Prison Yard Festival: Music from Within
20 - 30 NOV, 2023 | 6pm – 6:30pm
20-23, 27, 30.11.2023 (as opening performances)
There is no work more fitting for the birth centenary of composer György Ligeti (1923–2006) than his own Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes. Presented in collaboration with the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, 100 mechanical metronomes will be mounted at Tai Kwun’s Laundry Steps throughout the Prison Yard Festival period to perform this monumental work as a tribute to the composer’s provocative artistry.
Ligeti’s two-year flirtation with the Fluxus movement gave rise to several outstanding pieces, the last of which being the audacious Poème Symphonique (1962), which premiered in the Netherlands in 1963. It caused so much controversy that Dutch television decided to cancel its broadcast, to be replaced by a football game. Ligeti subsequently reworked the symphony for a more contemporary performance in 1982.
Veiled in mystery owing to its scarcity in public performance, the hundred pyramid-shaped metronomes, each set to a different tempo by 10 operators to be “conducted” for Poème Symphonique, create a mesmerising spectacle of audio and visual stimulation that is sure to dazzle and amaze!
Poème Symphonique will be performed at Laundry Steps multiple times over the festival week alongside his delightful Six Bagatelles and his son Lukas Ligeti’s Lakoni in Kazonnde for two drums as the opener of other Prison Yard Festival programmes.
Programme 1 (20 & 27 November 2023)
Free improvisation based on: Lukas Ligeti │ Lakoni in Kazonnde
György Ligeti │ Poème Symphonique
Performed by
Vicky Shin (Drums)
Samuel Chan Hin-kwong (Drums)
Programme 2 (21, 22, 23 & 30 November 2023)
György Ligeti │ Six Bagatelles
György Ligeti │ Poème Symphonique
Performed by
Angus Lee (Flute)
Wang Yu-Po (Oboe)
Linus Fung (Clarinet)
Alfred Lee (Horn)
Leung Tak Wing (Bassoon)
Moderators:
William Lane (20, 22 & 23 November 2023)
Daniel Lo (21, 27 & 28 November 2023)