'Tense' piece of Russian classical music helped push murder suspect over the edge, court hears

A piano piece by Russian composer Alexander Scriabin might have driven a man who later killed and butchered his parents into a frenzy, the Court of First Instance heard yesterday.

Psychiatrist Dr Chung Ka-fai said Henry Chau Hoi-leung, 31, claimed he listened to "Vers la Flamme" (Toward the Flame) every night for a whole month before he killed his father Chau Wing-ki, 65, and his mother Siu Yuet-yee, 63, on March 1, 2013.

Chung told the jury he himself had listened to Scriabin's piece just once - and felt tense and wound up.

When the psychiatrist evaluated Henry Chau last July, Chung told the jury, the defendant said he kept seeing images of flames around the time of the killings - and he believed the world would soon be consumed by fire. Chau also had thoughts of killing his family and himself, Chung said.

"The music intensified the images of fire and flame in his mind. He believed the world was going to end and he could not get away from it. The music was like repeating the words to him every day," the psychiatrist told the jury.

Henry Chau told Chung he believed the world was meaningless and had twice had suicidal thoughts - in 2001 and 2012, the court heard. The defendant had also said that in 2006 he remembered feeling as powerful as God - and he felt brave enough to touch the tights of a woman he did not know on a bus.