Uploaded 10 February 2023.
顧嘉煇 Joseph Koo Medley #1
雪山飛狐 - 家變 - 鮮花滿月樓 - 輪流傳
Joseph Koo 顧嘉煇, or as fondly referred to by his friends as 煇哥 Fai Gor (Older Brother Fai), is also referred to as 大师 (Grand Master), in his case, the musical Grand Master of popular Hong Kong music (or what is known as "Cantopop"), having composed more than 1,200 songs over a span of five decades, many of which are classics today. Indeed, the best of his compositions easily make up a 2 to 3-hour concert repertoire, and the musical arrangements of his recent 2012 and 2015 concerts only serves to reflect how well his songs age over the years.
Most Cantonese-speaking folks would be familiar with tunes such as 上海灘 Theme from "The Bund" (1980) (or more colloquially known as Shanghai Beach) sung by Frances Yip 葉麗儀, and 獅子山下 Below the Lion Rock (1979) (which is kinda like Hong Kong's unofficial anthem) sung by the late Roman Tam 羅文. (Both songs were written with his song-writing buddy of many years, the late James Wong Jim 黃霑.) And if you follow Hong Kong TV dramas and movies of the 70s-90s, like my parents did, then you'll probably be familiar with most of Joseph Koo's best works.
The songs I've covered in this medley are:
a. 雪山飛狐 Theme from "Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain" (1985), sung by David Lui 呂方 & Susanna Kwan 關菊英
b. 家變 Theme from "A House Is Not A Home" (1977), sung by Roman Tam 羅文
c. 鮮花滿月樓 (1978), sung by Teresa Cheung 張德蘭
d. 輪流傳 Theme from "Five Easy Pieces" (1980), sung by Adam Cheng 鄭少秋
If I cumulated the hours spent on just arranging this medley alone, it was slightly over 24hrs (interrupted many times by other more-important-than-my-hobby stuff). The melodies were simple enough (it usually is for Joseph Koo songs), but it's the chords he uses that threw me a curve ball here and there. I also took a lot of time mulling over what piano playing style to use against each section, in addition to making sure that the end to the start of each song made sense, i.e. that it was seamless without sounding forced.
Part of Joseph Koo's trademark is to resolve or develop songs by switching up major and minor keys within the same song, altering the musical mood to complement the lyrics it was carrying. His songs also tend to be very dramatic, as they're usually written for sword-flighting period shows and TV dramas dealing with human relationships, conflict, turmoil, hope and life. Enough cannot be said about this, but his ability to consistently and successfully meld Chinese musical influences with Western-style orchestral arrangements, makes him one of the biggest musical geniuses of our time.
This medley is dedicated to my parents. If not for the fact that they were followers of Hong Kong TV dramas and movies in my growing up days (besides the fact that my dad CONSTANTLY played Cantopop in the car, during a period of time when I consider myself musically immature LOL), I probably would never have been exposed to the songs of Joseph Koo. Today, I remain a big fan of his. I hope I've done a decent cover in this one and would like to cover more of his songs as medleys in future (which will explain my numbering this medley as "#1", not very original, I know).