YO-YO MA & THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

YO-YO MA & THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday & Saturday (11 & 12 November 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 November 2016 with the title "Memorable festival of musical riches".

How does one get people to attend concerts of new music? One way is inviting a celebrity artist to perform, and audiences will pretty much swallow up whatever music is offered. That is a cynical way of looking at things, but what would explain Esplanade Concert Hall filled to rafters on two evenings featuring superstar Chinese-American cellist Yo-Yo Ma in mostly modern works?

To be fair, his imprimatur ensured much good contemporary music played by other excellent soloists with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Shui Lan got heard by far more people than otherwise. Widening our ears, breaking down barriers and fostering warm ties between diverse global cultures were always the mission of Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, truly a worthy cause for celebration.

To sweeten the deal, Elgar's Cello Concerto was programmed in the first evening. Here was a rerun of Ma's 1999 performances of the same work at Victoria Concert Hall, except he seemed to adopt broader tempos in the 1^st and 3^rd movements. His opening solo had that unmistakable air of an elegy, breathtaking in its intensity and gripping listeners by the lapels.

Its famous Adagio was a sigh heard across the century, all the more poignant taking place a hundred years after the monumental sacrifices of the Somme. The faster movements were nimbly negotiated, and the finale's catharsis – with pain and agony palpably etched on his face - was greeted with a standing ovation. Three solo encores were also rapturously received.  

Earlier in the evening, Ma played equal partner to SSO Principal Cellist Ng Pei-Sian in Sicilian cellist-composer Giovanni Sollima's Violoncelles, Vibrez!, a concerto grosso-like movement accompanied by strings. Whether in unison, interplay or counterpoint, the pair was nigh inseparable through its quasi-minimalist and neo-Romantic course; a wallow for string fanciers.

On the second evening, Ma joined Chinese sheng virtuoso Wu Tong in Duo by Zhao Lin. Belying its simple title, the double concerto was a lushly orchestrated score that resembled film music, of the James Bond meets Pirates Of The Caribbean variety. The sonorous solo wind and string parts were well integrated into the canvas, culminating in a deeply felt slow duet to close.

Soloists from the Silk Road Ensemble were also highlighted in concertante works. Kurdish-Iranian kamancheh (spike fiddle) player Kayhan Kalhor starred in his own Silent City (on Friday), another moving elegy for strings and percussion, this time to the million lives lost in the 1980s Iran-Iraq War. Hypnotic and meditative turned to breathless and bounding in Gallop Of A Thousand Horses (on Saturday), which got communal pulses racing.

Wu Man's pipa substituted for the Japanese biwa as she joined Kojiro Umekazi's shakuhachi (bamboo flute) in Takemitsu's November Steps, where contrasted but ultimately complimenting timbres broke the etheral orchestral spell of rapt stillness. Umekazi's own Cycles, a modern relook at Dvorak's Largo with recorded fragments of Walt Whitman's voice, opened the first evening's fare.

Mark Suter leads the percussionists.

The second evening's programme was more eclectic, with short chamber pieces to begin: Wu Tong's ceremonial Fanfare for suona and percussion, Mark Suter's Weavings for four percussionists wielding eight caxixis (Brazilian bead-filled shakers), Wu Man and Wu Tong's Duo for pipa and sheng, all of which exhibited a rare and exuberant artistry from the performers.

The full ensemble with orchestra also showcased Uzbek composer Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky's Sacred Signs, with five likeable movements that explored the Euro- and Central Asian folk influences which paved the way for Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring. Completing the memorable two-day festival of musical riches was Siamak Aghaei and Colin Jacobsen's arrangement of traditional Persian music, Ascending Bird, a exhilarating accelerando about a bird's metaphorical flight to the sun and spiritual transcendence.

Can you spot a casually attired Yo-Yo Ma
who performed in the general ensemble?
(He's in blue, near the extreme right.)

      

The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma / Review

The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma
Esplanade Concert Hall
Friday (30 April 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 May 2010.

The Silk Road Ensemble, founded by eminent cellist Yo-Yo Ma, celebrated its 10th anniversary with an Asian tour which concluded with two concerts in Singapore. The idea of bringing musicians from disparate world cultures together was likened to the ancient Silk Road that linked the Far East to Europe, with its inevitable exchanges and assimilations.

All the music performed was written or adapted specifically for the ensemble and its unique blend of instruments. Friday’s concert began with Silk Road Suite, described by Ma as four pieces united by “location, horses and birds”. Over the stillness of a barely audible hum, Ma’s cello and Kayhan Kalhor’s (left) kamancheh (Persian spiked fiddle, relative of the erhu and rebab) opened in quiet unison in Mountains Are Far Away.

The pace quickened and then segued onward to Hu Tian Quan’s Phoenix Rising, which showcased two Chinese instruments – Wu Tong’s blown sheng and Liu Lin’s plucked ruan. A spectrum of harmonies issued, before Ma’s cello cadenza ushered in Zhao Ji Ping’s Summer In The High Grassland, a soundtrack written for a NHK documentary, and closing with fiddlers taking flight in the traditional Persian song Ascending Bird.

One soon gets the idea what their version of world music is all about. Barriers are breached, and politics is shown the door when Americans perform the music of Cold War rivals China and supposed Axis of Evil rogue state Iran.

Even the composers themselves are cross-cultural specimens. The Peruvian-American Gabriela Lena Frank’s Ritmos Anchinos explored timbres of Chinese instruments transplanted into a Latin American milieu. If Wu Man’s pipa (below) sounded like flamenco guitar, that may have something to do with the fact that one of Frank’s grandfather was Chinese.

The most haunting music came from Uzbekistani composer Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky whose Night Music: Voice In The Leaves was a study of calm and spectral silences. Taking Bartok’s patented night music effects as start point, Ma’s cello sang through a soothing dreamscape, later uniting with a recorded Uzbek mother’s lullaby. Here he was joined by members of the Singapore Symphony conducted by Shui Lan.

The final work closed the concert as it began with a suite of four movements, Air To Air by the Argentine Jewish composer Osvaldo Golijov. Again, geography proved no limitation as the music floated from Palestine (with Arab and Christian deliberately juxtaposed), Mexico and Sardinia. The last was a protest march song that also sounded celebratory, with all on stage erupting into a near riot.

Through two eventful hours (which included two encores), the irrepressible Ma was ever present but never strove to hog the limelight. Allowing the spotlight to shine on his illustrious colleagues, he proved a most sympathetic musical partner. In the perfect world, all musicians are brothers.

Yo-Yo Ma (extreme left) salutes his colleagues

of the Silk Road Ensemble & Singapore Symphony.