An innovative program upcoming at the Hong Kong Philharmonic caught our interest. Conductor Robert Moody will be leading the Hong Kong Philharmonic in a program featuring the voice of Renée Fleming. The evening is centred on Fleming’s 2023 Grammy Award–winning recording Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene. That recording was for soprano and piano (played by Yannick Nezet-Séguin) and, starting in 2024, was redone for voice and orchestra. Ms Fleming’s conversations with National Geographic resulted in an accompanying video, and this new multimedia work will make its Asian debut in October with the Philharmonic.
Robert Moody
The Anthropocene is our current geological epoch, with the title meaning an epoch defined by the impact of humans on the world. Geology and ecosystems are all affected by our actions, resulting in climate change, mass extinctions, and a world filled with our ‘technofossils’.
The National Geographic video will be shown on a large screen on stage, and in a technological breakthrough, it’s not the musicians who are tied to the video (no earpieces with click-tracks), but a video that will follow the orchestra. Maestro Moody said, with delight, that he could conduct a different tempo every night!
Renée Fleming
The arc of the first half of the program is our current climate situation, told with connecting music. Maestro Moody sees it much like one of Renée Fleming’s programs built around Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs. Strauss’ posthumous collection is based around songs of death, yet is filled with a calmness that turns the texts into more than just memento mori. In a similar way, we are watching the death of so much of the world’s ecology, but must approach solutions with a sense of calmness that will ensure progress, rather than hysterical handwringing that goes nowhere.
Joseph Canteloube: Chants d’Auvergne, Vol. 1: No. 2. Bailero (Henry V) (Renée Fleming, soprano; English Chamber Orchestra; Jeffrey Tate, cond.)
In addition to the many pieces on the program by composers from the 18th and 19th centuries, Maestro Moody is particularly excited by some of the modern works, such as Kevin Puts’ Evening. Puts is best known for his opera The Hours, which received its stage premiere in 2022 at the Metropolitan Opera, with Kelli O’Hara, Joyce DiDonato, and Renée Fleming as the three female protagonists.
Giacomo Puccini: Gianni Schicchi: O mio babbino caro (Renée Fleming, soprano; London Philharmonic Orchestra; Charles Mackerras, cond.)
Another work, in the second half of the program, is by Mason Bates. His work Desert Transport was written in 2010 and will be augmented in the Hong Kong Philharmonic performance. The work originated in a helicopter tour the composer took over Arizona, ranging from its deserts to its mountains. From a modern airport to cliff dwellings from a thousand years ago, Desert Transport carries listeners to another place.
Montezuma Castle National Monument, Arizona
The Pima Indian song ‘From the Mountains to the Sea’ is presented in an audio-voiceover before migrating to the orchestra to bring the work to a triumphal end. Maestro Moody was on that original helicopter trip with the composer and really feels the work brings out everything they saw on Earth. The HK Philharmonic augmentation will take advantage of the on-stage screen from the first part of the program to show images taken on that inspirational flight.
Robert Moody (photo by Jamie Harmon)
A magnificent voice, a multimedia melding of music and images, and an imagination for new programming promise to bring a magnificent concert to Hong Kong. This will be the first presentation of the programme outside North America.
Maestro Moody is in his 10th season as Music Director of The Memphis Symphony Orchestra in Tennessee, and his 2nd season as Music Director of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. In addition, he’s celebrating his 20th season as Music Director of Arizona Musicfest. Although Maestro Moody has conducted in China, this will be his Hong Kong debut. He has worked frequently with Renée Fleming and, in 2024, led the world premiere of the full orchestral Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene, a song cycle created by Ms Fleming in collaboration with National Geographic.
Maestro Moody is one of those rare conductors looking to reimagine the relationship between the players on stage and the listeners in the audience – he’s fond of speaking directly to the audience to help them understand the arc of a concert, and he’s delighted with this concert in particular because of the contemporary messages it presents.
Renée Fleming: Voice of Nature
Hong Kong Philharmonic conducted by Robert Moody, with Renée Fleming, soprano
Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall
24 October 2025 at 19:30
25 October 2025 at 17:00
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