Unlike sporting teams that forgo their treasured home ground advantage when playing away from home, touring orchestras can reap the benefits of performing at venues with better acoustics than their own.
That was the case recently when the Hong Philharmonic Orchestra performed in the acoustically bright Concert Hall of the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Beijing with Estonian conductor Paavo Järvi at the helm and Bomsori Kim as violin soloist.
To hear the Hong Kong Phil at a superior venue is to be reminded of the infamous sound anomalies of the orchestra’s “home turf”, the Hong Kong Cultural Centre’s cavernous Concert Hall on the Tsim Sha Tsui harbourfront.
The concert of works by Aavo Pärt and Sergei Prokofiev, also performed in Hong Kong on April 4, was a celebration of “pure” music that resonated with marked clarity in the Chinese capital’s main concert venue, referred to by some as “China’s Carnegie Hall” since it opened in 2007.
Immediately west of the Great Hall of the People and Tiananmen Square, “The Giant Egg” as the massive centre designed by French architect Paul Andreu is colloquially known, encases the hall, which also boasts the largest organ in the country.