RHAPSODIES OF SPRING 2016 / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

RHAPSODIES OF SPRING 2016

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

The Star Theatre

Saturday (30 January 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 February 2016

Rhapsodies Of Spring is the Singapore Chinese Orchestra's way of celebrating the Lunar New Year in concert, and for the first time it performed in the massive arena that is The Star Theatre. As with previous editions, the concert took on the form of a variety show, and who better to host it than well-known local television personality Marcus Chin (Chen Jian Bin), emcee of the popular Golden Age Talentime?

He and conductor Yeh Tsung displayed good chemistry in their playful banter in Mandarin, peppered with a few English phrases, which most centred around how busy they were and how young each other looked. There were no skits from radio personalities this year but more music, which began with Li Huan Zhi's Spring Festival Overture.

This familiar work was accompanied by visuals of the orchestra projected on a giant screen behind the stage, which focused on groups of soloists. This was soon overtaken by the entrance of the 9-member ZingO Festival Drum Group which raised a racket that was wholly appropriate for the occasion. Its synchronised drumming in Soar and Xu Chang Jun's Dragon Dance was an impressive show of precision and togetherness.

The first half was otherwise the Marcus Chin show, who had no less than four costume changes and enthralled the aunties with his crooning in the Nostalgic Song Medley (arranged by Tan Kah Yong) and Mix Match Song Medley (Phang Kok Jun). He does not have an operatic voice for songs like Man Chang Fei, Azaleas Bloom, Yue Qin and The Traveller With A Bamboo Pole, but his tenor comfortably scaled the heights with oodles of personality and some epileptic dancing.

The Chinese Folksong Medley curiously included a Russian song, Under The Shimmering Moonlight (but sung in Mandarin) and concluded with Radiant With Joy, rendered in an authentic Sichuan accent. Then the concert took on the feel of a typical episode from Saturday Night Live. With the lights dimmed, the main orchestra dispersed leaving behind the 16-strong SCO Pop Ensemble, which resembled and played like a jazz combo.

TV Golden Medley (arranged by Law Wai Lun) revived melodies like Striving (from the early local serial The Awakening), Good Morning, Sir! and  Kopi O. Suona Principal Jin Shi Yi had a field day with his assorted reeds in the Taiwanese song Tian Hei Hei, alternating between jazzy riffs and Donald Duck imitations. Not to be outdone was Han Lei on guanzi in Beijing jazz pianist Kong Hong Wei's Summer Palace, with a stirring display that brought on loud cheers.

The 2-hour concert concluded with bidding farewell to the Year of the Goat and ushering the Year of the Monkey. Wang Li Ping's Shepherd Song gave way to Xu Jing Qing's Gan Wen Lu Zai He Fang from Journey To The West, which saw Chin imitating the moves of Sun Wu Kong (Monkey God). Joined by four ladies in gaudy red, a motley Chinese version of Solid Gold Dancers, the glittery ensemble got the audience singing and clapping along to Sim Boon Yew's Spring Suite VI.

Has there been that many Chinese New Year songs in circulation? The Singapore Chinese Orchestra under Yeh Tsung has played them all. 

TREASURES OF TAIWAN / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

 

TREASURES OF TAIWAN

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (23 March 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 March 2013 with the title "Cross-Straits Treasures".

Led by the young Taiwanese conductor Ku Pao-wen, the Singapore Chinese Orchestra performed a very well-conceived programme built around the theme of Taiwanese music and composers. It seems that the politics of separation has not adversely affected cross-Straits musical affairs. Chinese music has always endured, whether from the mainland or otherwise.

An case in point would be Sui Li Jun’s Guandong Overture, an effective showpiece by a mainland composer written for a Taiwanese youth orchestra. Concertmaster Li Bao Shun’s gaohu and Xu Zhong’s cello blended well for the work’s main theme, but it was the chorus of suonas, aided by dizis for an added nasal twang, that completely stole the show as the work drove to a frenzied and percussive close.

By contrast, Taiwanese composer-conductor Chung Yiu-kwong’s Erhu Concerto provided a mellowing salve. The first two movements were slow, almost elegiac, allowing soloist Tian Xiao to eloquently pour out his lament. Its long-breathed lines, sensitively supported by the orchestra, bore out the principal subject of Chung’s Beijing opera Sunlight After Snowfall. That poser was the imponderable question, “Where is one’s homeland?”

By means of contrast again, the finale was a Paganinian moto perpetuo, with Tian’s erhu the virtuoso vehicle for dazzling display. The hectic gallop rhythm, egged on by quasi-tribal drumming, brought to mind that famous showpiece Horse Racing, with soloist and orchestra rushing headlong to the finish line.

True to the pedestrian title of Scenic Taiwan, Kuan Nai-chung’s suite in three movements is a musical travelogue dressed up in the flashy orchestral colour of Respighi’s Roman Trilogy. The opening Tune of Taipei is a busy evocation of the city’s famous nightlife, with a brief gaohu and erhu duet by way of romantic interest.

The most memorable movement was the central Ku Diao (Crying Tone), with Jin Shi Yi’s suona a tour de force in expressing eternal sorrow and strife. The finale Tian Hei Hei (Darkening Sky) employed two folksongs as subjects, with effective scoring and instrumental flair being the saving graces of otherwise thin material.  

The concert concluded with Zhao Yong Shan’s orchestral adaptation of the pipa classic Ambush From All Sides, originally by Liu Wen Jin. A battle piece in the manner of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, but based on the war of 202 B.C., the programmatic music depicted the calm before the carnage, leading to a full scale assault with flying steeds and the clangourous clashing of metal.

It was all very rowdy stuff, enough to stun the living and wake the dead. More importantly, this concert showed that with well-chosen and contrasting works, the Chinese orchestra exists as a vital symphonic force, far more than just a glorified folk band.