TCHAIKOVSKY AND PROKOFIEV -
HANS GRAF AND BENJAMIN SCHMID
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Thursday (2 May 2024)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 4 May 2024 with the title "Sumptuous night of Russian music".
Outside of politics, Russians are beloved in Singapore, especially their composers. What else would explain two consecutive evenings of music by Piotr Tchaikovsky and Sergei Prokofiev at Esplanade Concert Hall by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra led by music director Hans Graf?
The indestructible war-horse that is Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture opened the all-Russian concert. This is familiar music inspired by William Shakespeare’s tragedy, incorporating scenes of Friar Laurence, the feuding Montagues and Capulets and most famous of all, the Love Scene, within a 20-minute essay.
Clear and fluid woodwinds defined the tone in this well-disciplined performance, one so polished to a fine sheen that it could have done with a quantum of blood and guts. The gushing love theme, well-known in popular culture, was certainly not bland on account of the fine string-playing. One, however, suspected that its more rapturous and carnal emotions may have been kept at arm’s length.
The evening’s concertante showcase was provided by Austrian violinist Benjamin Schmid in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.2 in G minor. By the 1930s, the former enfant terrible of Russian modernism in the West had his fear factor diminished. Having returned to the Soviet Union, he was already composing accessible music deemed inoffensive to Stalin’s totalitarian regime.
Schmid’s sumptuous tone and pristine intonation shone through in the totally exposed opening solo built upon the G minor triad. The second subject’s melting lyricism and the lovely slow movement, a graceful dance with accompanied by gentle pizzicatos, would further confirm his artistry.
By the finale’s savage but still tonal romp, his mastery of the music’s dare-devilry was complete. The solo encore of Heinrich Biber’s Passacaglia (from the Mystery Sonatas), also in the key of G minor, provided a canny spot of symmetry.
The evening closed as it began, with more familiar Tchaikovsky, his Fifth Symphony in E minor. As before, it took some time for the music to ignite. Ma Yue’s solo clarinet helped set the initial droll tone of the work’s recurring motto theme, one which varied as the movements progressed.
Under Graf’s steady guiding hand, the tension was built up incrementally but there was to be no hysteria or histrionics, only polished playing.
Austin Larson’s radiant French horn solo lit up the brooding slow movement and when the motto theme returned, it was with added vehemence and almost violent undertones. The third movement’s elegant waltz that followed was well-contrasted with the finale’s show of defiance and might.
The latter’s development was taken at a furious pace, providing the symphony’s most gripping and exciting moments. A once-dormant colossus had been awakened, with the motto theme now striding and swaggering without apology to its triumphant close.
Greeted with loud cheers and applause, here was proof that SSO’s primer of Russian concert music had been a success, with high culture transcending prideful politics.
You can read the original review, published in Bachtrack.com here:
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