TRAVERSING / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

 

TRAVERSING

Ding Yi Music Company

Victoria Concert Hall

Saturday (11 April 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 April 2026 with the title "Eclectic programme allows musicians to shine in Ding Yi concert".

The title of Ding Yi Music Company’s first evening of its concert season had to do with eclecticism and transcending geographical and cultural boundaries. Led by its chief artistic mentor Tsung Yeh, who regularly helmed similar programmes with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, the concert was greater than the sum of its parts.

Tsung Yeh is the Conductor Emeritus
of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra
Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

Opening was the world premiere of Su Xiao’s short tone poem Sing A Pura. Beginning quietly with an air of mystery, the dizi gently rose above the percussion’s rhythmic accompaniment. The lilting dance that came after summed up the Chinese composer’s impressions of the city-state – lively, urbane and somewhat exotic.

More substantial was New York-based Singaporean composer Koh Cheng Jin’s Tang - Moonlight Fragrance, a single-movement concerto for orchestra inspired by Tang poetry. Huang Hsu-Lei’s long and impassioned dizi solo set the mood of contemplation. The demanding obbligato piano part with Ning An initially began as part of the general ensemble but soon grew in stature as the work picked up in tempo and volume.

Replacing guzheng and yangqin for creating specific sound textures, the part also included scraping the insides of the Steinway grand. Its percussive effects and virtuoso figurations also fueled the ethnic dance as the music lurched to a vigorous and wild close.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

The most demanding solo of the evening was by Yvonne Tay, whose guzheng worked overtime in Tang Jian Ping’s concerto Goddess of the Luo River. In a variegated score of multiple scenes, she cast a spellbinding thrall, from the gentlest of plinks to sweeping swathes of sound that rose above the orchestral throng. She literally personified the work’s subject, a figure of feminine grace and fearless self-empowerment.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

After a first half which did not pander to popular tastes, the concert’s latter half was to be much lighter. Bohemian cellist-composer David Popper’s Hungarian Rhapsody Op.68, arranged by Jon Lin Chua, was the virtuoso vehicle for Ding Yi’s Uzbek cellist Bekhzod Oblayorov. If the music sounded familiar, that was because it used the same Magyar folk sources as a number of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. As with those florid piano fantasies, the cello was obliged to jump through many hoops for an enjoyable romp.

Eric Watson’s Celtic Knots, receiving its world premiere, was an engaging succession of Scottish, Irish and Welsh melodies. Given the modal nature of the songs, among them Suo Gan (heard in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun), these translated very well for Chinese instrumental treatment. And one has not lived without hearing the suona imitating bagpipes or Londonderry Air played on pipa.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

Closing the evening was the 1950s Chinese Socialist-Realist and populist Youth Piano Concerto, concocted by a committee of composers including Liu Shikun, Sun Yilin, Huang Xiaofei and Pan Yiming. Ning An returned as the brilliant soloist in three movements influenced by Russians Dmitri Kabalevsky and Sergei Rachmaninov but with Chinese characteristics. It was so well received that its final four minutes had to be encored.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

ASCO IS 5! / Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra / Review

ACSO IS 5!

Asian Cultural 

Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Tuesday (30 August 2022)

 

The Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra (ACSO), founded in 2016, occupies an important niche in Singapore’s music scene by performing works that merge Asian cultures and sensibilities with the western symphony orchestra. By championing music by Singaporean and Asian composers, it has complemented the good work fostered by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra and its Nanyang music projects. It also filled the gaping lacuna left by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, which had earlier in this century marketed itself as a “destination orchestra by bringing together musical cultures from the East and West”, but quietly dropped that tagline somewhere along the way.

 

ACSO is led by a team of two conductors, Dedric Wong Deli, well-known as a conductor of the Chinese instrumental chamber group Ding Yi Music Company, and Adrian Chiang, General Manager of re:Sound Collective and conductor of numerous ensembles thus representing the western classical music caucus. They share conducting duties in its concerts, taking turns in leading different works with the programme.

 

Wong opened the evening with Confluence by Wang Chen Wei (present Composer-in-Residence of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra), a rousing overture-like work that typified the Nanyang sound. Using the pelog scale in its lilting main theme, there is a recognisable Indo-Malayan character to the music, which also benefitted from the use of liberal portamenti and sheer colour of symphonic instruments. To seal this colourful marriage between cultures, a fugue was also thrown into the fray, livening the proceedings besides offering further proof of the composer’s academic credentials.  

 

Following this were four concertante works, more than amply demonstrating the wealth of solo instrumental talent on our shores. The first was Germaine Goh’s Kaleidoscope, a single-movement fantasy for clarinet and orchestra with Ralph Emmanuel Lim as exuberant soloist. Opening with a solo accompanied by harp ostinatos, the music opened dreamily and then came to life with a series of animated dance-like rhythms. Influences from Debussy may be discerned, as well as Copland and Bernstein in the more jazzy bits, but she does not imitate them. Much is attractive and enjoyable in this work, where the demi-mondaine world of smokey speakeasies and Hollywood glamour is not just hinted at but relived.    

 

Chinese composer Wang Dan Hong is a well-known name in Chinese orchestra circles and her guzheng concerto As Thus is as glitzy as they come. Its slow introduction with gentle string accompaniment established soloist Yvonne Tay, in an advanced antenatal state, as a sensitive protagonist. However the amplication of her guzheng was garishly overdone, with distorted sound detracting from her brilliant narrative. As with Wang’s rhapsodic and quasi-cinematic scores, the pacing hastened to an exciting climax, and a faux ending which had the audience applauding prematurely. A true apotheosis and close came later, and the payoff was no less vociferous.

 

Singapore-based Briton Eric Watson’s Dialogue for tabla and orchestra is a well-travelled work commissioned by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. Its iteration with western instruments was no less trenchant, held together by the virtuosic drumming of Govin Tan, young tabla virtuoso who comes from a Hindu Chinese family. If one wondered what mileage could be had with a pair of drums which essentially plays single notes, one is prepared to be surprised. For the first half, the tabla provided accompaniment to a series of varied themes from the orchestra (including one resembling a motif from Stravinsky’s Firebird), then it takes a life of its own – a good four minutes or so of solo improvisation. As cadenzas go, this was simply breathtaking.

Edmund Song is better known as the double bassist of Red Dot Baroque and re:Sound. This evening, he took on duo-mantle of composer and conductor, leading the World Premiere of his Triple Concertino entitled Till The End Of Time. A work that employed a mix of Asian scales, the music emanated a variety of aromatic incenses. The soloists Niranjan Pandian (bansuri, North Indian bamboo flute), Jacky Ng (suona) and Azrin Abdullah (oud, Middle Eastern lute) had their moments in the spotlight, and how precious these were. The bansuri was positively haunting, the suona took on cor anglais tones resembling Rodrigo’s Aranjuez, while the oud could have had more air time. Some degree of counterpoint with all three together should have been the end-result but the opportunity was not taken, with heterophony prevailing instead.

 

It would still have been a totally satisfying experience had the concert ended there, but ACSO possessed several encores up its collective sleeve. Surprise celebrity cameos took the form of busker-of-the-season Jeff Ng in a medley of JJ Lin songs, while legendary songstress and 2021 Cultural Medallion recipient Rahimah Rahim irrepressibly strutted her stuff with two Malay songs and Bob Gaudio’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off You (Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons). That was mere icing on a wonderfully baked cake, and long may the Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra thrive, and entertain.

 

All the soloists joined in the finale
Can't Take My Eyes Off You.

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR CONCERT 2019 / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

HAPPY CHINESE 
NEW YEAR CONCERT 2019

Ding Yi Music Company

Chinese Cultural Centre Theatre

Sunday (17 February 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 February 2019 with the title "Pleasing paean to the Year of the Pig".

Its been 13 days into the first month of the lunar calendar, but the celebrations of Chinese New Year carry on till Chap Goh Mei or the 15^th night. One simply cannot escape the various shades of crimson that formed the backdrop to Ding Yi Music Company’s annual CNY concert, the chamber counterpart to Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s musical festivities.

Young conductor Dedric Wong Deli led the raucous but pleasing proceedings, with works which could be subdivided into three genres: festive music coloured with local, popular or modern influences, spectacular concertante works and gaudily orchestrated pop songs. 

The first group needs some getting used to. For example, the ubiquitous Xi Yang Yang hardly gains any traction in the guise of bossa nova   despite some fine playing from the suona family. Similarly, Da Di Hui Chun becomes a parody when Malay and Indian drumming dominates the rhythms.

The exception was Yu Le Fu’s adaptation of Cantonese tune Yu Le Shen Ping (Joyous Celebration), with Chin Yen Choong and Fred Chan on the rarely-heard zhutiqin and erxian respectively, which provided a rousing prelude. Here, even the pop drum-set injecting a more contemporary feel did not get in the way of its fulsome felicitations.

More satisfying were the concertante pieces featuring Ding Yi’s own members as soloists. Chua Yew Kok on pipa in Jiang Ying’s Limitless was a slow boil, building up from its ethnic tribal flavoured opening, full of calm and contemplation, to a rugged and spirited close.

Not to be outdone, Jacky Ng’s suona soared in Phang Kok Jun’s arrangement of the familiar classic Hundreds Of Birds Paying Homage To The Phoenix. When one thought heights of virtuosity could not be further scaled, the improvisatory reed hit stratospheric reaches with eardrum-piercing volumes to match.

Coming back to earth, guzheng exponent Yvonne Tay was just as excellent in Liu Chang’s Rippling Brook Capriccio, a fantasy on the popular Yunnan love song Xiao He Tang Shui. All this did not seem the least bit surprising, as the audience were witnessing some of the nation’s best young soloists.

The third and final genre was the realm of popular songs, where Ding Yi provided both sympathetic and classy accompaniment to two local Mando-popstars. Jarrell Huang was a veritable livewire in Lee Wei Song’s Soaring Against The Wind, FIR’s First Day and Sandy Lam’s Love Never Leaves, swinging and air-strumming his microphone stand with wild abandon, while egging on the audience to clap-along.

Somewhat more subdued was Bonnie Loo who helmed a Jay Chou Love Suite, a medley of songs including Rainbow, Love Confession and Starry Mood. Then she switched to the Minnan dialect for Call My Name by Eric Moo, which no doubt gave Hokkien speakers in the audience some smiles. The final song, seasonal supermarket staple Bai Nian, was sung by both singers, closing the concert on a prosperous and satisfying high.

  

ONWARDS: A RUAN & ZHENG RECITAL / JONATHAN RAO & YVONNE TAY

ONWARDS: A RUAN & ZHENG RECITAL

JONATHAN RAO, Zhongruan

YVONNE TAY, Guzheng

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday (17 April 2018)

Contrary to what some may think, there is not much repertoire that involves the ruan and guzheng, both very popular traditional Chinese instruments, as a duet. Thinking along the same lines, there are also not many works for guitar and harp together in the Western classical canon. This unusual chamber concert paired both plucked instruments, performed by Jonathan Rao on zhongruan and Yvonne Tay on guzheng, both exciting young soloists and members of the highly progressive Ding Yi Music Company.

The duo opened the evening's programme with Zheng Zhe Cheng's Song Of Li, which is a contemporary work that keenly contrasts the timbres of both instruments. Inspired by tribal music of the Li indigenous people, the play of dissonances and microtonal music lent a piquant feel to the music. Straight off, the ensemble work of both players were excellent.

Robert Zollitsch's Boat Against The Current pitted guzheng with sheng (Soh Swee Kiat) and percussion (Low Yik Hang), yet another interesting combination of instruments. As its title suggests, there is much vigour and rhythmic interest in the music, aided by side-drum and cymbal. There was stillness in its central section before shifting gears for a faster and animated close.

Just as unusual was Dong Li Qiang's Scattered Shadows, scored for ruan and percussion (with Cheong Kah Yiong joining Low). Another modern sounding piece, the mellowness of the marimba was well-contrasted with the more incisive ruan. The fine interplay between the three players ensured an exciting close to this highly rhythmic piece.

Perhaps the most emotional work of the evening was Wang Dan Hong's Ru Shi, a guzheng concerto with Yvonne accompanied on piano by Clarence Lee. This was the same work performed at last week's concert with the NAFA Chinese Orchestra, and it was no less stirring this time around. Based on film music about the life of a legendary courtesan, its vicissitudes drew both a virtuosic and passionate response from the soloist - she was literally in tears by its end. 

A dramatic pause at the climax of  Ru Shi,
but there was no premature applause this time!

Zero Limits by Chen Ting-Fang was conceived to challenge the performer in all aspects of ruan technique and it worked brilliantly. Beginning with an ambling pace, the work gradually accelerated and built up to a frenzied tempo, all the way to an explosive finish. This concertante work was also accompanied by Clarence Lee on piano.  

The most traditional work was Pan I-Tung and Kuo Min-Chin's Ambience of Guang Ling San, based on an ancient melody. This was music for meditation and contemplation, with both instruments in unison for much of its course. There was some doubling and simple accompaniment for what was essentially a monody, and it was also interesting to hear each instrument for its own unique qualities. 

The final work was specially commissioned for this concert, a world premiere of Phang Kok Jun's Onwards. One of the most prolific local young composers, Phang comfortably melds Chinese, Western and popular idioms to excellent effect, in this case a quintet for ruan, guzheng, piano and percussion. The music has a popular (and populist) slant, with a penchant for nostalgia. 

It is this backward glance that aspired to spur and guide the future, which begs the question: what does the future hold for traditional Chinese instruments? Given the sheer virtuosity and unquenchable spirit displayed by these young musicians, the sky's the limit, and onwards (to borrow the title of the concert) they march.

A shout out too for the evening's host,
whose spoken Mandarin is as
perfect as her spoken English.
That, too, is a rarity.

NAFA CHINESE ORCHESTRA GALA CONCERT / Review

NAFA CHINESE ORCHESTRA

GALA CONCERT

Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre Auditorium

Thursday (12 April 2018)

The Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts is the premier Singaporean tertiary institution for the study of traditional Chinese instruments. Its Chinese orchestra, rightfully, is also the finest of its kind among the local educational institutions. In a concert celebrating the institution’s 80^th anniversary helmed by veteran Chinese conductor Wang Yongji, the NAFA Orchestra, with its student body augmented by alumni and Singapore Chinese Orchestra members, rose to a rarefied standard of playing that lovers of Chinese music will all be proud of.

Like the Singapore Chinese Orchestra's concert the week before, this was a programme of excellent showpieces – with no kitsch – that displayed the best of the orchestra's abilities besides highlighting solo prowess. Lady composer Wang Dan Hong's works are a case in point. Opening the concert was her Ode To The Sun, which worked from a slow opening to a rousing allegro. A winsome dizi melody accompanied by plucked strings (pipas and ruans) later soaring to a high with raucous drumming, were highlights in this music which resembled that of an epic film.

Similarly emotive was an abridged version of Wang's Ru Shi, a concerto for guzheng which featured as soloist one of NAFA's most brilliant alumni Yvonne Tay, now a principal member of Ding Yi Music Company. This concerto was derived from music from Wang's score for the film of the same title, about the legendary courtesan, her trials and tribulations. The slow to fast form was again employed, culminating in a show of digital virtuosity, one which also employed modern technical devices. There was a faux ending, which induced some premature applause, a ruse to further its narrative to a definitive but emphatic close.

Qiao Haibo, Principal dizi in the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra, played on no less than four instruments in Qu Xiaosong's Divine Melody. These included the dizi, xun (ocarina), xiao and shakuhachi, each producing a distinctively different timbre. Based on the poems of Qu Yuan, the music was atmospheric and lyrical, before following an increasingly furious martial beat to a rousing and heroic end.

In the second half, Zhou Chenglong's Nao Hua Deng (Playing Flower Lanterns) provided an imperious show for the orchestra's very impressive suona section. Theirs is a highly plangent sonority, ceremonial in intention and ritualistic in intensity. Subtler harmonies were also highlighted in the playing, that was later accompanied by an 8-member battery of percussion. It was revealed after the work that no less than four of its members were actually guzheng players standing in! Much detail of the music came through amid this racket, confirming the orchestra's mastery of this most piquant piece. 

NAFA's Head of Chinese instrumental studies, erhu player Sunny Wong Sun Tat, was the soloist in Jin Fuzai's concertante work When The Rivers Thaw In Spring. Arguably the best work of the concert, it was a rhapsodic wallow through the string instrument's extremes of registers. 

Inspired by Su Shi's poetry, it began lyrically and plotted its congenial course before arriving at an impressive cadenza. Disaster struck midway through the concerto when a string snapped. Wong coolly swapped an erhu with a front-desk member before excusing himself for two agonising minutes. Returning with an intact instrument, he blazed a path through this beautiful music to a splendidly animated close. If anything, the rupture galvanised all the players into an altogether excitable finish.

The final work was Peng Xiu Wen's arrangement of a Beijing opera favourite The Surging Of Turbulent Clouds. Highlighted in this more traditional number was solos from the sheng, suona and a centrally-placed jinghu, highest pitched member of the huqin string family. The rhythmic dance, aided by the incessant beat of a temple block made for a showy and grand close to the concert. There was also time for an encore, which was a medley which including amongst other tunes Di Tanjung Katong.

A very eventful and enjoyful concert, and one that foresees a very bright future for all these talented young musicians, and the strong case for the pursuit of great Chinese orchestral music.      

SPRING BLOSSOMS / NAFA Chinese Chamber Ensemble / Review

SPRING BLOSSOMS

NAFA Chinese Chamber Ensemble

Lee Foundation Theatre

Thursday (4 February 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 February 2016 with the title "Ushering in Chinese New Year with raucous music".

As the beginning of a new lunar year draws ever close, one is readily reminded that much Chinese music heralding the onset of spring exists beyond the usual suspects. This 80-minute concert by the excellent Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Chinese Chamber Ensemble was a showcase of the Chinese orchestra's celebratory colours. 

The first three works were led by Singapore Chinese Orchestra Resident Conductor Quek Ling Kiong, beginning with the ubiquitous Spring Festival Overture by Li Huan Zhi in Sim Boon Yew's arrangement. An elaborate display by the drumming section ushered in the furiously-paced opening that did not let up until its lyrical second subject heard on solo sheng.

Equally busy and raucous was Peng Xiu Wen's Lantern Festival, which depicts the feeling of anticipation on New Year's Eve. Xuonas, de facto brass of the ensemble, led the way through its gaudily lit procession to a rowdy conclusion.

The sole concertante work featured elegant young guzheng virtuoso Yvonne Tay, winner of numerous awards and prizes, in Zhou Yu Guo's Robe Of Clouds. This is a rhapsodic piece which begins with an evocative slow segment, almost impressionist in its narrative, before taking off in a fast leaping dance.

This culminated in a showy cadenza exhibiting the full gamut of the plucked instrument's sonorities, which Tay brilliantly explored to best possible effect. This undergraduate, Principal Guzheng in the Ding Yi Music Company, augurs a bright future for Chinese instrumental music in Singapore.   

The same could be said about young conductor Moses Gay who helmed the balance of the concert. His casual stage demeanour belied a serious musician who had something vital to say. Lo Leung Fai's Spring was perhaps the most eclectic work on show, its pivot being a big tune that sounded like a variation of the familiar Molihua.

Accompanying figures that resembled those in the West End musical Les Miserables and a finale whose theme reminded one of Dvorak's American Quartet were probably coincidental, but the end result was the same –  jolly good fun for all concerned. Wang Fu-Jian's arrangement of A Moonlit Night On The Spring River, sensitively played, provided genuine reflective moments before all of old Middle Road broke loose.

Ten singers in festive costumes fronted the Spring Festival Medley which erupted with popular seasonal favourites Da Di Hui Chun, Ying Chun Hua and the inevitable Gong Xi Gong Xi Ni. The hapless nightclub-like arrangement paid nil regard to harmonic subtleties, instead letting the lucky percussionist on the drum-set go to town on a rampage. 

Conductor Gay cheekily quipped that an encore would be played “whether you like it or not” and that turned out to be the cheerful Hua Hao Yue Yuan (Beautiful Flowers, Full Moon), which saw synchronised clapping from the audience. In the tradition of the Vienna Philharmonic, the performers hollered a hearty “Gong Xi Fa Cai”, and there can be no more auspicious greeting than that.