Prestige Hong Kong Adore Issue 2019

Completing their Ring cycle on Naxos, Jaap van Zweden and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra have at last released their much anticipated recording of Götterdämmerung, which proves conclusively that this enterprise was a success. There had been some concern that Wagner's tetralogy would be an insurmountable challenge for this inexperienced orchestra, and that an untried conductor and singers would be unable to give convincing performances from start to finish. Beginning with the release of Das Rheingold in 2015, which was followed by Die Walküre in 2016 and Siegfried in 2017, the performances showed increasing confidence and commitment, not least from van Zweden, who had planned this project since he began his tenure with the orchestra in 2012, but also from the orchestra, which provided consistently solid playing and many moments of sheer brilliance.

These two Tenth Symphonies represent powerful statements by composers undergoing the greatest of crises in their eventful lives. Gustav Mahler’s last and incomplete symphony was kept a secret by his widow Alma for many years after his death, the desperate scrawl of ‘Almschi!’ on its final page an outburst at her betrayal of their marriage. Shostakovich’s intense and deeply symbolic Symphony no.10, considered by many to be his finest, was kept hidden by the composer for fear of Soviet reprisals, and was only performed after Stalin’s death in 1953.