THE BLUE PLANET LIVE!
Esplanade Concert Hall
Friday (29 June 2012 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 July 2012 with the title "Awesome dive into the oceans".
Using live music to accompany images projected
on a screen is not something new for the SSO. In 2001, the Eisenstein black and
white classic Alexander Nevsky was
screened to stirring music by Prokofiev. Two years ago, Debussy’s La Mer lent an added dimension to
stunning marine photography by SSO violinist William Tan. The Blue Planet Live!, a two hour documentary-concert adapted from
the BBC natural history series, is unsurprisingly the most spectacular
culmination of this genre.
Drawn from 7000 hours of film shot in 300
localities over 5 years, every minute provided its own thrills and spills.
Acclaimed film composer George Fenton’s score was memorable, wide-ranging in
style and vividly captured the spirit of the oceans. The sea is an awesome,
almost unfathomable and most unexplored expanse of our world, and its denizens
among the most curious and diverse.
It is also dangerous and unforgiving. An
advisory warned of the disturbing visual scenes of predatory animal behaviour,
and nothing quite prepares one for the carnage of a pod of orcas tearing into a
defenceless grey whale calf. Low brass and ominous percussion set the prefatory
mood. Equally gut-wrenching is seeing seal carcasses tossed like cabers by
captors before crashing limply into oblivion. The music was just as harrowing.
The sentiment changed considerably in The Frozen Oceans, where Arctic and Antarctic scenes
stitched together become seemingly inseparable geographically. A medley of
Christmas carols and melodies accompanied polar bear frolics and the belly-gliding
ballet or waddling march of penguins.
The plaintive flute and unaccompanied choir
provided a soothing nocturne to the verdant mass of kelp forests. Jazzy trumpet
and flugelhorn solos lit up Life In The
Flow, which highlighted some of the more quirky fauna, including the mass
migration of Christmas Island (once of Singapore) red crabs. Fact is indeed often
stranger than CGI.
Swift changes of scenarios prevented any
possibility of any subject from lingering longer than necessary, each preceded
by narrator Remesh Panicker’s calming baritone declamations. The orchestra
conducted by Joshua Kangming Tan was excellent throughout, whether capturing
the majesty of sailing marlins or sei whales gulping down breakfast. They were well
augmented by singers from the Hallelujah and Singapore Symphony Choruses
trained by Wong Lai Foon.
Their parts were mostly wordless until the final
number with Charles Trenet’s chanson La
Mer, which carried the vital ecological message of conservation. The heavy
price exacted by homo sapiens by pollution and over-fishing in our oceans will
mean that in fifty years, all the wondrous scenes seen this evening will be a
thing of the past. That was the one singular abiding message of The Blue Planet.
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