Song is Being

 “Ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: 

must I write?” 

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This is the advise poet Rainer Maria Rilke gave in a letter to a lost young poet in 1903. 115 years later, another young musician came across this letter while questioning the value and meaning of live classical music performance in the modern time. He then set off his search for an answer and encountered two Greek mythology tragic figures that would shine light on him: Daphne, the first love of Apollo; and Eurydice, 

the wife and most beloved of Orpheus.....

Song is Being is a program concert curated by flutist Yat Ho Tsang. His idea was to reexamine the traditional classical music concert format and to present baroque music in an easier, more interesting and meaningful way to the general public. He carefully selected poems and baroque music that supplement and complement each other, and used them to reinforce and be part of the storytelling of two Greek mythology love stories - Apollo & Daphne and Orpheus & Eurydice. 

With a well balanced structure of storytelling by a narrator in Cantonese, Rilke’s German poems recited by a voice actress and baroque music performed on period instruments, Song is Being aims at maximising the musical and emotional experience of the Hong Kong audience, and invites them to find their own answer to Rilke’s question: "Must I write(make art)?"

After the huge success of the premiere given in March 2018 in a ceramic studio in Hong Kong, two re-runs of Song is Being have been scheduled on 4th Nov 2018 during Prism Chamber Music Festival in Hong Kong; and in Feb 2019 during Musica Antiqua Takamatsu in Takamatsu Japan with support from Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

The name Song is Being is from Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, part one, no.3.