SEAMLESS / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

 

SEAMLESS 

Singapore Chinese Orchestra 

Singapore Conference Hall 

Saturday (20 July 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 July with the title "SCO's season opener nothing short of spectacular".

The opening concert of Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s 2024-25 season, led by principal conductor Quek Ling Kiong, was nothing short of spectacular. True to its credo of being the “people’s orchestra”, SCO’s exploration of trans-cultural genres immediately bore fruit with its collaboration with 2023 Cultural Medallion recipient Osman bin Abdul Hamid. 

The Malay dancer-master’s Era Dance Theatre (EDT) took centrestage in a choreographed performance of SCO composer-in-residence Wang Chenwei’s The Sisters’ Islands (2006), his award-winning symphonic poem based on a well-known Malay legend. The music’s deft use of lilting asli, zapin dances and the pelog scale made it eminently suitable for choreography. 

Seventeen dancers soon filled the aisles and stage, reenacting the graceful sashays of the eponymous sisters and villagers, before them being forcibly abducted by pirates. The playful and later angst-filled movements echoed the dramatic programme music, adding a further dimension to an already vividly detailed score. 

The sisters’ immortalisation as the island pair in the Straits of Singapore was represented with both dancers held aloft high above the orchestra as the music reached its climax. After this impressive showing, it is now almost impossible to hear this music without reimagining the dance moves. 

Also involving EDT was a sole veiled dancer in Chung Yiu-Kwong’s Girl From Kroran, a single-movement yangqin concerto with SCO principal Qu Jianqing as soloist. Kroran was an ancient kingdom along the Silk Road which suddenly disappeared during the Fourth Century A.D., and the music was distinctly Central Asian with its Arabic influences. 

The dancer soon unveiled, performed several dervish-like pirouettes before hightailing offstage, just as the pace escalated alarmingly into terminal velocity. Then the super-virtuoso in Qu took over, stealing the stage by romping through the high-risk high-stakes score completely from memory. Any misplaced note would have spelt disaster, but the adrenaline-fueled soloist and turbo-charged ensemble gloriously prevailed. 

The balance of this very well-structured programme, graced by President and Mrs Tharman Shanmugaratnam, also had much to recommend. Beginning the evening was Jiang Ying’s Impressions of Chinese Music: Daqu, the movement’s title translating into Big Composition. This sumptuous score, opening with a lovely guan solo, resembled film music, and its well-sustained waves of sound approximated that of a Western symphony orchestra. 

Following this was Peng Xiuwen’s Flowing Water, essentially a river portrait tracing the origins of the mighty Yangtze from trickling droplets (guzheng), limpid streams (lyrical huqins) to soaring waves before concluding in harmonious peace. 

The concert closed with the two movements of Liu Changyuan’s Symphony of Sizhu. Jiangnan Sizhu is the beloved tradition of “silk and bamboo”, delighting in the finery of lush string (silk) and wind (bamboo) playing. Its beauty was captured in a intimate moment when Yu Jia’s pipa, Huang Guifang’s sanxian and Zhao Jianhua’s erhu were given free rein to express themselves. 

The conclusion work’s animated conclusion was so well received that it was encored, with the audience encouraged to hum along its big tune before its grand apotheosis. Little wonder why this season opener closed in brimming high spirits.