Welcome to the Grand Hall
Thank you for coming to this HKU MUSE event. To ensure that everyone enjoys the music, please switch off your mobile phones and any other sound and light emitting devices before the performance. Unauthorised photography and audio/video recordings in the Hall are prohibited. Enjoy the concert and come again.
30-31 AUG 2025 | SAT-SUN | 8PM
Grand Hall, The University of Hong Kong
Aristo Sham, piano
J.S. BACH / Suite from Violin Partita No. 3 in E major, BWV 1006
RACHMANINOV Preludio
Gavotte Gigue
J.S. BACH / Chaconne from Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004
BUSONI
RAVEL Gaspard de la nuit
Ondine
Le Gibet Scarbo
- INTERMISSION -
RACHMANINOV Études-tableaux, Op. 39
No. 1 in C minor, Allegro agitato
No. 2 in A minor, Lento assai
No. 3 in F-sharp minor, Allegro molto
No. 4 in B minor, Allegro assai
No. 5 in E-flat minor, Appassionato
No. 6 in A minor, Allegro
No. 7 in C minor, Lento
No. 8 in D minor, Allegro moderato
No. 9 in D major, Allegro moderato. Tempo di marcia
Aristo Sham
Pianist Aristo Sham exudes astounding intellect and a deep emotional resonance; a cultivated sophistication and an immediately engaging presence; a penchant to take on the great monuments of the piano repertoire and a natural, infectious spontaneity. This makeup is fuelled by a fascination with the world and its rich cultures: he was an international prodigy, is a voracious student of wide-ranging interests, and currently splits his time between three continents.
At the 2025 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Aristo found his breakthrough moment, taking home both the gold medal and the audience award at "one of the most prestigious contests in classical music" (The New York Times, June 2022). And the critics showered him with imaginative praise, calling him "a marvel of deft characterisation", "consistently authoritative", "a card-carrying risk taker", "a dapper, aristocratic figure on stage", and "a pianist I look forward to hearing again" ( The Dallas Morning News , Gramophone, and Texas Classical Voice). In just two months' time, he was mentioned in more than 800 news articles, and his Cliburn performance videos were streamed 2 million times across 125 countries.
Lisa-Marie Mazzucco / The Cliburn
Aristo was featured in the 2009 documentary The World's Greatest Musical Prodigies on Channel 4 (UK), has performed for royalty including King Charles, and was hailed by The New York Times in 2020 as an artist "whose playing combines clarity, elegance, and abundant technique". He has concertised across Asia, Europe, and the United States, with major highlights including the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra under Edo de Waart, English Chamber Orchestra under the late Sir Raymond Leppard, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, and Minnesota Orchestra. His 2025–2026 debut season as Cliburn winner includes a major tour of Asia through South Korea and China, and U.S. recitals for Aspen Music Festival, La Jolla Music Society/The Conrad, UCSB Arts and Lectures, and the Skyline Piano Artist Series at Northwestern University.
Recently, he recorded and hosted the complete Brahms solo piano music on RTHK Radio 4, Classical Radio in Hong Kong. Upcoming seasons will see the release of two albums on Platoon: a Cliburn live release, as well as his debut studio album.
Aristo Sham's mother taught piano in their Hong Kong home, so he says: "I was enveloped in the environment of the piano even before I was born." His parents recall his immense curiosity towards the instrument when he was a toddler and started him in lessons when he was 3. At the age of 10, he began competing and concertising. But he also went to regular schools, never making the conscious decision to focus solely on the piano or his other studies; this made the dual degree programme at Harvard and the New England Conservatory a perfect fit when he went to college. He finished his Bachelor of Arts at Harvard in 2019 and Master's at NEC under Victor Rosenbaum in 2020. He then went to the Ingesund School of Music in Sweden to study with Julia Mustonen-Dahlkvist before returning to the States to earn an artist diploma at The Juilliard School with Robert McDonald and Orli Shaham. In addition to the Cliburn, he's a laureate of international competitions, with first-prize wins at Young Concert Artists, Ettlingen, Gina Bachauer, and Monte Carlo Music Masters.
2025 CLIBURN COMPETITION
Music in Words with
29 AUG 2025 | FRI | 7:30PM Grand Hall, HKU
Prior to his first recital appearance in Hong Kong since triumphing at the Cliburn this June, Aristo Sham joins Prof. Daniel Chua for a 'Music in Words' dialogue. The acclaimed Hong Kong-born pianist shares his thoughts on the recital repertoire, exploring the interpretive decisions and artistic choices that shape his performances. He also reflects on the power of music to transcend boundaries in our ever-evolving world.
Aristo Sham
Prof. Daniel Chua Chair Professor of Music, HKU
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) /
SERGEI RACHMANINOV (1873–1943)
Suite from Violin Partita No. 3 in E major, BWV 1006
Rachmaninov was prolific in writing piano transcriptions: his transcriptions are much more than mere adaptations or reproductions of the original compositions but (re)creations that embody rather personal interpretations with tasteful additions. Rachmaninov first began to transcribe music in 1886, which led to a four-hand piano reduction of Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony, Op. 58. In 1891, he also transcribed Tchaikovsky's ballet The Sleeping Beauty, Op. 66, published later in 1892.
In 1933, Rachmaninov decided to transcribe three movements from J. S. Bach's Violin Partita No. 3 in E major, BWV 1006, based on his recollection of his father's playing of the piece on the piano, and combined them into a suite. Out of the six movements, he chose to work on the Preludio, Gavotte, and Gigue, adding new contrapuntal materials and harmonies, while omitting the Loure , Menuets , and Bourreé . In the same year, Rachmaninov also performed his transcription of the Preludio, after having premiered his arrangement of the Scherzo from Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream in January. He likely did not transcribe the Gavotte and Gigue until the summer. He played all three movements as a unified work in November but did not record them until nine years later.
Rachmaninov was not the only pianist-composer who took an interest in transcribing Bach's music; Liszt and Busoni had both conceived marvellous Bach transcriptions for piano. But, as Barrie Martyn, the author of Rachmaninoff : Composer , Pianist , Conductor points out, Rachmaninov demonstrated the ability to rework polyphony, deriving counterpoint from the single melodic line which he expanded into a "complex web". Given Rachmaninov's personal elements in the music, unfavourable receptions from critics do linger even though the transcriptions arguably display "great pianistic clarity and restraint". Nevertheless, Martyn suggests, "those with less squeamish tastes have good reason to rejoice in the existence of so stimulating and inherently musical a work"—and this work, he observes, "should be set alongside Busoni's arrangement of the D minor Chaconne as the supreme Bach transcription of the 20th century".
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) / FERRUCCIO BUSONI (1866–1924)
Chaconne from Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004
Busoni was praised as "a Bach player by the grace of God" by pianist Adolf Paul after his performance of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier in Helsinki, Finland, on November 3, 1888. Busoni wrote a large number of piano transcriptions of Bach's organ and violin works, included in the Bach-Busoni editions. His love for Bach is well encapsulated in the Bach-Busoni editions, which contain performance suggestion on Bach's compositions and an essay that discusses the art of transcribing Bach's music. Among all the Bach transcriptions, the Chaconne from Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor and the ten Chorale Preludes for organ are perhaps the most recognised. Bach's Chaconne is itself one of the most widely known works of music in the history of violin repertoire and is often played as a stand-alone piece.
Like the original Chaconne for violin, Busoni's piano transcription proves technically challenging and virtuosic, but it exhibits emotional depth and profundity throughout, conveyed in sonorous complexity born out of Busoni's pianistic imagination. While Busoni evokes the violin by integrating pizzicato and spiccato textures, he also makes full use of the low register of the piano to bring forth majestic harmonies while inserting imitations of timpani, bells, and other instruments. Busoni's transcription is regularly contrasted with Brahms' piano transcription of the same piece, for both show radically different approaches. Brahms intended to be "faithful" to Bach's Chaconne by adopting, in his words, "the same difficulty, the nature of the technique, the rendering of the arpeggios, everything conspires to make me feel like a violinist", and for him, writing the transcription for the left hand alone is the only way to "secure undiluted joy from the piece".
As noted by pianist Leon Fleisher who considers Brahms' transcription "probably the single greatest work for solo left hand", Brahms was "looking for a way to capture the sparseness, in a piano transcription, of the unaccompanied violin line of Bach's wondrous D minor Chaconne" and writing for the left hand had enabled Brahms to "echo the limitations of the solo instrument and the ways that Bach miraculously transcends them". But Busoni experimented with the limits and boundaries of the piano too: he realised the piano's potential to, on one hand, invoke characteristics of the violin and, on the other, dramatise the sublimity of Bach's Chaconne in rich organistic and orchestral sound without forsaking the earnestness that marks the original.
JOSEPH MAURICE RAVEL
(1875–1937)
Gaspard de la nuit
In 1887, the Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes introduced Ravel to Aloysius Bertrand's Gaspard de la nuit , a book of poems written between 1832 and 1836, eventually published in 1842. Ravel was drawn to the poems as they echoed his love for supernatural stories and his adoration of Edgar Allan Poe's macabre and gruesome works. Ravel professed in 1928 that his "greatest teacher in composition was Edgar Allan Poe"; emphasising composers must in their music maintain a balance between emotion and intellect, he even proclaimed that "Poe proved that art must strike a balance between these two extremes, for the first leads only to formlessness and the second to the dry and abstract".
For Ravel, "Gaspard has been a devil in coming, but that is only logical since it was he who is the author of the poems". Bertrand himself had indeed stated that Satan was Gaspard as the real author of the poetry. Ravel chose three poems out of the book, Ondine, Le Gibet, and Scarbo, turning the demonic and the grotesque into the most astounding and daring piano music in 1908. The first movement Ondine is filled with quiet shimmering notes that reflect the effects of rippling water, paired with melodic lines that bespeak the water nymph Ondine's luring songfulness. Ondine seeks to seduce a married man, imploring him, "Listen!—Listen!— It's me, it's Ondine who brushes these drops of water on the resonant panes of your window, illuminated by the mournful rays of the moon; and look, in a robe of watered silk, the lady of the chateau who contemplates, from her balcony, the beautiful starry night and the beautiful sleeping lake". But she does not succeed in the end and "dissolves in tears and laughter".
The slow and mysterious movement, Le Gibet, mesmerises with the sound of tolling bells ringing for the corpse of a dead man on the gallows in a desert—"the bell ringing by the walls of a city below the horizon, and the carcass of a hanged man reddened by the setting sun", as Bertrand writes. Bertrand suggests the bell can be heard as similar to creeping insects, such as "some cricket singing from its hiding place in the moss and sterile ivy with which the forest covers it floor out of pity" and "some fly hunting for prey and blowing its horn all around those ears deaf to the fanfare of the dead". The finale Scarbo is often considered the most virtuosic. Ravel had admitted wanting to showcase his ability to write music more difficult than Mily Balakirev's Islamey with this movement while creating "a caricature of romanticism". Ravel's manipulation of violent and impulsive elements with rhythmic unpredictability and frenzied dissonance depicts the vampiric and nocturnal dwarf who is addicted to lurking in the dark at nighttime.
Viñes premiered the work in Paris on January 9, 1909, although the piece was dedicated to pianist Harold Bauer. But Viñes did not deliver according to Ravel's expectations: in a letter to Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, Ravel expressed his disappointment at Viñes' performance, of his Le Gibet in particular. Ravel noted that Viñes consistently went against the stated tempos and phrasing, and no longer had Viñes premiere his piano pieces. The French pianist Marguerite Long became the composer's preferred player instead.
SERGEI RACHMANINOV (1873–1943)
Études-tableaux , Op. 39
Rachmaninov's Études-tableaux Op. 39, written between 1916 and 1917, revolutionised the genre of etude with its vivid pictorial imageries and scenes, although Rachmaninov did not appear exactly sure about categorising the pieces as etudes, given the title did not appear in the autograph. The earliest reviews of this set of nine pieces even referred to the compositions as Preludes-tableaux
Each étude-tableau of this set evokes a distinct landscape and emotions. Rachmaninov gave some of these etudes specific titles. No. 1 in C minor, stormy in character, was designated "The Sea"; No. 2 in A minor, the dramatic and powerful "The Sea and Seagulls", although the famed pedagogue Heinrich Neuhaus had called it "Levitan" instead, referencing the Russian mood landscape painter Isaac Levitan; and No. 6 in A minor, inspired by the fairytale Little Red Riding Hood. The other etudes sound a wide spectrum of characters. No. 4 in B minor, for example, exhibits scherzo-like humorous personalities. No. 7 in C minor is a funeral march that alludes to church bells, with the opening theme evoking a march and the other, the singing of a choir. No. 9 in D major characteristically calls to mind an "Oriental March".
Fitting to one's enjoyment of the etudes are Rachmaninov's words in a 1941 interview for the magazine, named coincidentally also as The Étude. Rachmaninov remarked:
"I have no sympathy with the composer who produces works according to preconceived formulas or preconceived theories. Or with the composer who writes in a certain style because it is the fashion to do so. Great music has never been produced in that way—and I dare say it never will. Music should, in the final analysis, be the expression of a composer's complex personality… A composer's music should express the country of his birth, his love affairs, his religion, the books which have influenced him, the pictures he loves. It should be the product of the sum total of a composer's experiences."
With this set of Études-tableaux , Rachmaninov seemingly demonstrates that his music is an accumulation of his personal experiences. In the same interview, he also confessed: "When composing, I find it of great help to have in mind a book just recently read, or a beautiful picture, or a poem. Sometimes a definite story is kept in mind, which I try to convert into tones without disclosing the source of my inspiration". Given the source is concealed, how then shall we listen to his piano pieces, including these études? Rachmaninov answered: "Since the sources of my inspiration are never revealed, the public must listen to the music absolutely".
Programme
notes by
Keri Hui PhD in Musicology
The University of Hong Kong & Kings College London
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ADVISORY BOARD
Prof. Chan Hing-yan
Prof. Daniel K. L. Chua
Ms. Belinda Hung
Mr. Albert Wong Legal Advisor
STAFF
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ABOUT US
In the last 13 years, MUSE has amused, bemuse and confused the standard practices in concert presentations, bringing new ideas and energies to the cultural offering in Hong Kong. In doing so, it has raised the University as a major force in cultural leadership, and as a cultural hub for the HKU community and friends. Most of all, MUSE has been a muse for many: inspiring us to explore, create, and think more deeply. MUSE has made the Grand Hall, with its astounding acoustics, a cultural home, a cultural lab, and a living room that lives and breathes live music anew. There are
‧ MANY DEBUTS, such as Belcea Quartet, Chiaroscuro Quartet, Eric Lu, Quatuor Hanson, LENK Quartet, Julia Lezhneva, Yunchan Lim, Jan Lisiecki, NOĒMA, Christoph Prégardien, Andreas Staier, Nobuyuki Tsujii, and Zhu Xiao-mei;
MANY FIRSTS, such as the release of Beethoven 32 Sonatas Vinyl and CD boxsets with Alpha Classics, the publishing of In Time with the Late Style book with Oxford University Press, and the launch of Around Twilight Lecture-Demonstration and the Music in Words podcasts;
MANY RETURNING STARS, such as Berliner Barock Solisten, Isabelle Faust, Angela Hewitt, Paul Lewis, Konstantin Lifschitz, Alexander Melnikov, Jean Rondeau, Hayato Sumino (Cateen), and Takács Quartet;
· MANY NEW WORKS by HKU composers, such as Anthony Au, David Chan, Owen Ho, Charles Lee, Austin Leung, Daniel Lo, Peter Tang, Kiko Shao, and Jing Wang;
MANY IN-DEPTH EXPLORATIONS on monumental works, such as the complete cycle of Beethoven Violin Sonatas, Bartók String Quartets, Bach Well-Tempered Clavier, Schubert Piano Sonatas, Schubert Song Cycles, and Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues; and on composers such as György Ligeti, Doming Lam, and George Crumb;
MANY STUDENT ENGAGEMENTS, such as writing programme notes, performing alongside professional musicians, and gaining practical art administration experience;
And, most importantly, there are many collaborations and amazing moments that will always be treasured by our audiences. What's your unforgettable MUSE moment? That's why we are here—to make the invaluable possible. So as we look ahead, be a muse for us in whatever way you can to encourage MUSE for years to come.
Prof. Daniel Chua
像「繆思」這樣的一個樂季
於2013年啟用的李兆基會議中心大會堂是港大百周年校園的亮點建築，原址為水務署的 配水庫，服務港島各區超過半世紀。「繆思樂季」與大會堂同步誕生，致力令這個具備美 妙音響效果的場地成為普羅大眾樂意踏足，並不時流連忘返的「知識庫」。
「繆思樂季」起步之初即另闢蹊徑，朱曉玫的《哥德堡變奏曲》（2014）、呂培原的琵琶 古琴演奏會（2014），至今仍為樂迷津津樂道。往後列夫席茲的貝多芬鋼琴奏鳴曲全集 （2017）、休伊特的巴赫平均律鍵盤曲集（2018）、塔克斯四重奏的巴爾托克全集（2019）、
以及近年李維斯的12首舒伯特鋼琴奏鳴曲（2023、24），均開風氣之先，提供現場聽全 某一整卷音樂經典的機會，一新觀眾耳目。其中，列夫席茲八場音樂會的現場錄音，「繆 思樂季」還與Alpha Classics合作，發行了全球限量版的黑膠和鐳射唱片（2020）。
推廣知識交流是大學的使命，「繆思樂季」除了在節目策劃上與音樂系合作無間，還不時 邀請系內老師與樂手或嘉賓以對談、導賞、示範講座等形式，將相關的人文知識一點一滴、 深入淺出介紹給觀眾，冀能做到寓教於樂，與眾同樂。
但「繆思樂季」的合作對象並不囿於港大校園。樂評人如臺灣的焦元溥博士、加拿大的邵 頌雄教授、本地的李歐梵教授，都是「繆思樂季」的好伙伴。焦博士的「音樂與文學對話」 系列（2018, 2019, 2020）固然是寓教於樂的好例子。邵教授先獨家專訪朱曉玫，為她 2014年的演奏會作鋪墊；隨後在「人文 ‧ 巴赫」（2015）與李教授暢談巴赫創作中的人文 思想。兩位教授的對談往後還發展出一本文集《諸神的黃昏》，由「繆思樂季」策劃，牛 津大學出版社出版（2019）。
說到與眾同樂，不能不提2017年推出的「眾聲齊頌《彌賽亞》」。這個每次由不同的本地 指揮、樂手、歌唱家與觀眾普天同慶的活動，已是不少熱愛合唱的樂迷每年臨近聖誕翹首 以待的節目。
新冠疫情肆虐的幾年，看著精心策劃的節目不得不一個接一個取消，「繆思樂季」的團 隊並沒有因此而氣餒，還隨即變陣，陸續推出推介本地年輕音樂家的「薄暮樂敘」示範 講座（2020, 2021, 2022）、與香港管弦樂團合辦的「聚焦管弦」室樂系列（2021, 2022, 2023）、梅湘四重奏首演80週年系列（2021），還有與美國巴德音樂學院、M+博物館共 同籌劃的《水墨藝術與新音樂》中西混合室內樂創作交流項目（2021, 2022）。
回顧過去，展望將來，「繆思樂季」它不會以原來配水庫的「服務超過半世紀」為限。 因為，十年樹木，百年樹人，像「繆思」這樣的一個樂季，十年，只是一個開始。
陳慶恩教授
