& Joy Chorale
Esplanade
Concert Hall
Sunday
(25 January 2015 )
Joy! is a community project by the Braddell
Heights Symphony Orchestra (BHSO) and its Music Director Adrian Tan to bring
people unfamiliar with classical music into the concert hall, not just as a
member of the audience but also as performers. In December 2013, the BHSO had
great success in Sing Messiah!, which was essentially a DIY Handel Messiah
performance with a chorus formed by total beginners who learnt their parts from
scratch, augmenting a regular symphony chorus.
This time the same formula was applied to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony,
with an even greater degree of success.
About 45 singers, including a family with
young children, were recruited and trained by Laura Abello and later Khor Ai Ming, choir mistress of
the Vocal Associates Festival Chorus. Many of them were new to classical music
and did not read musical notation. They formed Chorus 1 and were placed on the
far left of the gallery (below). Joined by more experienced singers, the Joy Chorale
was a respectable 180-strong group, which looked splendid in ethnic costumes and
uniforms. Kimonos and kebayas alongside boy scout and girl guide outfits, men
in songkoks, Pavarotti wannabes, would-be Carmens, Patricia Teng as herself, and professors of gynaecology dressed as Santa
Claus (SG colours as well) were just part of the vocal ensemble which emphasised the “brotherhood of
man”, the central theme of Beethoven and Schiller's Ode To Joy.
 |
| The smiling faces of Chorus 1, comprising completely of newbies. |
Conductor Adrian Tan reprised his role as
emcee, talking to the audience about the works, and reassuring them that it was
alright to clap between movements of the symphony. They obliged, of course, but
were impeccably behaved throughout. It was clear that the sold-out crowd wanted
to be there, and treated the event with utmost respect and courtesy.
The first work was local jazz legend
Jeremy Monteiro's Overture in C – The Story of Singapore, a short work
that encapsulated the history of the nation post-1819 within just 4 minutes of
music. Two trumpets announced the arrival of the British (Raffles and Co.),
in a style not unlike Copland (who was American), and greeted by the kompangs
from the Orkestra Melayu Singapura. Soon, the drone of warplanes and a
brusquely Oriental motif signalled the intrusion and occupation by the
Japanese, all leading up to the work's big melody, which was Monteiro's
much-loved National Day Parade song One People, One Nation, One Singapore
The first second of Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony was not promising, as the drone of the brass was off key, but
immediately corrected itself before the entry of the strings. Conductor Tan did
not adopt an overly brisk tempo, but a comfortable one which suited the mostly
amateur players well. Yet the paced never dragged nor did he allow the spirit
to flag. This sustained the dramatic first movement with enough tension,
setting up the ensuing Scherzo which was arguably even better. The tempo
and temperature was upped considerably, yet the forces rallied steadfastly
without sacrificing accuracy in cues or prestidigitation. The excellent and
ever-steady timpanist Victor Wong was central to this movement's success.
The Adagio could have been made to
sound interminable but Tan kept it on tight rein throughout, to the point it
could even be considered short-winded. The opening statement was judged to
perfection, and the strings were a joy to behold in the slow movement's
lingering melody. Since when did the BHSO have it in them to play with such
beauty and finesse? Having heard the ensemble from its rough and ready earlier
days, its progress over the last few years have been nothing but totally
encouraging, perhaps also buoyed by the general overall quantum leaps made by
all the non-professional musical outfits in Singapore
And so the choral finale. Leading to
this, the audience listened with remarkable silence, patience and restraint,
applauding between movements not so much out of total ignorance but because
Maestro Tan permitted it. The many children were also rapt in attention, as
with the whole corpus of listeners awaiting the big moment to arrive.
There were smiles when
the Joy motif was heard for the first time from the low strings and the Presto
section erupted with a vehemence that demanded a response. If there were a weak
link in the performance, that would be the soloists who were probably
volunteers anyway. The opening vocal pronouncement O Freude, nicht diese
töne from Kong Lingyi was somewhat disappointing. He is more baritone than
bass, and his words did not carry much weight nor did it carry far. Tenor
Raymond Lee was better in the Turkish march segment, but was no Lim Shieh Yih
(bless his soul, who sang in the very first Esplanade Beethoven 9 in
October 2002) in terms of projection and sheer heroism. The soprano Wendy Woon
and mezzo-soprano Cheryl Bains (only 15 years old) had smallish voices, but
blended nicely within the quartet.
The chorus was close to
magnificent, arriving on cue with great spirit and fervour. Eyes were cast on
Chorus 1 which had no prior experience but sang as if their lives were on the
line, and this included the family of boy-scouts led by the father. They were
spared the intricacies of the fugal chorus, which the balance of the Joy
Chorale took up with much zeal. They had been well drilled by Khor Ai Ming. The
orchestra marched on without faltering, and its own fugal segment provided one
of the most thrilling moments of the concert.
Whether one was
listening to this symphony for the first time or the thousandth time, one would
not have missed the magnificent effort, sheer passion and commitment of all the
performers on stage. This performance not just reinforced the joy of
brotherhood or humanity, but the joy of making music itself. That itself is a
priceless commodity, one which the three concerts of Beethoven 9 by the
Singapore Symphony Orchestra in March will be hard-pressed to replicate.
Note: My sincere thanks go to Professor Maurine Tsakok for additional information on the Joy Chorale.
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