DARRELL AND & SCO / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

DARRELL ANG & SCO

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Friday (28 April 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 May 2023 with the title "Darrell Ang pulls out all stops for debut with Singapore Chinese Orchestra".

 

In his debut concert conducting the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, Darrell Ang, presently Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Sichuan Philharmonic in Chengdu, pulled out all the stops. In an eclectic and highly engaging programme which included bits of his hometown and adopted city, every effort was made to ensure a visual and sonic spectacular.

 

The evening began with SCO Composer-in-Residence Wang Chenwei’s Thaipusam, originally a solo violin piece. Zhao Jianhua’s erhu and Li Baoshun’s gaohu introduced insinuating melodies with portamenti (slides) that simulated the inflexions of Tamil tunes. The orchestra coped well with the irregular meters of Carnatic rhythms, and a full-on procession soon ensued. Resembling modern minimalist music, one might say this was “John Adams goes to Serangoon Road”.

 

Darrell Ang salutes SCO Composer-in-Residence
Wang Chenwei for his new work.

Percussion at play.
Notice the angklungs on the sides.

Malaysian composer Chow Jun Yi’s Kampung was an idealised view of an idyllic village in the eyes of a Kuala Lumpur city-slicker. The slow-to-fast form portrayed the break of dawn, its awakening starring solo dizi and sheng, before heading into the hustle-bustle of busy country living. Rattling of wooden angklongs added to the gentle rustic charm, soon overtaken by percussion working overtime in this colourful and highly rhythmic score.

 

The evening’s tour de force were two original works by Ang himself, strategically placed on either sides of the intermission. The first was Kungfu Koncerto, a ballet for solo martial artist showcasing the pugilistic prowess of national wushu coach Su Zifang. Beginning with classical moves of taiji quan, this soon evolved into more fluid and vigourous motions, later culminating with swashbuckling swordplay.

 

Impressing with an age-defying suppleness and agility, no septuagenarian has the right to be this dynamic or youthful. As in Weber’s famous Invitation to the Dance, a brief lull in the music precipitated a storm of premature applause, but its true ending was rightly accorded even more plaudits.

 

The second of two enthralling acts was an imperious show of vocal abilities by Tibetan folk singer Tsering DarGi, star in Ang’s Aba, Aba! His was the natural high tenor of the highlands, unabashed in flexing all sorts of musculature to achieve a rich, unadulterated quality which incorporated a kind of yodelling quite different from the Alpine variety. His repeated long held notes, heady and intoxicating, would even be the envy of Pavarotti and his kind.

 

One only wished his words to have been translated into Chinese or English. According to the notes, he would most likely have expressed “the love of nature, the awe of gods and the yearning for a better life”.        

 

Ang’s musical idiom for both works falls under the category of cinematic music, such was the lavish orchestration and overarching sweep. The same is said of the two pieces that closed the concert. Five movements from Zhao Jiping’s Qiao’s Grand Courtyard were rich in melody and lush orchestral effects, united by a common leitmotif. Wang Danhong’s Ode To The Sun, an energetic and orgiastic dance hailing from Sichuan, provided a rousing conclusion to a true concert spectacle.    

   

NATIONAL DAY CONCERT 2022 / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

NATIONAL DAY CONCERT 2022

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (13 August 2022)

This review was first published in Bachtrack on 15 August 2022 with the title "What is Singapore music? Singapore Symphony’s National Day Concert provides the clues."

 

Ever since 2018, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s National Day Concert has become the showcase of music by Singaporean composers. The sixty-four million dollar question inevitably arises: What is Singapore music? This leads to further questions: Who composes Singapore music? What does it sound like?   

 

Antonin Dvorak posed similar questions about American music more than a century ago, sparking a musical revolution that inspired composers like Ives, Gershwin, Copland, Barber, Bernstein and Florence Price. Singapore’s first major post-Colonial post-Independence composer was Leong Yoon Pin (1931-2011), notably a student of Nadia Boulanger. Although Leong’s original music did not feature in this year’s concert, newer generations of composers represented may be considered his spiritual descendants. Led by Grammy-nominated Singaporean conductor Darrell Ang, himself a former student of Leong’s, the music performed was a veritable melting pot of the myriad cultures that make up Singapore society.

Photo: Nathaniel Lim

 

The concert opened with three World Premieres of new commissioned works. Wang Chenwei’s short symphonic poem Thaipusam was inspired by the Tamil (South Indian) Hindu festival day of penitence in honour of deity Lord Murugan. Playing on complex metres and rhythms from Carnatic music, evocative solos for viola and violin lead into a vibrant but sanitised view of the hot and sweaty procession characterised by self-mortification. John Adams goes to Serangoon Road (in Singapore’s Little India) might be an apt description.

Photo: Nathaniel Lim

 

More eclectic was David Loke’s 3 Sketches of Singapore, a modern concerto grosso with the Lorong Boys (“back street boys” in Malay) quintet as soloists. Comprising violinists Gabriel Lee and the composer himself, flautist Rit Xu, percussionist Joachim Lim and pianist Jonathan Shin, this “garage band” of ex-Yong Siew Toh Conservatory students had made its name busking in subway trains. Almost recounting Singapore’s history, its movements include a stormy sea shanty (the nation’s modern founder Stamford Raffles came from the Sceptred Isles, after all), an elegy with a solo from Loke a la John Williams’ Schindler’s List (remembering the genocide of ethnic Chinese perpetrated by the Japanese during WWII) and use of rattling angklungs (bamboo idiophones), before closing with a lively jazz-inflected Raindance.

Lorong Boys take a bow.

 

Niranjan Pandian on the bansuri.

Alicia de Silva’s Echoes of the Woods was the antithesis of Debussy’s Prelude to Afternoon of the Fawn. She painted a balmy night soundscape, resembling Vaughan Williams at his moodiest, before the emergence of Niranjan Pandian’s bansuri (North Indian bamboo flute). Mellow and haunting, its mystique is heightened with cellist Ng Pei Sian’s plaint, the duo completing what was the evening’s most poignant work. The oldest work was Stasis (1988) by the late Tsao Chieh (1953-1996), who made a living as an engineer and defence scientist. Its minimalism was founded on an A minor triad, a gradual crescendo of extreme calm and serenity broken by Evgueni Brokmiller’s flute (resembling the Balinese suling) and concertmaster Kong Zhao Hui’s closing violin solo reminiscent of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. The serendipitous symmetry provided by both these two works could not have been more striking.  

Photo: Nathaniel Lim

 

A combined chorus of over a hundred singers from the Singapore Symphony Choruses joined the orchestra for three popular National Day Songs: Lee Chin Sin’s Up (orchestrated by Jaffar Sidek), Benjamin Lim’s Little Big Things (combining two songs, sung in English and Chinese) and Dick Lee’s Home (arranged by Wong Lai Foon, orchestrated by Dax Wilson Liang), the last a sentimental favourite so beloved as to have become a second national anthem. Closing with the national anthem Majulah Singapura (Onward Singapore) by Zubir Said (orchestrated by Leong Yoon Pin) sung in Malay, it felt almost like the Last Night of the Proms, but without the jingoism.

Chorus masters Wong Lai Foon and
Eudenice Palaruan sing the National Anthem.

 

Star Rating: ****

You can watch this concert in its entirety here:

Temasek Foundation SSO National Day Concert 2022 - YouTube

All the performers meet
Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat

The Lorong Boys
with the Loke clan. 

JOAN MANEN Violin Concerto No.3, Symphony No.2 / Review

JOAN MANÉN

Violin Concerto No.3

Symphony No.2

Barcelona Symphony Orchestra

DARRELL ANG, Conductor

Naxos 8.574274-75 (2 CDs)

 

At the rate he carries on, Grammy-nominated Darrell Ang might very well become the most recorded Singaporean conductor of all time. For the Naxos label, he has done sterling work in introducing the lesser-known music of French and Spanish composers. Following up on his earlier and much-acclaimed recording of Spanish violin concertos with Yang Tianwa and the Barcelona Symphony is this album dedicated to Catalonian composer Joan Manén (1883-1971).

 

It is unfathomable how Manén, a contemporary of Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), is almost unknown despite having written much good music. He was a virtuoso violinist (considered a younger rival of Pablo de Sarasate), pianist and conductor who made the first recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Second only to cellist Pablo Casals as the most famous Catalan musician, the two major orchestral works in this album suggested he also had Beethovenian ambitions.

 

His Violin Concerto (1941), nicknamed “Iberico”, plays for some 43 minutes. Only Beethoven, Brahms, Elgar and Reger wrote longer violin concertos. Its description sin tono (without tonality) is curious, meaning that it does not have a definite tonal centre. Far from being atonal, it is a lush Romantic work with memorable melodies. The opening movement plays for almost a half-hour (echoing his famous predecessors), while the brief second movement serves as an enlace (link) to a rather short-winded finale. While not as overtly nationalistic as Manén’s own Concierto Espanol, a distinct Iberian flavour pervades the work. Spanish violinist Ana Maria Valderrama, winner of the 2011 Sarasate International Violin Competition, is a most convincing soloist.   

 

Symphony No.2 (1955), nicknamed “Iberica”, in four movements and scored for large orchestra, is even more ambitious at 55 minutes. This was Manén’s Eroica Symphony, given its scope and sense of proportion. A Slavic solemnity and foreboding dominates the sprawling opening movement and slow third movement, but it is the highly rhythmic and dance-like Allegro scherzando second movement and celebratory finale where more obvious Iberian influences come to bear. Conductor Darrell Ang keeps a tight rein on the proceedings, firmly guiding its narrative while preventing the music from becoming protracted and over-bloated. Given Joan Manén’s well-conceived and flavoursome music, Naxos’ low price and excellent annotations, this double-CD album is well worth exploring. 

A GIFT TO THE UNIVERSE: CELEBRATING BACH III / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

A GIFT TO THE UNIVERSE

CELEBRATING BACH III

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Thursday (4 February 2021)

 

This was the third concert by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra celebrating the legacy of J.S.Bach, utilising chamber forces that have become a norm as Singapore gradually emerges from the Covid circuit breaker period. Conducted by Darrell Ang, the hour-long concert attended by a socially-distanced and masked audience, featured three familiar works.

 

Bach’s diverse set of six Brandenburg Concertos was the closest he came to the baroque concerto grosso form, featuring soloists (concertino group) playing separately from the general ensemble (ripieno group). As such, selected players from within the orchestra were highlighted and given their chance to shine in their solo parts.

 

Issues of balance resulted however cropped up in the popular Second Brandenburg Concerto, when violinist Kong Xianlong was stood front of stage while flautist Evgueni Brokmiller, oboist Pan Yun and trumpeter Lau Wen Rong (substituting for Principal Jon Paul Dante) sat playing in the rear. Given the prominence and volume of brass, this seemed a logical move, but the overall balance of sonorities did not fully gel.

 

The violin barely stood out, the woodwinds often receded into the background while the trumpet - most prominent of them all – stole the show. Playing at the highest possible register, this extremely demanding part was also fraught with difficulties. Although Lau has a pleasant and striking clarion tone, the articulation was not always immaculate.

 

As the ensemble settled into the concert, the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto fared much better. Both flautists Brokmiller and Miao Shanshan played from the back and were as one throughout the three movements. Violinist Zhao Tian played at the front and fully relished his part, with virtuosic flourishes that would not look out of place in a Vivaldi concerto. This was arguably the best ensemble performance of the evening, and closed the concert on a high.

 

Wedged in between the Brandenburgs was the evergreen Concerto in D minor for two violins (BWV.1043), with Ye Lin and guest soloist Chloe Chua doing the honours. Fences were rushed in the opening few bars, resulting in some untidiness but eventually cooler minds prevailed. Once again, one cannot overstate the miracle that is Chloe, joint winner of the 2018 Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition (Junior category), who partnered relative veteran Ye (close to three times her age) to near perfection. The slow movement sung with an aria-like seamlessness and the busy counterpoint of the outer movements were dispatched with spirit and verve.

 

The Singapore Symphony Orchestra has never sold itself as a baroque specialist, but it is encouraged to continue exploring this repertoire, not just the familiar favourites but to forge out further afield.                 

 

SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA NATIONAL DAY CONCERT / Review

SSO NATIONAL DAY CONCERT:

A NATION IN HARMONY

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Streamed online via SISTIC Live

Saturday (15 August 2020)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 18 August 2020  with the title "Joyous showcase of local music canon".

 

Over the last three years, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s National Day Concerts have become proud showcases of works by Singaporean and locally-based composers. This year’s offerings, conducted by Darrell Ang, included four new works. Three were by young composers who by their ages would be known as millennials. Never in Singapore’s 55-year history has there been such a glut of composing talent.

 

The concert began with New Beginnings by Sandra Lim  (born 1991), a slickly orchestrated fantasy on two popular songs, Di Tanjong Katong and Singapura. Resembling the scores of Hollywood epics à la John Williams, motifs of both songs were wittily bandied about but never heard in full. As per social distancing requirements, the orchestra was chamber-sized, with musicians widely separated on the Esplanade Concert Hall stage, and all masked-up (wind players excepted) which is for now standard concert attire.  

 

More modern and ominous in feel was Metro by Tan Yuting (born 1993), a portrayal of urban hyperactivity, perhaps not of Singapore’s pristine streets, but somewhere far less secure or savoury. Over an ostinato beat established by Jonathan Fox on hi-hat cymbals, a quasi-minimalist scenario unfolded with Stravinskyan economy but always poised on a razor’s edge. As if violence might erupt at any moment, this seemed a portent of the uncertain times we live in.

 

Exuberant would aptly describe City Arising by Jonathan Shin (born 1992), a bustling morning scene as the nation awakes to another fraught and frenetic day. Even the ear-piercing call of the koel is quoted, heard on Ma Yue’s solo clarinet, and the ensuing hubbub is a good-natured and comically optimistic one, recalling socialist-realist overtures of Shostakovich and Kabalevsky.  

 

The Texan John Sharpley (born 1955), resident here since the mid-1980s, is the sole boomer among  young upstarts. His chamber opera Kannagi (2009), based on the Tamil saga Silapathikaram (The Anklet) has now become part of the Singapore opera canon.

 

Brahman: Kannagi’s Realization, the penultimate section of the opera, is a sequence building up to a grand climax. Anticipation and expectancy is driven to seemingly insurmountable levels, heightened by Shane Thio’s runs on the celesta. This intoxicating music accompanied Bharatanayam dancer Kshirja Govind’s entrancing movements playing the eponymous heroine-turned-goddess.  

 

After the serious stuff, Dick Lee’s Home (orchestrated by Kelly Tang) provided some levity in a video from the 2018 National Day Concert featuring the Singapore Symphony Choruses. National Day Parade favourite Count On Me, Singapore by the Canadian Hugh Harrison (whose other hit song was Stand Up For Singapore) was sung jazz-styled by Benjamin Kheng in a super slick commercially produced video that also recounted landmarks in SSO’s history.

 

Finally, it was left to Zubir Said’s national anthem Majulah Singapura (in Tang’s 2020 reorchestration for chamber forces) to do the honours. So what is Singapore music? A fuller picture emerges with each and every National Day concert, so long may this continue. 

THE GENTEEL HORN OF MR HAN / Singapore Sy,phony Orchestra / Review

THE GENTEEL HORN OF MR HAN
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Victoria Concert Hall
Friday (13 March 2020)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 March 2020 with the title "Awe-inspiring romp as SSO French-hornist says goodbye".

The Singapore Symphony Orchestra has reached an age when long-serving musicians have begun to retire. Earlier this year, it bade farewell to veteran Leader, violinist Lynnette Seah. This evening, Principal French hornist Han Chang Chou, popularly known as Han Xiao Guang, said goodbye. Of his 41 years as a professional musician, 33 were spent with the SSO.

In August, he returns to his homeland China to teach at the Tianjin Juilliard School. His parting gift was a performance of Mozart’s Second Horn Concerto, ironically receiving its belated SSO premiere. Perhaps that speaks of the orchestra’s relative neglect of Classical era repertoire, but its redress was an invigorating outing with Han firmly in control.

Just last week, he confidently blew away the treacherously exposed repeated solo horn passages in Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. This evening revealed a more sensitive side to his virtuosity, and that sonority that spelt mellow nobility. Eschewing outward display for its own sake, he was a figure of unwavering steadfastness and unflappable calm.

In the aria-like slow movement, his seamless singing tone reminded that much of Mozart’s lyricism was inspired by opera. In the Rondo finale, close sibling to that of the Fourth Horn Concerto, his agility to jump through assorted musical hoops proved to be a most enjoyable romp. An awe-inspiring one too, judging by the hearty applause that greeted its end.

Judging by the smiles, Mr Han

is well-loved by the orchestra.

The Mozart was sandwiched between two contrasted suites inspired by Moliere’s play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Would-Be Gentleman), both local premieres by chamber-sized forces conducted by Darrell Ang. This was inspired programming for the 75-minute concert which had no intermission.

Opening was the Overture and Dances from Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lully’s accompanying music of 1670. Here was actual baroque music but performed on modern instruments in Ang’s own edition. The Overture was a French overture, a form comprising a syncopated opening section leading into a fugue.

Note the presence of the harpsichord and theorbo.

The music was crisply articulated with three dances that followed courtly and charming. The Turkish  influences (then trending in Western Europe) were graced by a small battery of percussion, and concessions to authenticity were provided by Shane Thio’s harpsichord and Christopher Clarke’s theorbo (an antique long-necked lute).   

Richard Strauss’ Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme suite from 1920 concluded the concert. Here was an example of neoclassicism, where modern composers relived old forms and styles with contemporary means. Its nine short movements were tuneful and tasteful, mostly accomplished by small groups of instruments, and often festooned with solo flourishes.   

Returning as guest concertmaster, Lynnette Seah and her violin worked tirelessly, while Jon Paul Dante’s trumpet added gloss to the showy movements. Shane Thio now commanded the piano as the music danced to a more modern beat. By the final movement, The Dinner, tutti forces resounded like one of Strauss’ classic scores, Don Juan or Don Quixote. Such is the magic of chamber-sized orchestras.

Judging by the smiles, Darrell Ang

and the orchestra had a good time!

CD Review (The Straits Times, April 2019)

BRUNEAU

L’Attaque Du Moulin – Suite

Barcelona Symphony / DARRELL ANG

Naxos 8.573888 / ****1/2

It is likely that operatic composer Alfred Bruneau (1857-1934), a contemporary of Puccini and Elgar, is hardly known outside of his native France. He was credited for introducing verismo into French opera, substituting mythical and historical characters with modern-day personalities which contemporary audiences could better relate to. This ground-breaking album brings together over an hour of orchestral excerpts from his little-known and almost-forgotten operas. 

A 22-minute suite comes from L’Attaque Du Moulin (The Attack On The Mill, 1893), a “lyric drama” inspired by a short story by Emile Zola. The highly evocative music brings to mind the orchestral music from Italian verismo composer Pietro Mascagni’s familiar Cavalleria Rusticana. 

Even more ambitious is the ballet La Legende De L’Or (The Legend Of Gold) from Messidor (1897), just over half an hour long, which displays influences of the German Richard Wagner, specifically music from his Ring cycle. Two short preludes from Messidor and Nais Micoulin (1907) make interesting fillers.

Darrell Ang and the excellent Barcelona Symphony give fine and idiomatic performances, for which attention to orchestral detail is not spared. One will be hard-pressed to find better recordings this obscure but thoroughly worthy music.   

CD Review (The Straits Times, November 2018)

SMETANA Festive Symphony

The Bartered Bride: Overture & Dances

Berlin Radio Symphony / DARRELL ANG

Naxos 8.573672 / ****1/2

At the rate he is going, Darrell Ang could well become the most recorded Singaporean conductor of all time. His recorded repertoire has been diverse and this disc features the music of Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884), hailed as the “Father of Czech music”. Although very well known for his symphonic poem cycle Ma Vlast (My Country) from the 1870s, his early Festive Symphony of 1854 is virtually unknown.

As a loyal subject of the Habsburg empire, he quoted the Emperor’s Hymn (popularised by Joseph Haydn in his “Emperor” String Quartet, Op.76 No.3) in three of its four movements. The work runs to almost 43 minutes, and almost outstays its welcome amid grand fanfares and martial postures, culminating in the Hymn blared out at its triumphal and grandstanding conclusion.

Only in the dance-like 3^rd movement does one hear Smetana’s nationalism at play, looking forward to Dvorak’s popular Slavonic Dances to come. The fill-up in this album are the Overture and three fast dances – Polka, Furiant and Dance Of The Comedians - from the nationalist opera The Bartered Bride. 

These, rather than the symphony, constitute vintage Smetana and represents his best music. Darrell Ang and the excellent Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra offer lively performances, comparable with the best recordings in the catalogue. For the rarely heard and seldom recorded symphony, they have the field to their own, so do have a listen.   

SSO NATIONAL DAY CONCERT / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

SSO NATIONAL DAY CONCERT

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (11 August 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 August 2018 with the title "Something for everyone in concert of Singaporean music".

What is Singaporean music? That question was partially answered in a first-ever National Day Concert by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, led by Singaporean conductor Darrell Ang. In premiering new works and reliving popular tunes, there seemed to be something for everyone this evening. 

Cultural Medallion recipient Kelly Tang's two suites on popular local melodies began each half of the concert. The Symphonic Suite On A Set Of Local Tunes had Home, Chan Mali Chan, Bunga Sayang and Singapore Heartbeat as main themes, with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Elmer Bernstein's Magnificent Seven as clever cameos. His Sketches Of Singapore did service to Stand Up For Singapore, Rasa Sayang, Where I Belong and Di Tanjong Katong in the flag-waving Americanised style of John Williams.

It was feel good all the way in the original works, beginning with Syafiqah 'Adha Sallehin's Bidasari, a short work based on the pan-Malayan legend of Syair Bidasari. An orchestration of the main theme from her 2016 choreographed work Ikan Girl, atmospheric piccolo and flute solos backed by lush orchestration suggested this to be the Prelude To The Afternoon Of The Fish.

The Malay and marine setting also dominated Wang Chen Wei The Sisters' Islands, based on another legend. This work sounded even more Indo-Malay with the use of the pelog scale, and had solos from a blown conch shell and ocarina as part of its storytelling. The Vienna-trained Wang's Wagnerian orchestration brought echoes of the Rhine to the Straits of Singapore. 

The longest work was Chen Zhangyi 17-minute-long Violin Concerto entitled Vanda, a tribute to the national flower (Vanda Miss Joachim) and our Garden City. The soloist was London-based Kam Ning who mastered its three movements with her usual easy-going aplomb. The first two botanically-inspired movements were slow, and the fast finale, titled A Renaissance, included a virtuosic jazz-inflected cadenza by Kam herself. Her encore relived the raucous sounds of Chinatown, a Paganinian movement from her father Kam Kee Yong's 1976 sonata Huai Ku.

Xinyao (1980s Singaporean mandarin pop) had a look in with Liang Wern Fook's This Is Singapore Medley orchestrated by Samuel Tan, Its big band arrangement that found an apotheosis in his best-known song Xi Shui Chang Liu. The legacy of Sing Singapore and NDP was revived in Phoon Yew Tien's arrangements of Zubir Said's Semoga Bahagia (May You Achieve Happiness, better known as The Children's Day Song) and S.Jesudassan's Tamil favourite Munnaeru Vaalibaa (Come Forward, Youths!), now joined by the 100-strong combined choirs of the Singapore Symphony group.

It would not be a National Day Concert without Dick Lee's ubiquitous Home, arranged by Tang, and the audience stood up for the national anthem Majulah Singapura by Zubir Said. One senses that this concert has merely scratched the surface of Singaporean music. It is imperative that there will be many more National Day Concerts by the SSO to come in the future.