words yvonne teh

Joanna MacGregor and Messiaen make a special contribution to the international celebration of women.

The collection of musical pieces that make up a meditation on the childhood of Jesus Christ, French composer Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt Regards Sur L’Enfant Jésus (Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus), consists of 20 distinct movements and takes around two hours to perform. Incorporating leitmotifs representing often abstract ideas like God, joy and mystical love, it was written in 1944, when much of Europe was still in the throes of the Second World War but its composer – who had previously been incarcerated as a prisoner of war – was already free to occupy the civilian post of Professor of Harmony at the Paris Conservatoire.

Vingt Regards Sur L’Enfant Jésus was written for a woman: specifically, the pianist Yvonne Loriod who was one of the composer’s pupils and, later, his second wife and most important interpreter of his works. This makes it all the more appropriate a choice to be performed on Friday, March 8.

For March 8 is International Women’s Day and, although the coincidence may not have been planned, pianist Joanna MacGregor will, on that day, in her own way be highlighting the achievements of women by playing what is technically one of the most notoriously demanding piano works of the 20th century at a 2008 HK Arts Festival event.

With the gracious cooperation of the performer, the Joanna MacGregor Piano Recital will be even more outstanding for two Festival Plus events associated with it – one before and the other after. For not only will the pianist be performing all 20 movements of Vingt Regards Sur L’Enfant Jésus from 8pm on March 8, but, to prepare her audience for Messiaen’s magnificent but challenging work, she will hold a pre-concert talk starting one hour before she takes her place on the concert stage.

Then from 2-4pm on Saturday, March 9, the woman who HK Arts Festival executive director Tisa Ho characterizes as “a very expressive person musically as well as in speaking and other ways”, will also give a lecture and perform other musical pieces at a two-hour Meet Joanna MacGregor session. And if all that doesn’t celebrate the achievements of what is often labelled the gentler gender, it could be difficult to say what would.

Tickets for the Joanna MacGregor Piano Recital at the HK City Hall’s
Concert Hall are $320 to $80 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.

Tickets for both the March 8 Pre-Concert Talk, also in the HK City Hall’s Concert Hall, and the March 9 Meet Joanna MacGregor session at the HK Academy of the Performing Arts’ Dance Studio 1, are free from the HK Arts Festival information counters at the HK Cultural Centre and HK City Hall on a first-come, first-served basis.