RACHMANINOFF PIANO CONCERTO 3 & SYMPHONY 3

RACHMANINOFF

PIANO CONCERTO 3

AND SYMPHONY 3

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

18 January 2024

This review was published on Bachtrack.com on 22 January 2024 with the title "Just about satisfying second part to Singapore Symphony’s Rachmaninov Anniversary bash".

Rachmaninov is likely the favourite composer among concert-goers in Singapore, and not even Tchaikovsky has the same draw as his younger compatriot. Two pairs of concerts by the Singapore Symphony commemorating Rachmaninov’s 150th anniversary, each with a piano concerto and symphony, were filled to the rafters. If the tandem of Second Piano Concerto and Symphony the previous week proved a hit, this one with Third Piano Concerto and Symphony lagged some distance behind. 

South Korean pianist Jae-Hyuck Cho is not a household name, certainly far less known than Garrick Ohlsson from the week before, but proved he had the chops. His perfomance conducted by Hans Graf was satisfying because it occupied the Goldilocks zone: not too fast, not too slow, and just about right for all tastes. While not being middle-of-the-road, it was free of idiosyncracy, with none of the preening and posturing many young keyboard wizards are guilty of. 

He knew how to project, and made the music sing. Consistent with a lack of ostentation, he also chose the shorter, leaner and more mercurial first movement cadenza less often heard these days. He was in good company, as this was the version Rachmaninov and Horowitz themselves played and recorded. 

The orchestra brooded in the Intermezzo’s opening, setting the stage for some really emotive playing from Cho, culminating in the scintillation of a whimsical waltz sequence before launching headlong into the Alla breve finale. From here, it was a white-knuckle ride all through its pulsating and breathless end. Credit goes to all for not making any excisions, which had severely truncated Rachmaninov’s own and Horowitz’s earlier recordings. 

An enjoyable performance, made all the more memorable with Cho’s unusual encore that was his own transcription of Philadelphia-born composer Albert Hay Malotte’s The Lord’s Prayer cast in D flat major (shades of that 18th Variation), much in the chordal style of Rachmaninov himself. 

Occupying the concert’s second half was the Third Symphony in A minor (Op.44), a work which lives in the shadow of the Second Symphony. Despite being two thirds its length and possessing the same melancholic quality and textural opulence as its predecessor, the shortcomings stood out. Paucity of gushing melodies was one, and Rachmaninov’s overarching nostalgia and struggles coming to grips with 20th century modernity (this was 1936 after all) left him an anachronism. Attempts at dissonance and grittiness in the first movement development, though well-handled by the orchestra, would pale heard alongside his compatriots Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. 

The second movement attempted something daring, by interpolating a martial scherzo-like sequence into its pages, but it was the yearning – encapsulated by guest concertmaster Andrew Haveron’s excellent solos – that became its lingering memory. 

By far the weakest movement was the finale, which began promisingly but soon petered out with a lack of thematic inspirations and ideas. What recourse was there? Throw in a furious fugato. Check. Then play around with the Dies Irae chant theme. Check. Balance all this with a slow and reflective segment. Check. Give Jin Ta’s solo flute extra work to do before an hasty coda and requisite big bang to close. Little wonder the applause was less vociferous than for the concerto or the whole of last week’s concerts. The musicians, who did their jobs well, were not culpable, so does the blame fall on poor Rachmaninov? 

Star Rating: ***

Here is the link to the original article on Bachtrack:

Satisfying second part to Singapore Symphony’s Rachmaninov anniversary bash | Bachtrack

MISCHA MAISKY & HAN-NA CHANG / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

MISCHA MAISKY & HAN-NA CHANG

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (29 September 2023)

This review was first published on Bachtrack.com on 2 October 2023 with the title "Mischa Maisky still a live wire on his Singapore return".

 

The year 1986 was a special one for the young Singapore Symphony Orchestra. For a seven-year-old fledgling outfit, it was gaining in confidence and beginning to take on big name soloists for marquee concerto performances. Enter Latvia-born cellist Mischa Maisky, he with his wild black, curly locks, irrepressible personality, and a high profile recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon besides. “Love me, love my cello” shouted The Straits Times preview, and he went on to sweep the Victoria Concert Hall audience away with Saint-Saëns’s First Cello Concerto in A minor.

 

It seems that 37 years has done little to change this artist. His flowing mane is now fully silver but the demeanour of “let me show you what I do, the way I do” remains wholly intact and totally kicking. It was Saint-Saëns One again on the cards, but it is the turn of a new generation of music-lovers to experience that full flush of Maisky, and his famed big tone. The concerto’s 19 precious minutes seemed all too brief, but he made every moment count. The fiery entry sizzled with the high voltage of a live wire, one which never stopped sparking. In a concerto without a true slow movement, the central Allegretto con moto provided some kind of respite but it was the orchestra traipsing lightly in close repartee with Maisky that kept the conversation hyper-alert and totally engaging.

 

Credit goes to the orchestra led by Han-Na Chang, herself a virtuoso cellist in an earlier iteration. If there were any conductor sympathetic to a soloist, that would be her. Not that Maisky needed any concession, as he blazed away in the finale, which also included three short slower sections to emote. The cello’s full-throated voice again came to the fore, and although one might have earlier wished for Dvorak or Elgar, this Saint-Saëns did its job with lots to spare. The enraptured young audience was rewarded with three encores, Maisky’s own arrangement of Lensky’s Aria (Kuda, kuda, vi udalilis) from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, accompanied by orchestra, and solo J.S.Bach, the Preludes from Suites No.1 and 2.

 

Although this gala concert was built around Maisky, the orchestra still had much to offer. The evening opened with Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, expanded from its original scoring for thirteen instrumentalists to 47 players. This allowed for a greater bandwidth for the strings to shine, and a rich sonority was generated from the stillness of its quiet lullaby-like opening. The entry of winds was sensitively handled especially the oboe solo, but it soon got congested and blustery, with the trumpet’s thirteen bars unfortunately submerged beneath the throng.

 

The concert’s second half was devoted Mozart’s Symphony No.41 in C major (K.551), the Jupiter after the ruler of Roman gods. Its regal opening movement, heralded by well punched-out chords, flexed muscles and exercised unabashed vibrato. Under Chang's sure-headed direction, this was how we used to hear this music before the rising of the period instruments movement. The slow movement oozed operatic grace but not without exhibiting tension and mild dissonance as it unfolded. The Minuet and Trio was suitably animated, and the valedictory finale then piled on the volume. The fugal culmination in Mozart's greatest symphonic finale, well negotiated by the orchestra, showed he knew his Bach and Handel well. Could he have topped that had he lived beyond 1791? That has to be one of music history's abiding mysteries.

Star Rating: ****

The original article on Bachtrack.com may be found here:

Mischa Maisky still a live wire on his Singapore return | Bachtrack

FANTASIA, FAREWELLS AND FAURE / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

FANTASIA, FAREWELLS & FAURE

Singapore Symphony Orchestra 

Victoria Concert Hall, Singapore

Friday (16 September 2022)

 

This review was first published in Bachtrack on 20 September 2022 with the title "A Requiem of repose: Stephen Layton conducts Fauré in Singapore"

 

British choral conductor Stephen Layton was to have led the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and its choruses in Fauré’s Requiem in March 2020. The Covid pandemic put an end to that. Two and a half years later, with the virus now endemic, Layton finally arrived and never has there been a more appropriate time for this masterpiece to be heard. The passing of HM Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September had cast a pall around the world, but this concert held in a historic hall memorialising Queen Victoria in the former Straits Settlements colony of Singapore seemed like the most timely response.

 

Thomas Tallis’s Why fumeth in fight sung by an offstage chorus opened the evening’s music, those being the very strains quoted by Ralph Vaughan Williams in his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis which followed without a break. Despite having just 28 string players onstage (21 in the main body and 7 standing behind), Layton coaxed from the ensemble a cathedral of sonority. Having former SSO Concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich (now with the BBC Symphony) as leader certainly helped with crafting textures of evenness and homogeneity. His own quartet of soloists, including violinist Michael Loh, violist Zhang Manchin and cellist Yu Jing, also stood out above the harmonious throng. Seldom has three choirs of strings sung with such moving intensity.

 

Still with string music, two short pieces from William Walton’s film music for Henry V lent further relevance and significance with their inclusion. In Passacaglia – Death of Falstaff, a slow throbbing pulse held sway, later giving way to the more richly harmonised Touch her soft lips and part in gentle sicilienne rhythm. There was no pretence to lugubriousness, just the regret of parting and bidding farewell.    

 

The Singapore Symphony Youth Choir (Choirmaster: Wong Lai Foon) with woodwinds, French horn and harp joined the string orchestra for Gabriel Fauré’s lilting Pavane. Has anyone actually paid attention to Robert de Montesquiou’s words, which include Les reines de nos coeurs (Queens of our hearts) and Adieu donc et bons jours aux tyrans de nos coeurs (Farewell and good days to the tyrants of our hearts)? A soothing benediction followed in Cantique de Jean Racine, with the splendid choir’s reassuring mellowness approximating voices of angels.

Photograph: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

 

The concert’s centrepiece was Fauré’s Requiem, in John Rutter and Stephen Layton’s edition for soprano and alto voices, performed by the boys, girls and ladies from both the Singapore Symphony Children’s and Youth Choirs (Choirmaster: Wong Lai Foon). Sung completely from memory, this was a show of perfect deportment and discipline. Yet there was a depth of feeling from the opening Requiem aeternam, allied by vocal clarity and excellent enunciation of consonants, all through to the close.

The soloists:
Baritone Martin Ng, soprano Victoria Songwei Li
and violinist Igor Yuzefovich (behind harp)

 

Organist Isaac Lee provided steadfast support on the hall’s Klais organ, and Yuzefovich’s delightful obbligato violin solos in Sanctus and In Paradisum were the gilded edge. Two of Singapore’s finest young opera singers also had spots to shine. Baritone Martin Ng lent gravitas in Hostias and the rapturous Libera me, while London-based soprano Victoria Songwei Li’s cameo in Pie Jesu revealed a voice of rare beauty. The closing In Paradisum floated on angels’ wings, its ethereal lightness finding a perfect match in the purity of the voices. It would have been hard to find dry eyes among the audience in this requiem of repose.

Photo: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

 

Star Rating: *****

VIENNA TO LINZ WITH MOZART / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

VIENNA TO LINZ WITH MOZART

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Wednesday (6 January 2021)

Witty and ebullient Mozart from the Singapore Symphony

This review was first published on the international music review website Bachtrack (www.bachtrack.com) on 11 January 2021.

 

Live concerts with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra began with a pair of Christmas concerts on 15 and 16 December of last year, bringing festive cheer to an otherwise gloomy close of an annus horribilus. The new year’s first concerts were to have been a trio of evenings with Krystian Zimerman playing all five Beethoven piano concertos, but that had to be cancelled.

 

In their place was a single hour-long concert, retaining its Viennese flavour with the music of Mozart led by the orchestra’s Austrian chief conductor Hans Graf. What could have been crushing disappointment was dispelled when the familiar figure of Philippines-born pianist Albert Tiu strode onstage to perform Mozart’s congenial Piano Concerto No.23 in A major (K.488). The Juilliard-schooled Tiu has been a regular and well-loved fixture in the Singapore concert scene since assuming the position of Associate Professor of piano performance at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in 2003.

 

Although he is better known for performing Romantic repertoire such as Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Chopin and Godowsky, Tiu’s Mozart is every bit worth the attention. To its rococo sensibilities, he offered tonal clarity, limpid fingerwork and a singing seamlessness. Accompanied discreetly and attentively by chamber forces, his solo part became an epitome of good taste and utmost decorum.

 

Then came a most unexpected surprise from left of field. Instead of the usual Mozart cadenza, which is not particularly virtuosic and decidedly short-winded, he served up Leopold Godowsky’s lushly (and decadently) harmonised cadenza. Those familiar with the Pole’s grandiloquent takes on Chopin’s Études might have guessed from the contrapuntal quirks, outlandish sleights of hand and generally unabashed chutzpah.

 

After this cheeky sojourn to the early 20^th century, all returned to the 1780s for the slow movement’s lilting sicilienne. Tiu’s aria-like musings on the keyboard held sway, with melancoly and nostalgia balanced against feather-light string pizzicatos in its sublime last pages. The final rondo had an irrepressible joie de vivre, bringing the concerto to a lively close. Tiu was not done yet, the encore being his own transcription of the selfsame Adagio. Now sans orchestra, little harmonic intricacies were gently teased out, revealing yet more of Mozart’s genius.

 

The concert continued without intermission into Mozart’s “Linz” Symphony. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra has never been renowned as a Mozart or Haydn orchestra, having prioritised Romantic and 20^th century repertoire in programming through its 42-year history. This looks to change under Salzburg-resident Hans Graf’s directorship. The performance of the symphony simply sparkled with a champagne-like ebullience. His mustering of small forces at hand lent the ensemble a buoyancy and litheness through its four movements. At no point was its overall architecture or thematic integrety sacrificed for outward display or superficial effect.

 

The opening introduction was direct and plain-speaking, leading to the Allegro proper with its cheeky appropriation of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus motif. Repeating it like some kind of mantra, the music spelt pure unadulterated joy continuing into the slow movement. While not taken at a particularly slow tempo, there were nevertheless contrasts between light and shade in its alternating major and minor modes. The courtly Minuetto with its gently lilting Trio section saw oboist Rachel Walker and bassoonist Christoph Wichert with delightful repartee. The earlier liveliness returned in the spirited finale, blazing a brilliant path to the concert’s close.

 

Concert life in Singapore following a gradual lifting of circuit breaker measures has begun to pick up with a combination of live and streamed events. This concert, attended by a socially distanced audience, bodes well for a hopeful but somewhat uncertain future.    

 

Star Rating: *****