha Omega Sound label, will give a presentation and demonstration on the art and science of restoring old recordings. Last but not least, Henry Lai, the famous composer of film music in Hong Kong, will also share with us the secrets of his art which have made Hong Kong films a pleasure not only for the eyes but also for the ears.

The Society welcomes all its friends to the Festival and, as always, extends a heartfelt “Thank You” to our sponsors (listed separately in this leaflet) whose generosity has made this series of events possible.

Enjoi !