Lorin Maazel to replace Riccardo Muti in Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts at Hong Kong Arts Festival

January 18th, 2013

(Hong Kong, 18 January 2013) The Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF) announced today that Maestro Lorin Maazel replaces Maestro Riccardo Muti for its Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts on 28 and 29 January at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. Maestro Riccardo Muti is unable to participate in the Orchestra’s tour to Asia due to illness and requires immediate medical attention.

The Orchestra will be performing Mozart’s Symphony No 41, in place of Stravinsky’s Divertimento from The Fairy's Kiss and Busoni’s Turandot Suite, Op 41 on 28 January. Updated programme information follows:

28 January 2013 (Monday)MOZART            Symphony No 41 in C, K551, JupiterBRAHMS                        Symphony No 2 in D, Op 73

29 January 2013 (Tuesday)

VERDI                     Overture to I Vespri SicilianiMENDELSSOHN            Symphony No 4 in A, Op 90, ItalianBEETHOVEN      Symphony No 3 in E-flat, Op 55, Eroica

For over five decades, American conductor Lorin Maazel has been one of the world’s most esteemed and sought-after conductors. His association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra dates back to his debut concerts with them 40 years ago, in 1973. In the decades since, he has led the Orchestra in a wide range of repertoire from Brahms, Berlioz and Schumann to Mahler, Strauss and Bartok, as well as works by Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Sibelius. In 2000, Maazel and the CSO gave the American premiere of his own composition, Farewells, as part of his 70th birthday celebrations, and his programmes with the CSO have featured works by living American composers including Aaron Jay Kernis and Augusta Read Thomas.

In spring 2011, Maestro Maazel completed his fifth and final season as the inaugural music director of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain. He has been the music director of the New York Philharmonic from 2002 to 2009. He assumes the same post with the Munich Philharmonic at the start of the 2012/13 season. He is also the founder and artistic director of a new festival based on his farm property in Virginia, the Castleton Festival, launched to exceptional acclaim in 2009 and expanding its activities nationally and internationally in 2011/12 and beyond. Maestro Maazel is also a highly regarded composer, with a wide-ranging catalogue of works written primarily over the last dozen or so years. His first opera, 1984, based on George Orwell’s literary masterpiece, received its world premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in May 2005. Maestro Maazel has conducted nearly 200 orchestras in no fewer than 7,000 opera and concert performances. He has made over 300 recordings, including symphonic cycles and complete orchestral works of Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Mahler, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Richard Strauss, winning ten Grands Prix du Disques.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s opening performance is one of the programmes under “The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series” sponsored by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust. The 29 January performance is one of the “Sino Group Arts Celebration Series” programmes, sponsored by Sino Group.

For programme and ticketing enquiries, please call 2824 2430.

MEDIA ENQUIRIES

For further enquiries, please contact Ms Katy Cheng, Marketing Director, on 2824 3555 or Ms Wendy Chung, on 2828 4931, or email: wendy.chung@hkaf.org.

About the Hong Kong Arts Festival

Launched in 1973, the Hong Kong Arts Festival is a major annual international celebration of the performing arts and one of the region’s premier cultural events, held in February and March each year, serving an audience of 150,000. Performances take place in over a dozen venues throughout Hong Kong, supplemented by over 100 PLUS events; and 10,000 Young Friends are given special access to Festival performances and events. The Festival presents the world’s top artists as well as stars of tomorrow and gives equal importance to great traditions and contemporary creations. The Festival also commissions and produces work in theatre, chamber opera and contemporary dance; some Festival productions have toured to other Asian cities after their Hong Kong premiere.

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