HANS GRAF FAREWELL SERIES:
MYSTERE DE L’INSTANT
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Victoria Concert Hall
Friday (15 May 2026)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 18 May 2026 with the title "Conductor Hans Graf tests virtuosity of musicians with French programme of avant-garde and fun fare".
The second concert programme of Singapore Symphony Orchestra music director Hans Graf’s Farewell Series was an all-French affair. Although well-known for his interpretation of Austro-German and Central European repertoire, his sympathy for modern French music extended to two albums of orchestral music by 20th century master Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013).
Dutilleux’s Mystere de l’instant (Mystery of the Moment), composed as recently as 1989, received its first Singapore performance. Scored for strings, cimbalom (dulcimer) and percussion, its rarefied palette of shades and dissonances was a revelation all through ten short but volatile movements.
All form of string techniques encapsulated in 24 independent parts were experimented, while Patrick Ngo’s yangqin (doubling as cimbalom), Mario Choo’s percussion and Christian Schioler’s timpani were used sparingly but strategically. Graf was putting to the test the virtuosity of his players, succeeding admirably while also opening the ears of listeners unaccustomed to the avant-garde.
The rest of the concert offered much easier listening in the form of lollipops. Two showpieces for violin highlighted the uncommon prowess of young Salzburg-based Chinese violinist He Ziyu. Opening with Camille Saint-Saens’s popular Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso, he exhibited a singing tone and spot-on intonation.
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Arguably more challenging was Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane, a gypsy rhapsody that opens with an extended solo of immense difficulty, leading to an unbuttoned dance which gave a new meaning to gay abandon. The natural ease at which he negotiated the music’s myriad twists and turns was further highlighted in his encore, Ukraine-born violin virtuoso Nathan Milstein’s Paganiniana, a fiendish mash-up of Nicolo Paganini’s Caprices with the infamous No.24 as a starting point.
The celebration of miraculous youth continued into the concert’s second half with Singapore’s most prominent classical saxophonist Samuel Phua in Darius Milhaud’s Scaramouche. Originally conceived for two pianos, this orchestral version delighted in its sheer busyness, with the opening movement pitting sax against the forces of some implacable big band.
His voice finally came to the fore in the slow movement, a creamily-tone romance turned bluesy by discreet pairs of trumpets and trombones, which sounded even better than the original. The finale was a Brazilian samba with the irrepressible spirit of a Mardi Gras in Rio. Speaking of festivals, his encore of local composer Wang Chenwei’s Thaipusam, originally for violin solo, swung like cool Carnatic jazz.
Despite its diminutive title, Francis Poulenc’s four-movement Sinfonietta (1948) is a major 30-minute work in four movements which exceeded the lengths of most Mozart symphonies. Conceived in neoclassical style with influences by Igor Stravinsky and the cabaret, the line between popular and serious music became blurred beyond recognition.
Wit and humour abounded in its pages, captured with requisite verve by Graf and his charges. The scherzo-like second movement relived the jive of the earlier Milhaud (both composers were part of a Parisian clique called Les Six), while the slow movement lilted with the gentle grace of a baroque-era dance. It was left in the Mozartian finale to pull out all stops for a delightful conclusion of an intriguing but enjoyable programme.
All photos by Yoricko Liu,
courtesy of Singapore Symphony Orchestra
