Gliding through the Golden '20s

During the five-year period between 1924 and 1929, known as the "Golden '20s," Berlin was regarded as a cultural hotspot in Europe. New forms of music, art and literature were being created in the post-World War I era as artists participated in avant-garde art movements like Dadaism, which challenged the existing logical and aesthetic standards by which art was evaluated.

Last week, the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong, together with saxophonist Joshua Jones and guest conductor Colin Touchin, transported listeners back to that exciting time. The Hot Music concert, held at the City Hall Concert Hall presented music from the "Golden '20s" by three prominent Jewish composers.

The concert kicked off with the short Stefan Wolpe composition, Tango for Irma. Dedicated to his lover, the Romanian pianist Irma Schoenberg, the piece was influenced by jazz and popular dance music. Wolpe was particularly inspired by the gliding motions of tango. The piece has a whimsical beginning, progressively getting more somber as the wind and brass instruments are heard more prominently than the rest.

Jones made his appearance only in the second piece of the evening, Erwin Schulhoff's Hot-Sonata. His solo performance blended in with the orchestra as well as showcasing the sonic depths of the saxophone, loud and clear when the piece called for it. Originally composed for alto saxophone and piano, the sonata is infused with jazz idioms and syncopations to the effect that its rendition could sometimes come across as a classical recital rather than a jazz performance.

"I'm looking forward to hearing the audience's reaction to the third movement of Hot-Sonata as it's designed to be humorous. But it's also kind of a grotesque moment as well, as we'll be performing really big flies up and down the range of the instrument," Jones said shortly before the performance.

From this listener's point of view, there was nothing grotesque about the performance. If anything, it left me in awe, seeing Jones effortlessly glide from the low notes to high ones in such quick succession. The movement of Jones' shoulders, shimmying up and down, added to the playfulness of the performance, leading up to the pulsing big finish that included a return to the sonata's opening tune.

The third and final piece of the program, Kurt Weill's Little Threepenny Music, was performed by a full orchestra that included Jones, an accordionist, a banjo player and guitarist. The composition is an instrumental suite of eight songs from The Threepenny Opera. The standouts included Overture (setting the tone with its classical operatic tunes), The Ballad of Mack the Knife (well-known for having been covered by famous singers such as Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra and featuring a slow foxtrot very different in tone and pace from the Overture), and Cannon Song (a festive and energetic track with military connotations). While it was good to get to hear a range of music from the original opera, the three chosen songs did not seem to gel that well when heard in a sequence.

The finale was a surprise: Duke Ellington's East St. Louis Toodle-oo. As the trumpets and trombones blared, the crowd happily clapped, keeping the rhythm, and if the concert were held in a more spacious venue, they would probably have danced in the aisles, delivering a fun ending to the show.

Jones had told this writer that he hoped to inspire greater interest in and understanding of the saxophone as a classical instrument. While I must admit that at certain points during the performance I caught myself looking for a jazz saxophone improvisation moment, I was left surprised and curious by how well the instrument performed as part of an orchestra. Judging by the happy smiles on the faces of students, families with young children, and young and elderly couples leaving the concert hall that evening, many others in the audience probably felt the same way.