Dearest to Monster Hunter – film music by Hong Kong composer to get the full stage treatment in orchestral concert
Hong Kong Sinfonietta devotes a programme to the film scores of award-winning composer Leon Ko, who penned the soundtracks to movies including Perhaps Love and The Great Magician
From Canto-pop and musicals to Chinese opera, composer Leon Ko Sai-tseung has dabbled in a wide range of musical genres. Next week, Hong Kong audiences will get a taste of another, when the Hong Kong Sinfonietta perform a concert dedicated to film soundtracks.
Ko says his all-time favourite film score is from Cinema Paradiso, written by Ennio Morricone. It’s this work that influenced his own compositions.
“[Hearing] that score ... was one of the pivotal moments in my film scoring journey because in very few films [do] you have that first few notes [that] immediately [pull] you into that world, and I think Cinema Paradiso did that. It opened with the music,” he says.
In the upcoming concert, The Amazing Filmphony, Ko will take the audience on a journey to revisit some of the compositions he’d penned for films such as Perhaps Love, The Great Magician, Dearest and Monster Hunt.
Other than the Sinfonietta’s music director Yip Wing-sie, Ko will also have four singers – Rick Lau, Jarita Wan, Margaret Cheung and Jordan Cheng – help bring his music to life. Ko will also put in a very rare stage appearance and perform some of the theme songs himself.