For musical organisations that still plan their programmes on the “American-Chinese menu” principle – “one from column A, one from column B” – the main advantage of having a festival as partner is the more extensive bill of fare. The Hong Kong Sinfonietta’s programme on Tuesday evening clearly benefited from Sergio Tiempo being in town for a solo recital at the Hong Kong Arts Festival the weekend before.

Samson Young and Yip Wing-sie

The disadvantage of such meals, though, is that you often wind up with dishes that have no business being served at the same table. Tucked between a world premiere by the Sinfonietta’s resident composer Samson Young and a second half comprised of Lutoslawski’s Dance Preludes and Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta was Tiempo performing Chopin’s First Piano Concerto.

It wasn’t just that Chopin didn’t mingle well with the other composers; the orchestra and soloist had trouble talking among themselves. Tiempo, a protégé of Martha Argerich and an immense pianistic talent in his own right, has a fiery way with Chopin, but one that favours lyrical impulsiveness and tonal nuance over precise attention to the score. The Sinfonietta musicians, for their part, were still slavishly devoted to the printed page. One could imagine Tuesday’s forces finding common ground in other repertory – or perhaps, with sufficient rehearsal time, in Chopin – but Tuesday’s endeavour was a frustrating exercise. 

Apart from the Chopin, the evening cast a different light entirely. Following the lead of clarinet soloist (and Sinfonietta principal) Johnny Fong Hiu-kai, the orchestra danced with a rhythmic freedom wholly lacking in the Chopin. Music director Yip Wing-sie drew a range of sonorous colours from the Bartók. Audience members who fled during the interval clearly picked the wrong half to attend.

Young, who received a 2007 Bloomberg Emerging Artist Award for a series of Nintendo-inspired audio-visual installations, continued that theme in Electric Counterpoint, an electro-acoustic piece for Game Boy and orchestra that opened the evening. The piece unfolded with driving buoyancy, with Young (concluding his tenure as the Sinfonietta’s Artist Associate) on stage behind a clear acoustic shield providing the electronic sounds. Inspired by “the gorgeous colours you get when you pull out the game card”, the piece was, by the composer’s own admission, rather one-dimensional. But as single dimensions go, it was playful and entertaining.