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In October last year, the Hong Kong Philharmonic’s performances of Tenth Symphony by Shostakovich have ignited audiences with its drama and potency. In his Eleventh Symphony, written soon after the death of Stalin, Shostakovich vividly portrays the events of the first uprising against the Tsar in 1905, which was brutally crushed by the Imperial Army. This symphony was sometimes dubbed as “a film score without the film”. By contrast, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, the soundtrack of Oscar-winning film Out of Africa, dates from his last months but exudes the grace and warmth of humanism at the height of the Enlightenment. |