Six degrees of separation from Hungarian composer Béla Bartók
Mary Hui
Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra was, if all went to plan, performed by the Hong Kong Philharmonic last night at the Cultural Centre. The Hungarian composer was born in 1881 in a district that is now part of Serbia. He learned the piano from his mother and had begun to compose by the age of eight. After completing his studies at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music, Bartók began studying Hungarian folk music, which would later influence his compositions. He made his American debut in 1927, soloing his own at New York's Carnegie Hall, which had been built in 1891 by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie …
Born to a Scottish family of weavers, Carnegie would raise himself up to dominate the steel and iron industries of the United States in the late 19th century. After his retirement, he devoted himself to philanthropic causes, something with which his name is now synonymous - the Carnegie Corporation of New York is one of the benefactors of the Centre for Public Integrity, which was behind the release of the offshore-wealth-exposing Panama Papers. One of the world's most famous venues, Carnegie Hall, in 2014, played host to a concert featuring the music of Estonian composer Arvo Part. Present in the audience that May evening was Keanu Reeves …
Keanu, which roughly translates from Hawaiian to "cool breeze over the mountains", was born in Lebanon to an English mother and a Chinese-Hawaiian father. As a boy, he was always on the move and he attended four high schools in five years before dropping out to become an actor. Reeves made his name in , a 1986 drama about a group of teens and their reaction to a murder. He has since played both dumb (Bill & Ted's adventures) and edgy, in science-fiction action trilogy , the fight scenes of which were choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping …
Regarded as one of the masters of martial arts choreography, Yuen is a legend of Hong Kong cinema. He has directed classics such as and , and has choreographed hits , and . Yuen claims he always tries to portray a different fighting style, "otherwise the audiences wouldn't watch". In 2008, Yuen choreographed action sequences in , the first film to star both Jackie Chan and Jet Li. The man tasked with directing that fight fest was Rob Minkoff …
Minkoff has "made a career of directing actors who aren't real", as puts it, with many of his works - and among them - featuring either animated or computer-generated characters. His tells the tale of an orphaned mouse adopted into a human family. In 2009, an art historian watching the film noticed something interesting: , a long-lost Hungarian masterpiece, in one of the live-action scenes. The person who made that discovery was Gergely Barki …
A researcher at the Hungarian National Gallery, Barki is an expert on the work of Robert Berény, who had painted . For years, Barki has been devoted to tracking down missing pieces of Hungarian art around the globe. He writes a column in Hungarian called "Wanted", in which he publishes photographs of paintings that he has yet to find. Barki also curates and, in 2013, took charge of an exhibition at the Musee d'Orsay, in Paris, titled "Allegro Barbaro", which showcased the life and music of … Béla Bartók.
