AN EVENING OF CHINESE TIMELESS CLASSICS / NAFA Chinese Orchestra / Review

 

AN EVENING OF 

CHINESE TIMELESS CLASSICS

NAFA Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Sunday (28 September 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 September 2025 with the title "Spirited performance of classic works by young talent of NAFA Chinese Orchestra".

If one wondered how professional Chinese musical ensembles like the Singapore Chinese Orchestra or Ding Yi Music Company get its members, just take a look at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts’ (NAFA) Chinese Instrumental Studies degree programme. Now part of the University of the Arts Singapore (UAS), this is the very reason why we have the highest levels of Chinese musical performances here today.

In the final concert of the 2025 Singapore Chinese Music Festival, the NAFA Chinese Orchestra led by Lim Yau provided a showcase that stands the test of time. The concert opened with the popular Dance of the Yao People by Liu Tieshan and Mao Yuan, originally conceived for western orchestra but orchestrated by Peng Xiuwen for Chinese instruments.

The music sourced from the ethnic minorities of southwest China rhapsodised with much feeling and fervour, with concertmaster Koh Yu Jie’s gaohu confidently singing its principal theme. Picking up speed, momentum and without looking back, the work made for a rousing curtain-raiser.

What followed were concertante works featuring four NAFA faculty members, two of whom are principals in the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. The old Cantonese tune Zhaojun’s Lament was elegiac in nature, wholly suited for Qu Jian Qing’s eloquent and mellow musings on the yangqin. Temperance ruled, and the orchestra piped down for the understated angsty emotions on show.

Quite different was the more demonstrative Ballade of Lan Huahua by Guan Ming, arranged as a dizi concerto by Zhan Yong Ming and Lu Chunlin, with Zhan as spirited soloist. Here, the sense of tragedy was more palpable, with the bamboo flute’s plangent tones searing a path through the dramatics. The trill-filled cadenzas made for moments for contemplation and reflection before closing on a subdued note.

The longest and arguably most virtuosic piece was Heroic Sisters of the Grassland composed by the committee of Wu Zhuqiang, Wang Yanjiao and Liu Dehai, and arranged by Peng. This work’s claim to fame was having been recorded by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Seiji Ozawa in 1979 with the gradual opening of communist China to the West.

Yu Jia, resplendent in a stunning red outfit, was the spectacular pipa soloist who caught no breaks in its 20-minute playtime. This work of programme music recounted the escapades of two young sisters in Inner Mongolia who braved a blizzard to protect their flock of sheep. Through storms and squalls of orchestral textures, it was Yu who held firm from its pastoral opening to brilliant conclusion.

Photo: Chew Kai Xin

One often needs to separate the Socialist Realist claptrap of many Chinese works of the period from the true quality of the music. This however did not apply to Liu Wenjin’s Ballad from Northern Henan, another folk rhapsody, with Sunny Wong Sun Tat, head of NAFA’s Chinese music department, on his trusty erhu.

This was celebratory music one need not apologise for, and his excellence of execution and the orchestra’s spirited contribution were emblematic of the very bright future ahead for Chinese instrumental music in Singapore.

FLURRY OF THE FLUTE / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

FLURRY OF THE FLUTE

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (10 April 2021)

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 14 April 2021 with the title "Lyrical flute paints picture of lyrical bliss".

 

Judging by the concert’s title, one might have expected the flute concerto programmed to be its main draw. In that respect, one would have been right as the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s principal flautist Jin Ta gave a stunning performance of French composer Jacques Ibert’s Flute Concerto. The three-movement showpiece, although peppered with piquant dissonances, was mostly a lyrical work that suited Jin to the tee.

 

In its dreamy central slow movement, his pure and limpid tone painted a landscape of idyllic bliss, one that radiated the warm glow of summer. This was contrasted with virtuosic flourishes in the bustling opening movement, tossed off with an almost casual nonchalance, and the finale’s syncopations and riffs. A series of outlandish cadenzas, also cooly dispatched, completed its busy twenty minutes.

 

Led by chief conductor Hans Graf, the orchestra provided discreet and sensitive support but also  had the flexibility to let it rip when called upon. Jin’s encore, a jazzman’s take on the popular Love Song of Kangding accompanied by bassist Wang Xu, was simply delightful.

 

Social-distancing rules that limited ensembles to a maximum of 30 onstage performers led to rather creative programming choices. Two rarely heard symphonies, both in the dramatic and quasi-tragic key of C minor, were given deserved exposure on either side of the Ibert concerto.

 

Haydn’s Symphony No.95, receiving its Singapore premiere, does not have the dubious blessing of a nickname. While it lacked surprises, drumrolls and imitations of ticking clocks or clucking hens, it more than made up with the Austrian composer’s penchant with storms and stresses. The emphatic opening was given bold lashes, precisely hewn by the strings, its nervous tension balanced by a more sedate second subject.

 

This sense of push and pull provided the interest that was sustained all the way to the second movement’s theme and variations. Here and in the more lively Minuet and Trio yielded some beautiful solo playing by cellist Yu Jing. The finale had the lightness and ebullience of Mozart, finishing gratifyingly in the key of C major.

 

Mendelssohn’s Symphony No.1, last played by the SSO in 1980, had its cobwebs dusted off with vehement zeal. The utterings of a precocious 15-year-old in the thrall of the late Mozart were passionately driven in the stormy first movement. This was contrasted by a hymn-like countenance in the Beethovenian slow movement distinguished by fine wind playing.

 

An urgency occupied the third movement Minuet, which went full tilt in the finale where the pathos of Mozart’s penultimate symphony was fervently relived. Mendelssohn was not copying Mozart, but paying homage, including a fugal episode and a triumphal apotheosis as C minor morphed into glorious C major.

 

The pleasing symmetry afforded by both symphonies and ardent performances made this 100-minute concert without intermission (the longest post circuit-breaker) an unmitigated pleasure.