RIVER OF LIFE / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

RIVER OF LIFE
Ding Yi Music Company
Esplanade Recital Studio
Sunday (15 December 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 December 2019 with the title "Story of Singapore River awash with nice touches".

It is laudable that Ding Yi Music Company is engaging audiences not just by performing music well, but also connecting with local culture and history, putting these in context with well-curated concerts. River Of Life, a story of Singapore River set to music, was another good example of its worthy projects.

Running just over 60 minutes, this was a programmatic chamber symphony in four chapters inspired by late journalist Han Shan Yuan’s Endless Stories of Singapore River. The script was crafted by his brother Han Lao Da while his daughter Han Yong May served as script consultant. The music by Law Wai Lun, composer-in-residence of Singapore Chinese Orchestra, accompanied stills, moving pictures and calligraphy by Choo Thiam Siew.

Conducted by Quek Ling Kiong, the concert began with an informal preamble when instruments representing the music’s main motifs were introduced. The men in the 18-member ensemble were attired like coolies, and raised wings - where dizi and suona players were seated - were painted with eyes to resemble prows of river-boats, all nice touches.

The music was contemporary in feel, like scores accompanying documentary movies, but there were obvious ethnic and cultural influences too. In the first chapter, Our Forefathers, gamelan-like chimes represented the Indo-Malayan phase of Singapore’s history, and when the British arrived, the music played was Scotland The Brave. Was this some kind of mistake?

No, that was a knowing acknowledgement of Scotsman William Farquhar’s role in developing Singapore into a busy trading post as its first resident and commandant. His face was flashed on the screen soon after Raffles’. Historically-aware nuances like this made the production all the more interesting.

The second chapter A Prosperous River saw Singapore as a hive of activity, the river being its pulsing artery and life-blood. The third and longest chapter The River Symphony was overtly Chinese in feel, with Yvonne Tay’s guzheng central to the narrative. Equally vital was a roadside storyteller, played by narrator Yang Shibin by the glow of an oil-lamp, relating the story of Wu Song slaying the tiger. This was not done in Mandarin but Cantonese, and true to form, the story was left unfinished, to be continued in another session.

Alert listeners would also note that when news of the fall of Beijing to Mao Zedong’s forces was read, China was referred to as the homeland. Those were the days before Singapore’s nationhood. This movement then closed with a Glenn Gouldian fugue of voices, now in different Chinese dialects.

Singapore River has also seen its dark days, but these were glossed over by its clean-up and inevitable gentrification as a premier tourist attraction. All through this, various motifs hitherto heard in bits and bytes coalesced to become the familiar tune Singapura in the finale, titled A River of Hope. That the song was not quoted in full was a relief. With a bathetic end averted, a standing ovation was a just result.

Everybody wants to take 

selfies with politicians these days.