FIREBIRD: 25TH ANNIVERSARY GALA CONCERT / Philharmonic Wind Orchestra / Review

FIREBIRD:
25TH ANNIVERSARY GALA CONCERT

Philharmonic Wind Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (9 November 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 November 2025 with the title "Landmark works of Philharmonic Wind Orchestra's 25th anniversary".

The Philharmonic Wind Orchestra (PWO), formerly known as The Philharmonic Winds, celebrated its 25th anniversary as the nation’s leading wind band with a concert of landmark works performed during the course of its illustrious history. Conducted by Leonard Tan, who also served as an engaging host, the concert was a showcase of the orchestra’s prowess in a variety of virtuoso repertoire.

Opening the evening was late Singaporean composer Leong Yoon Pin’s own wind arrangement of Giocoso Largamente from his Second Symphony (1979). Influenced by Tang dynasty poet Li Bai’s words on the duality of life, its alternating fast and slow sections reflected conflicting emotions of happiness and sorrow. Its distinctly Chinese musical idiom and use of percussion felt close to home, also matched by the warm sonority coaxed from the players.

PWO’s biggest coup was its 2015 premiere of Spanish composer-conductor Luis Serrano Alarcon’s epic triptych Marco Polo. An ambitious programme symphony, its three parts followed the Venetian’s journey from West to East, and back. Its first part, The Silk Road, began with him as a jailbird, recounting travels through exotic lands with perils ahead to be faced. The scoring for massive forces included traditional instruments such as the oud (Middle Eastern lute), hulusi (gourd flute), Tibetan singing bowls and a host of Eastern reeds.

Concertmaster Ralph Emmanuel Lim
performed on the duduki while guest performer
Boo Chin Kiah played a hulusi.

Getting the colours right was key, and so was the musical story-telling with Marco Polo represented by a leitmotif first heard on Kartik Alan Jairamin’s French horn. By the time he arrived at the gates of Cambaluc (Beijing today), one had gone through a journey of musical discovery. This is what symphonies such as this were meant to do.

After the intermission, French composer Florent Schmitt’s Dionysiaques, composed in 1913 but premiered in 1925, was heard to brilliant effect. Considered the first true modern classic written for wind orchestra, its opening was redolent of Debussy’s Impressionism, and the Bacchanalian dance that followed rivalled the orgiastic writhings of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

Albert Oliver Davis’ arrangement of Richard Strauss’ song Allerseelen (All Souls’ Day) was significant for being the first work PWO performed on its first overseas concert. Its lyrical lines, building to a passionate climax, was accompanied by old photographs and footage from the orchestra’s early years. Nostalgia indeed.

The evening closed with Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1919) in a virtuoso orchestration by Randy Earles. Following the exact same storyline of the original, winds and brass took the place of ethereal string effects – not an easy task – but by dint of sheer grit, succeeded. Even the jump scare provided by King Kashchei’s Infernal Dance following the Khorovod (Round Dance) was there, all thanks to an alert bass drummer.

Emerald Tan’s lovely bassoon provided the soothing balm to the Berceuse (Lullaby) before the magnificent crescendo that is the grand Finale. With the evil spell broken and the captives released, the resounding close was symbolic of PWO’s past quarter-century. With hard graft comes just reward.

FLYING HIGH - BEYOND OUR ISLANDS' SHORES / Philharmonic Wind Orchestra / Review

 

FLYING HIGH – 

BEYOND OUR ISLANDS’ SHORES 

Philharmonic Wind Orchestra 

Esplanade Concert Hall 

Sunday (23 June 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 June 2024 with the title "Philharmonic Wind Orchestra plays wide repertoire with aplomb".

The Philharmonic Wind Orchestra (PWO), formerly known as The Philharmonic Winds, will travel next month to South Korea for the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE) conference. Its pre-tour concert led by music director Leonard Tan was a showcase what an excellent local ensemble can achieve in a variety of repertoire. 

The concert opened with American composer John Mackey’s Asphalt Cocktail, an exhilarating showpiece that was literally a short ride in a fast machine. Its big brassy sonorities, accompanied by a relentless percussion beat and effects, suggested this was not a subway train but a runaway taxicab carrying the warning, “fasten your seatbelts!” 

More serious was American Kent Kennan’s Sonata for trumpet and wind ensemble in three movements with PWO alumnus Chong Loo Kit in the demanding solo role. Described as neoclassical, the music recalled ceremonial brass of olden times, but viewed through a tonal modern idiom of German modernist Paul Hindemith. Its acerbic quality however yielded unusual lyricism in the central movement’s aria-like melody, lovingly voiced, before closing with dance movements and busy counterpoint for its lively finale. 

The legendary 86-year-old British wind orchestra maestro Timothy Reynish, PWO’s principal guest conductor, made a cameo appearance directing Spanish composer Luis Serrano Alarcon’s attractive Spanish Dances. This local premiere delighted in complex rhythms which the orchestra mastered with aplomb, including a Moorish-flavoured central movement with offstage piccolo and drum-beat, and a finale lit up by solo trumpet and the ring of castanets and tambourine. 

Photo: Pianomaniac

Photo: Pianomaniac

The concert’s second half comprised wholly works by Singaporean composers, beginning with Leong Yoon Pin’s only wind band piece, Day-break And Sunrise (1992). Typical of the late doyen of local composers, his melodic intent is not revealed immediately. Instead, motivic shards and fragments emerge like nascent beams through the morning mist. Full illumination was achieved, albeit briefly as the music soon swiftly dissipated into fine ether. 

Conductor Leonard Tan holds aloft
Leong Yoon Pin's orchestral score.

Photo: Pianomaniac

Baltimore-based young composer Lee Jia Yi’s newly commissioned betwixt and between received its world premiere. Written in four short connected movements, the music shifted imperceptibly between Noise, seemingly random squeaks, slashes, swooshes and slides, and Harmony, represented by more stable long-held notes, which wavered into quarter-tones and overtones. Bewildering as this might sound, there was a strangely calming quality when the ears began to adapt to each of the different alternating sonic milieus. 

Photo: Pianomaniac

French horn player Alan Kartik
demonstrates playing the conch.
Photo: Pianomaniac

The 21st century Singaporean work that has received the most performances has to be Young Artist Award recipient Wang Chenwei’s symphonic poem The Sisters’ Islands (2006). Eighty as of this evening, to be exact. Originally scored for Chinese orchestra, the world premiere of its wind orchestra version was no less vivid. Using the Indo-Malay pelog scale, Wang crafted motifs representing the eponymous sisters, the sea and its legends in this programmatic work. 

The use of qudi and rebana lent
The Sisters' Islands an exotic Nanyang flavour.
Photo: Pianomaniac

Its lush scoring was well-realised on wind and brass, with the blare of the conch shell and ocarina’s diminutive voice being pivotal extras. Closing with a grand apotheosis of sisterly love, one can foresee the world band conference in Korea getting an unadulterated taste of true Singaporeana.

Photo: Pianomaniac

Photo: Pianomaniac

Photo: Pianomaniac

All photographs by Kwang 

unless otherwise stated.

RHAPSODIC STORIES: EXHIBITION / Samuel Phua Saxophone Recital / Review

RHAPSODIC STORIES: EXHIBITION

SAMUEL PHUA, Saxophone

with MERVYN LEE, Piano

Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre

Wednesday (29 November 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 December 2023 with the title "Saxophonist Samuel Phua showcases technical prowess".

 

When it comes to classical saxophone in Singapore, one name invariably comes to mind: Samuel Phua. The young graduate from Finland’s famed Sibelius Academy was the first and only saxophonist invited to perform at the President’s Young Performers Concert in 2014, and has been a regular fixture in works requiring sax solos in Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s concerts ever since.

 

His recital partnered by pianist Mervyn Lee was an impressive showcase of technical prowess and repertoire he has inspired. No less than five Singaporean composers were represented, opening with London-based composition student Elliot Teo, whose three-movement Mixed Recital received its Singapore premiere.

 

Opening with alto sax alone, its atonal content was characterised by declamatory and seemingly improvised passages that sometimes hinted of jazz. The second movement was for piano left hand alone despite its many notes, while the third, Pas de deux, was for combined forces with the dance element being apparent later on.

 

The late Leong Yoon Pin’s Sketches (1984) was originally scored for oboe and piano. Its movements, recalling scenes in New Zealand, was heard on soprano sax, which relived the oboe’s plangency, well-suited for musical dissonance and dance-like moves. In the world premiere of pianist Mervyn Lee’s Sketches in Movements, contrasts between lyricism and playfulness were well brought out on alto sax.

 

Two rather more approachable works closed the concert’s first half. New York-based Koh Cheng Jin’s A Fleeting Perennity was inspired by a poem about Suntec City’s Fountain of Wealth. Alto sax was rewarded with lyrical moments accompanied by gentle piano ostinatos. Volume and tempos would rise, like sprayed water jets, but the work closed quietly.

 

The world premiere of Germaine Goh’s Portrait saw the first appearance of the large and unwieldy baritone saxophone. Described as a “charming” character study of Phua himself, it was good-humoured and whimsical, radiating warmth and sensitivity besides having surprises up the sleeve. That it closed theatrically with an ascending glissando wail and a loud fart also spoke volumes.

 

Starring saxophones:
Baritone, soprano, tenor & alto
(from right to left)

The concert’s second hald was devoted to one work, Jun Nagao’s arrangement of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Originally a piano solo, this version saw Phua playing four different saxophones. Although some of the work’s original mystique was lost, this was made up by many fiendishly difficult maneuvers demanded of a soloist.

 

Alto sax appeared most frequently, including the opening Promenade and The Old Castle, a tribute to Maurice Ravel’s famous orchestration employing the saxophone as the troubadour’s voice. Baritone sax was used for the lumbering oxcart Bydlo and imperious Polish Jew Samuel Goldenberg, while soprano sax accounted for the shrieky Schmuyle and the Ballet of The Unhatched Chicks. 

The alto saxophone’s full gamut of tricks and devices was reserved for Baba Yaga’s Hut and The Great Gate of Kiev, where Promenade would gloriously return and the evening brought to a rousing close.   

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. 

THE BUTTERFLY LOVERS / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

THE BUTTERFLY LOVERS

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Thursday (5 November 2021)

This review was published by The Straits Times on 10 November 2021 with the title "Love story tugs at heartstrings".

 

It is not often that the Singapore Symphony Orchestra performs concerts entirely devoted to 20^th century and contemporary Asian music. These are notable events, especially when works by two Singaporean composers were also receiving SSO premieres.

 

Singaporean composer Leong Yoon Pin
was a student of Nadia Boulanger.

SSO’s first Composer-in-Residence and Cultural Medallion recipient Leong Yoon Pin’s Largo and Vivace for strings (1982) opened the evening on a sombre note. While not strictly atonal, his idiom was astringent, reminiscent of twentieth century greats Bartok and Shostakovich. Conductor Joshua Tan skillfully guided the ensemble, with string textures coming through with leanness and clarity. If the Largo were a portrait of depression, the brief ensuing Vivace projected an agitated face of neurosis.

 

Chen Gang and He Zhan Hao’s evergreen Butterfly Lovers Concerto (1958) was the obvious box-office draw, which saw award-winning Singaporean violinist Loh Jun Hong helming the solo part. His voluminous tone was the highlight in this programmatic fantasy, more a tone poem than concerto, about the ill-fated lovers of Chinese folklore.

 

Unafraid to bare heart on sleeve, he pulled out all stops in this tear-jerker, also exercising wide portamenti or slides which relived Chinese opera-singing and weeping erhus. His duet with orchestral cellist Yu Jing provided moments of genuine intimacy in a work where vivid story-telling and sentimentality were strong suits.

Singaporean composer Ho Chee Kong
is the Interim Dean of Yong Siew Toh Conservatory.

 

Ho Chee Kong’s double concerto for violin and cello entitled There And Back (2019) has no such programmatic pretensions. Before it began, SSO Principal Cellist Ng Pei-Sian dedicated the performance to his recently departed first cello teacher Barbara Yelland. Violinist Chan Yoong Han opened with an impassioned solo, followed by Ng himself with no less intensity, both accompanied by Mark Suter’s slow and ominous beat on bass drum.

 

The funereal pace strongly suggested a requiem in procession. The tempo then picked up with both soloists engaged in a neck-and-neck race, the music now resembling a cinematic score depicting broad vistas and the vast outback. The alternating slow and fast sections proved both unsettling yet exciting, and the duel between instruments absorbing and exhausting.

 

That had to end sometime, doing so with the orchestra silenced, and both violin and cello in quiet beatific unison. With bass drum taps remaining an idée fixe, the work may be considered a metaphorical epic journey of life itself. Ending as it began, with ups and downs in between, it represented a perpetual cycle from “ashes to ashes, and dust to dust”.

 

First performed by violinist Siow Lee-Chin and cellist Qin Li-Wei with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra led by Yeh Tsung, it made an instant impact and named best new work of 2019 in the pages of Life! This evening’s take was no less moving.

 

All three of the evening’s soloists were united for an encore designed to cheer up the audience. That turned out to be Alexander Oon’s arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s Oblivion, the Argentine composer’s most melancholic tango of all. Ironically, it made for a truly fitting send-off.