CIRCUS
MAXIMUS!
The
Philharmonic Winds
Esplanade
Concert Hall
Sunday (1 December 2013 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 December 2013 with the title "A blast from Winds".
Composers
who write for wind orchestras tend to be specialists, but when a traditional
mainstream composer attempts to create music for woodwinds and brass, something
special results. Such was the case for two composers in The Philharmonic Winds’
blockbuster concert this evening.
The
first was Richard Wagner’s Huldigungsmarsch
(Homage March), a short piece written
for the 19th birthday of King Ludwig II of Bavaria , something opera lovers may not be aware
of. Disciplined and well-honed, the young musicians confidently trumpeted the
kind of fanfares one would expect from the composer of Lohengrin and Tannhäuser.
The
second would dramatically close the concert, but there were three intervening
works including David Ward-Steinman’s Singapore
Sonorama, a new commission receiving its World Premiere. The American
composer had visited the island-state some thirty years ago, and these
picture-postcard impressions were his “An American In Singapore”.
His
references were 1970s and 80s, when Singapore touted itself as a touristic “Instant
Asia”. Its four colourful movements included Malay, Indian and Chinese
portraits. Dayung Sampan was
deconstructed and quoted in the 2nd movement. Govin Tan’s tabla and Shane Thio’s prepared piano
(simulating a tambura) provided a raga-like basis for the 3rd
movement Little India, while
percussion lit up the Chinatown finale.
This
well-crafted work gave individual soloists and the ensemble to shine, but had
anyone told the composer that the Merlion was ersatz, the figment of some tourism executive’s imagination? Or
that the low brass belches within the piece were the first time anybody heard the
creature roar?
Korean-Japanese
composer Chang Su Koh’s Lament, a
funereal trudge that brought out a finely-detailed crescendo, in stark contrast
to the slick clichés of American Norman Dello-Joio’s Satiric Dances For A Comedy By Aristophanes.
The
titular Circus Maximus was the Third Symphony of John Corigliano,
better known for his film music for The
Red Violin and a First Symphony
in remembrance of AIDS victims. This was an unlikely-to-be-repeated spectacle
that could only be experienced in a concert hall rather than through a pair of
speakers.
Off-stage
musicians occupied all four levels of the Esplanade Concert Hall, and an
antiphonal racket ensued, masterfully helmed by conductor Leonard Tan whose
Mahlerian task was immense. In this 35-minute long work, Corigliano likened the
bloodlust and barbarism of Roman games to modern ills like commercialism,
consumerism and channel-surfing.
Some
of the loudest music ever to be heard in this venue was balanced by saucy
interludes from saxophones, “wolf calls”
from French horns, intimate playing in the two Night Music segments (influenced by both Bartok and Mahler), and a Prayer which highlighted fine brass
chorales. To throw in the proverbial kitchen sink, a marching band trooped the
aisles, and the music was put to an abrupt end by literally a gunshot to the
head (above).
Who
wins this new “war of the worlds”? The jury is still out, but the finest young
wind players of the land were taken to task, but emerging as first among
equals.
Photographs by the kind courtesy of The Philharmonic Winds.
No comments:
Post a Comment