ENG-1972 — Page 241

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RECREATION

The City Hall, often in association with national cultural organisations such as the Alliance Francaise, the British Council, and the Goethe Institute, engages artists to give performances of music, ballet and drama. In 1972, there were 213 such per- formances. The Urban Council also arranged eight concerts of recorded music using sophisticated equipment in the Concert Hall where the acoustics are exceptionally good. In planning these 'hi-fi' concerts, attempts are made to include works which are unlikely to be heard 'live' in Hong Kong, and these have been particularly well received by the public. A new project for 1972, and one which proved popular with students, was the presentation of recorded chamber music in one of the lecture rooms in the City Hall. The admission price for students at all Urban Council cultural presenta- tions was $1, and tickets were invariably sold out quickly.

Local impresarios also arranged visits of internationally renowned artists. In the City Hall, they presented 15 artists and groups with a total of 27 performances.

In addition to participating in the Urban Council's own presentations, local musical groups and soloists gave 112 concerts in the City Hall during the year. In drama, three active English amateur groups and many Chinese dramatic groups, amateur and professional, presented 47 productions with 121 performances in the City Hall.

Among the various projects being planned by the City Hall management are regular performances of Chinese classical instrumental music, Chinese drama and western plays translated into Chinese. The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra which is sponsored by the Urban Council, plans to include a Chinese work in each of its 24 concerts presented annually at the City Hall.

City Museum and Art Gallery

This year, the City Museum and Art Gallery entered its second decade. In retro- spect, the past 10 years has been a period of rapid development, starting from very basic historical collections to sizeable collections covering a variety of fields: Chinese art and antiquities, historical pictures, ethnographical materials, archaeological finds, local and contemporary art.

The collection of Chinese antiquities includes ceramics, bronze, jade, lacquerware, cloisonné, embroidery, painting and calligraphy. The major portion of this collection made up

of ceramics, now includes many representative pieces of almost every period, and so provides a comprehensive picture of the whole development of the art of pottery and porcelain in Chinese history. The group of Kwangtung paintings and calligraphy based on a bequest made by a Hong Kong painter, the late Mr Wong Po-yeh, is also of some significance.

A unique pictorial record of Sino-British contacts in the 18th and early 19th cen- turies is contained in the collection of historical pictures which amounts to over 700 paintings, water-colours, drawings, lithographs and engravings. These were from the Chater, Hotung, Law and Sayer Collections, steadily augmented over the past years by purchase, and occasionally by gift. In addition, there are approximately 1,820 old photographs vividly portraying Hong Kong in all its aspects over the span of a century since 1870.