GERMAN CLASSICS
Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra
School of the Arts Concert Hall
Saturday (26 August 2023)
ASIA CONCERT TOUR 2023
Academy of Taiwan Strings
Victoria Concert Hall
Sunday (27 August 2023)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 August 2023 with the title "Invigorating showcases by Braddell orchestra and Academy of Taiwan Strings".
After the tragic passing of music director Adrian Tan in 2021, Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra, Singapore’s oldest community orchestra, has found a worthy successor in conductor Leonard Tan. Leonard, who is no relation of Adrian, has an excellent track record of having helmed The Philharmonic Winds, Singapore’s leading wind ensemble, for some 15 years. He also continued in Adrian’s friendly manner of demystifying the classics by addressing the audience with simple, well-chosen words.
More important was the music-making, and straight off, Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture was possessed with tension and energy befitting its drama and tragedy. The opening chords were punched out with incisiveness and clarity, and soon the musical narrative sizzled.
Far more substantial was Brahms’ Second Symphony in a performance which highlighted the music’s expansiveness and sunlit vistas. The string playing stood out and if a symphony had a smile, this was it. From the lilting lullaby-like theme from the opening movement, the scherzo’s chattiness to the finale’s trail-blazing close, the results were invigorating.
In Dvorak’s masterly Cello Concerto in B minor, the orchestra partnered talented young cellist Theophilus Tan, Goh Soon Tioe Centenary Award recipient and founding member of the Concordia Quartet. His solo playing was one of much sensitivity, which occasionally got submerged by dense orchestral textures and over-enthusiastic projecting. It was passion which ultimately shone through, in the slow movement’s love song and finale’s irrepressible march.
Singapore was the first leg of the Academy of Taiwan Strings’ Asian tour, which also includes concerts in Kuala Lumpur, Taipei and Kaohsiung. Why it is considered an elite ensemble was immediately apparent by the sheer volume and richness of sonority generated in Elgar’s showpiece Introduction and Allegro, suggesting a group far larger than its 21 members.
The major work in the 2-hour long concert was the World Premiere of Singaporean composer Tan Chan Boon’s newly commissioned Symphony For Strings. Tan is not one for half-measures, and his 38-minute long work relived the Mahlerian dictum that, “A symphony is like a world. It must have everything.” And the kitchen sink one might add, as its three movements got progressively longer.
The first two movements explored ethereal and otherworldly sound textures, including harmonics, slides, pizzicatos and other exotic devices. From the morass of the amorphous issued forth hints of melody, like a newly revitalised world emerging out of Covid-induced chaos. The final slow movement had Brucknerian ambitions, a hymn-like tune without worries or neuroses, later turning into some elegy for lost souls. Its life-affirming close saw a collective stomping of feet from all performers, a trickle turning into a torrential rainstorm.
Applause from the small audience was fulsome but genuine, also accorded to the absorbing reading of Brahms’ Second String Quintet (Op.111) in its string orchestra version. Its charm and luscious melodies were gratefully lapped up by the players, leaving one wondering why it is not more often heard.
Taiwan-based Japanese film composer Koji Sakurai’s Last Forever inspired by Eileen Chang’s novella Red Rose, White Rose was quasi-baroque in style. Reminiscent of a cross between Albinoni’s Adagio and Scarlatti’s “Aria” Sonata in D minor, this elegiac number tugged on the heart-strings like no other. Joined by eight string players from Singapore’s own chamber outfit re:Sound, the concert closed with two tangos by Astor Piazzolla, sultry and brooding Oblivion with violinist Cheng Tze Hsun as soloist and the ever-lively Libertango.
Encores were demanded even after the ensemble had left the stage, and who could resist enjoying that most quintessential of Taiwanese melodies, Teng Yu-Hsien’s Wang Chun Feng or Pining For The Spring Breeze?
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