SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: RIMSKY-KORSAKOV'S SCHEHERAZADE

 

That's Alexander Souptel's autograph
on the cover of my CD sleeve.

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Scheherazade

GLINKA Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Lan Shui

Sometime in 2001, this self-produced SSO recording came out of nowhere. Neither recorded by Donald Wong nor BIS, but by Paul Zinman for Sound Byte Productions, it sounded very good. Was this the SSO, which had not made a recording since that unauthorised Richard Strauss Alpine Symphony of 1993? Since when has the SSO recorded mainstream repertoire? And since when has the orchestra sounded this polished in ruinously familiar music?

A new broom sweeps clean, so they say. Lan Shui, who succeeded Choo Hoey in 1997 as music director, had main sweeping changes in personnel. He retired several older and past sell-by-date musicians, and recruited new and younger professionals, mostly from USA (where he had conducted in Boston, Baltimore, New York and Detroit) and the SSO was beginning to sound fresh and revitalised.

Russia-born concertmaster Alexander Souptel, who arrived in 1993 during the Choo Hoey tenure, was retained and was the superb solo violinist for this Scheherazade. Sasha (as he is affectionately known) had played for decades in professional orchestras in the bygone Soviet Union, including being Gennady Rozhdestvensky’s concertmaster in the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra in all those Melodiya recordings. The effortless manner in which he handled the storytelling that begins The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship and the final Festival at Baghdad sounds totally natural. The harpist is unfortunately uncredited.

The orchestra performs this familiar favourite with gusto and verve, and the performance survives repeated listening, which was saying a lot. SSO was really this good, and the strings shine particularly well in the filler, Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture. This became the orchestra’s calling card, and little wonder that SSO used this showpiece to open its BBC Proms debut in 2014. By this time, Souptel had retired and the concertmaster position handed to his younger compatriot, the Russian-American Igor Yuzefovich.

SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: COMING OF AGE / SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA 21ST ANNIVERSARY

COMING OF AGE

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

21st Anniversary

The Singapore Symphony Orchestra marked its 21st birthday in 2000 with this compilation album of recordings made between 1979 and 1999. It includes important landmarks from the orchestra’s history from its inaugural concerts in January 1979, live performances and recordings made during this period. It would go on to make much better recordings, but this album, despite the variable quality of sound, provided an important snapshot of SSO’s progress over the years. The way we were, so to speak.

In the beginning...

The journey takes place at its very beginning, with a live reading of the popular Dance of the Yau People by Mao Yuan and Liu Tien-Shan, from the inaugural concerts at Singapore Conference Hall led by founding music director Choo Hoey, complete with audience applause. Following that is the brief but brutal second movement from Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, issued on a once-off Philips recording to mark SSO’s 10th anniversary in 1989. SSO’s prowess in 20th century music, Choo’s speciality, was evident for all to hear.

The only concertante track was the Rondo from Mozart’s Concerto for Three Pianos in F major (K.242) with the celebrated duo of Dennis Lee and Toh Chee Hung and SSO Chairman Tan Boon Teik, who was then the nation’s attorney-general (a sort of Singapore answer to West Germany’s Helmut Schmidt). That was part of a fund-raising LP recording made in 1983. Music by Singaporean composers was represented by Leong Yoon Pin’s Dayong Sampan, taken from the 1993 documentation recording rather than the 10th anniversary Philips album from 1989.

Lim Yau (extreme right) was
SSO Associate Conductor and SSC Chorusmaster
when he got the Cultural Medallion in 1990.

The dramatis personae who defined the SSO’s early years have been included, including long-time associate conductor Lim Yau and his Singapore Symphony Chorus, performing the Ode To Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth, the Choral Symphony. The 10-minute segment starts from bar 195, after the first orchestral fugue, all through to its glorious end. Lim’s successor for three years (1998-2000), the American Bart Folse is represented with Isoldes Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, the recording from a Familiar Favourites concert “Opera Without Words”. SSO’s principal guest conductor the Finn Okko Kamu, appointed in 1994, does the honours in three Brahms Hungarian Dances, Nos.1, 5 and 17.

Bart Folse assumed Lim Yau's positions
from 1998 to 2000.

Okko Kamu was SSO Principal
Guest Conductor for over 20 years.

Lan Shui was SSO music director
from 1997 to 2019.

In 1997, Lan Shui succeeded Choo Hoey, becoming SSO’s second music director. One of his earliest recording projects on the Swedish BIS label was the complete symphonies and piano concertos of Russia-born composer Alexander Tcherepnin. The 2nd movement from the Third Symphony “Chinese” has been included here. The hour-long disc closes with three dances from Tchaikovsky’s ballets Swan Lake (Waltz) and Sleeping Beauty (Panorama and Waltz), a clear demonstration that the orchestra was truly adept in dance music.

At the turn of the century, SSO at 21 had come of age, and that was just the beginning of a long journey to musical excellence and worldwide recognition.

The cardboard case which the 
jewel case and CD were enclosed.

Post-script: This commemoration album was not for public sale, but presented to sponsors and guests at SSO's fundraising dinner in 2000. As editor of BraviSSimO! (The SSO Friends newsletter) and all-round kaypoh at large, I was asked to script the programme notes as well as the Chairmen's congratulatory messages.

THE SINGAPORE COLLECTION: ALEXANDER TCHEREPNIN THE SYMPHONIES & PIANO CONCERTOS / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

ALEXANDER TCHEREPNIN

The Symphonies & Piano Concertos

Noriko Ogawa, Piano

Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Lan Shui

BIS 1717/18 (4 CDs)

TT: 4 hrs 34’09”

Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977) may be said to have been the first truly cosmopolitan composer. Born to a musical and artistic family in Tsarist Saint Petersberg, his father was the composer, pianist and conductor Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873-1945), whose claim to fame was having taught composition to the young Sergei Prokofiev (who in turn dedicated his First Piano Concerto to him).

He lived for varying periods in Paris, the Caucasus, China and Japan before settling in America. He was married to the Chinese pianist Lee Hsien Ming (no relation to the Singapore Lees), and his music suitably reflected an eclecticism which encompassed late Romanticism, Stravinsky’s iconoclasm and neoclassicism, popular idioms such as jazz, tinged with a 1920s modernist outlook and generous helpings of Orientalism. He was a modernist in all senses but yet never embraced atonalism or the vagaries of the avant-garde.

The recordings were originally issued singly,
and this was the first instalment.

The ten major works in this box-set (4 discs at the cost of 2) are four symphonies and six piano concertos. The symphonies date from 1927 to 1959 while the piano concertos from 1918 to 1965, suggesting a wide range of styles gestated over extended periods of time and covering multiple geographical localities. The shorter pieces include Magna Mater, Symphonic March, Symphonic Prayer, and Festmusik (a 4-movement suite from opera The Wedding of Sobeide).

The second disc to be released.

The four symphonies are heard in the first two discs, sandwiching the Fifth and Sixth Piano Concertos. For a taste of his iconoclasm, sample the riotous second movement (Vivace) of the First Symphony (1927), entirely scored for percussion. Its influence by Le Sacre du Printemps also effected the same response – a demonstration for which the police were called. For today’s ears, the idiom is rather palatable, no more modern than the likes of Milhaud, Prokofiev or John Williams.

Arguably the best-known among these are the Chinese influenced works – the Third Symphony (1952) and Fourth Piano Concerto (1947), subtitled Fantaisie. Chinoiserie is rife in the Chinese Symphony, as much as in Stravinsky’s Le Chant du Rossignol, but there is much lyricism in its Adagio slow movement. The concerto, which appears as the last item of the fourth disc, is more programmatic with movements having descriptive titles. The first is Eastern Chamber Dream, portraying Wu Song’s legendary vanquishing of the killer tiger. Tang dynasty royal concubine Yan Kuei Fei’s Sacrifice is the subject of the central slow movement, while the pentatonic rondo-like Road To Yunnan closes the work on a high. These are so accessible as to make one wonder why this concerto isn’t more regularly heard or performed.

Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa
is highly attuned to Tcherepnin's musical idiom.

The first two piano concertos are in a single movement (bringing to mind Rimsky-Korsakov and Prokofiev’s First) while the third is in two movements. The last three concertos are in the traditional three movements where the idiom is closer to Prokofiev. Pianist Noriko Ogawa is the fearless and swashbuckling soloist in these technically highly demanding works. The six concertos may be heard in chronological sequence on two discs issued on the Brilliant Classics label (9232), something which pianophiles may opt for. There was an earlier cycle by British pianist Murray McLachlan with the orchestra of Chetham’s School, issued on two Olympia discs in the mid-1990s, which is good but SSO provides superior orchestral support.

If you want just the piano concertos,
here's the budget double-CD set to get.

This project was the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s first collaboration with the Swedish BIS label, with recordings dating from 1999 to 2002. The first of its recorded symphonic cycles, the orchestra performs with finesse and total conviction. Now in the Twenty-twenties, Lan Shui and our national orchestra still has the field to themselves, and are unlikely to be challenged in this repertoire for decades to come. Classics Today.com’s Dave Hurwitz also agrees on this count too!

THE SINGAPORE COLLECTION: RACHMANINOV SYMPHONIES & ORCHESTRAL MUSIC / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

RACHMANINOV

SYMPHONIES AND ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Lan Shui

BIS 2512 / 4 CDs TT: 5 hrs 6’11”

This is the first review of a series which I will refer to as “The Singapore Collection”, devoted to classical recordings by Singapore artists and artistic groups. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is the obvious starting point, having a tradition of making records from the early-1980s under its founding music director Choo Hoey. With Lan Shui’s tenure from 1997, the SSO began making big strides in its partnership with the independent (not any more) Swedish label BIS. Then came a multitude of well-received and critically acclaimed discs of a variety of repertoire, both mainstream and off the beaten path.

This Rachmaninov box-set is a culmination of the orchestra’s penchant for Russian repertoire, incorporating the three symphonies and complete orchestral music (excepting those with chorus and voices, such as The Bells). The symphonies were recorded first, dating as far back as 2008. These were originally issued as single discs, some coupled with concerto performances by Russian pianist Yevgeny Sudbin (Piano Concerto No.1 and Paganini Rhapsody), not included here.

The set opens with the First Symphony in D minor (Op.13), discarded by Rachmaninov after its disastrous premiere in 1897, but pieced together after the Second World War. It remains one of his boldest creations, and gets a very lively and trenchant performance befitting the early promise. The Symphonic Movement in D minor (1891), also referred to as his Youth Symphony, belies an obvious depth of influence to Tchaikovsky. Rachmaninov’s first tone poem, Prince Rostislav, dates from the same year and was inspired by a ballad by Aleksey Tolstoy (second cousin of Leo). This early style looks forward to his better-known tone poems The Rock and Isle of the Dead, and deserves listening.

Probably the weakest performance of the set was the Second Symphony in E minor (Op.27), which was the first to be recorded. It is still rather good although suffering from a surfeit of portamenti in all its movements, rendering it somewhat sickly sentimental. Ma Yue is the eloquently plain-singing clarinettist in the Adagio. Nonetheless, it held together well enough for SSO to programme it in its BBC Proms debut in 2014. The fill-up is Rachmaninov’s own transcription of Vocalise (Op.34 No.14), where portamenti are fine when sentimentality is key.

SSO at the BBC Proms, 2014.

Coming from Rachmaninov’s late period and years of exile in America was his Third Symphony in A minor (Op.44) and Symphonic Dances (Op.45), his last work before passing in Beverly Hills. Both receive fine performances despite the former’s final movement which is unusually short-winded and soon runs out of ideas. The latter supplies an appropriate response to his (discarded, so he thought) First Symphony, it first movement subject which once sounded defiant now returns as retiring and resigned. As a whole, this disc (recorded in 2011 and 2014) represented the mature SSO at a new high, an advance over on the previous few years.

The fourth and final disc has the most recent recordings (from 2012 to 2015), including tone poems The Rock (recorded last and arguably the finest in the set), Isle of the Dead, Capriccio Bohemien (a surprisingly effective showpiece in the slow-fast schema of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies), and the early but derivative Scherzo in D minor (1887), composed as a 14-year-old. Also included are four orchestral excerpts (Introduction, Intermezzo and Dances) from Rachmaninov’s first opera Aleko (1893) and a true rarity, the Prelude to The Miserly Knight (1904).

Lan Shui's work with the SSO
will never be forgotten.

There are famous recorded cycles of this repertoire, notably from the London Symphony Orchestra under Andre Previn (on EMI, now Warner), St Petersburg Philharmonic with Mariss Jansons (also EMI / Warner) and those vintage Melodiya recordings by Evgeny Svetlanov, but none is as complete as this survey. The much-vaunted BIS recorded sound lives up to the hype. This set is a source of Singaporean pride, and rightly so.

LAN SHUI & BOMSORI / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

LAN SHUI AND BOMSORI

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (1 March 2024)

This review was first published in Bachtrack.com on 4 March 2024 with the title "Conductor Laureate Lan Shui's poignant return to the Singapore Symphony". 

This concert marked a return of Lan Shui, Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s second music director, after a hiatus of five years. His tenure from 1997 to 2019 was pivotal, transforming a competent regional orchestra to one of international standing with highly-acclaimed recordings and international tours. He assumed the post of Conductor Laureate after a farewell concert with Mahler’s Second Symphony in February 2019. 

The evening also saw Korean violinist Bomsori Kim return, remembered as the first international soloist to perform in Singapore after pandemic travel restrictions were lifted in 2021. On the cards was a relative rarity, Carl Nielsen’s Violin Concerto, often twinned with Sibelius’ violin concerto in recordings despite being very different. Besides their birth-year, another thing in common was a homage to J.S.Bach. While Sibelius heavily revised his to make it less Bachian, Nielsen stuck to his guns. 

Photo: Chris P. Lim

A punched-out C minor chord, followed by an opening violin cadenza in G minor with the orchestra holding a pedal-point in G provided an early shock. Kim’s adroit handling of the Praeludium, reminiscent of the Bachian beginning of Saint-Saens’ Second Piano Concerto, was admirable, with the thread of lyricism maintained throughout. Even in the boisterous Allegro cavalleresco, orchestral textures were kept light and transparent to let her musical lines shine through. The thorny cadenza at its end was superbly handled. 

The second movement’s spelling of Bach’s name – B flat, A, C and B natural – was sensitively voiced by oboist Pan Yun, later echoed by violin in a ruminative but short-winded wallow. In the light-hearted Rondo, one of Nielsen’s cheeriest melodies with whimsicality and rusticity standing out, Kim’s nimbleness and dance-like take were totally enjoyable. Culminating in another elaborate cadenza, the concerto wound down to a retiring close and another shock - a loud orchestral chord in D major to end. Kim’s encore of Grazyna Bacewicz’s Polish Caprice, also folk-inspired, was an inspired choice. 

It was pure happenstance that Singapore audiences got to witness Mahler’s First Symphony twice within eleven days, by the Hong Kong Philharmonic (Jaap van Zweden) and now the Singapore Symphony. Comparisons were inevitable, making for a fascinating study in critical listening. 

The rapt stillness in the opening’s evocation of dawn was assiduously observed. Trumpets were kept onstage yet these sounded as if in der Ferne (in a distance), no mean feat. Principal clarinettist Ma Yue’s cuckoo calls were more sharply-delineated, leading into the movement proper which felt more organic in its build-up. The music’s natural flow, pregnant with tension-filled quiets, ensued before a fulsome climax was reached, also prompting premature applause at movement’s end. 

Lan Shui was the Singapore Symphony's
Music Director from 1997 to 2019.
Photo: Chris P. Lim

The Scherzo was not as vigorously driven as Hong Kong’s, instead taking a gentler and more nuanced look at the Austrian Ländler, including a Trio section that wallowed in schmaltz. Yang Zheng Yi’s excellent double-bass led the way in the funeral march, droll minor key iteration of the Frère Jacques theme. The klezmer interludes were a little more subdued, thus lending the quote from Wayfarer song Zwei Blauen Augen an added poignancy. 

The titanic struggles of the finale, emanating from that “cry from the wounded heart”, were not so much blazing triumph but a subconscious tide that constantly tugged and pulled at the heart-strings. The grandstanding close with eight French horns, trumpet and trombone up on their feet was an impressive look, but much more were concealed from plain sight. One just had to listen. 

While Hong Kong Philharmonic awed and thrilled with virtuosity, Singapore Symphony touched and moved with its humanity. Fortunate and privileged were those to have savoured both performances – and orchestras - in their prime and glory.  

Star rating: *****

The original review on Bachtrack.com may be found here: Conductor Laureate Lan Shui’s poignant return to the Singapore Symphony | Bachtrack 

Read Mervin Beng's review in The Straits Times here: 

Concert review: Lan Shui enraptures with Bomsori Kim pairing and SSO conducting comeback | The Straits Times

CD Review (The Straits Times, October 2019)

DEBUSSY Nocturnes / Printemps etc.
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
LAN SHUI
BIS 2232 / *****

This is the final instalment of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s three-disc survey of orchestral music by Claude Debussy (1862-1918), under the direction of former Music Director Shui Lan. Having recorded major works La Mer and Three Images for Orchestra, this disc concludes with the Three Nocturnes (1897-99), which helped establish the Frenchman as a frontline composer.

Impressionist in thought and colour, Nuages (Clouds) and Fêtes (Festivals) are musical tableaux distinguished by contrasting moods which are vividly evocative. The ennui of grey skies and frenetic pace of human activity are soon effaced by the haunting finale, Sirenes (Sirens), which features wordless women’s voices from the Philharmonic Chamber Choir of Europe  

There are also two concertante works, beginning with Rapsodie (1901-11), showcasing the variegated shadings of superb French saxophonist Claude Delangle, reminding one of the sinuous opening to the famous Prelude to The Afternoon Of The Fawn. The beautiful Two Dances (1904, Danse sacré et Danse profane) are graced by SSO principal harpist Gulnara Mashurova, who brilliantly brings out their alternatingly formal and sensuous faces, backed by just strings.

This interesting album is completed by various lesser-known odds and ends, the Scottish March On A Popular Theme (1890), Berceuse Heroique (1914), which quotes La Brabançonne, the Belgian national anthem, and the early Printemps (1887, orchestrated by Henri Busser), a reminder of the French Belle Epoque. SSO is served with spectacular sound, and the ecologically friendly packaging (with no plastic) does its part to save the planet. 

With this review, I conclude my fortnitely/weekly column of CD reviews for The Straits Times which began 22 years ago in 1997. There have been a total of 1186 CD reviews in total since the very first one (Paul McCartney's Standing Stone on EMI Classics). 

I thank The Straits Times for their faith in me, and indulging me in my musical whims and pianomaniac fancies. 

END OF AN ERA / MAESTRO LAN SHUI'S FAREWELL CONCERT

It seemed only a short while ago when Lan Shui succeeded Choo Hoey as the Music Director of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. In actual fact, that was back in 1997, long before there was such a thing as Esplanade or a music conservatory in Singapore.

On Saturday 26 January 2019, Lan Shui conducted his final concert with the SSO. The work was Mahler's Second Symphony, or the Resurrection Symphony, symbolic in the sense that farewell is not a goodbye, but the birth of a new future - a resurrection, so to speak. 

Lan, as he is affectionately known by many, was responsible for turning Choo Hoey's already-considerable creation into a truly world-class symphony orchestra. Now that the SSO has a season that rivals the top orchestras of the world is not an accident, but one of design, built on vision, hard work, perseverance and artistic genius.   

The concert, second of a pair, could well be one of the most memorable concerts ever given in Esplanade. It featured the full orchestra and many extras, the combined choirs that formed the Singapore Symphony Chorus and soloists soprano Miah Persson and alto Anna Larsson.  It had many heart-wrenching moments, not least in the finale's march to the abyss and then the proclamation of Klopstock's Auferstehung, the resurrection and beginning of a new life. There was a prolonged standing ovation, and chorus of bravos. There were tears of sadness, and tears of joy.

On that evening, Maestro Lan Shui was conferred the title of SSO's first ever Conductor Laureate, and one eagerly looks forward to his next phase of musical life with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. Thank you, Lan. We will miss you but there will be great joy when you next return.  

Watch the concert here:

SSO Chairman Goh Yew Lin
introduces the new SSO Conductor Laureate.

One will not find a more spontaneous standing ovation.

Concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich and
Bass Principal Guennadi Mouzyka.

Maestro Lan Shui has always been a hit with the ladies,
here with Culture Minister Grace Fu et al.

Mister and Missus Lan Shui

SSC Three Tenors!