SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No.10
LEONG YOON PIN Dayong Sampan
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Choo Hoey (Conductor)
Philips 426 228-2
This CD recording saw the Singapore Symphony Orchestra come of age. Issued in 1989 to mark the orchestra’s 10th anniversary, it was a once-off on the Dutch Philips label, a gift from the regional director of Philips Electronics, which had a factory operating in Toa Payoh. The disc was produced for local distribution by the Polygram group, but still carried the hallmarks and technology of Philips, the label of Bernard Haitink, Colin Davis et al.
By this time, the SSO under music director Choo Hoey had already developed a good reputation in 20th music. In 1980, SSO performed its first Shostakovich symphony (No.1), just five years after the composer’s death. In 1983, the Tenth Symphony received its Singapore premiere, and this was a work the orchestra returned to with much regularity, together with other contemporary staples like Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1919) and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.
Composed in 1953, after the death of Soviet dictator Stalin, Shostakovich was free to express his true feelings about the regime, encapsulated in its four unusual movements. Widely considered his greatest symphony, SSO very much regarded it as such. The long slow first movement unfolded with purposed and received a true Mahlerian catharsis it deserved. The short Scherzo was a portrait of pure Stalinist malevolence, and Choo Hoey drove his charges to a feverish frenzy. This movement was so well performed that it was shortlisted for SSO’s 21st anniversary highlights disc.
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| Elmira & DSCH |
The final two movements were possessed with Shostakovich’s ironic sense of humour, an interplay between a mystery French horn theme (now identified as the Elmira Nazirova motif) and his own DSCH motto. Were the two secretly in love? According to Nazirova many years later, it was all in Mitya’s head. The finale is possessed with a mordant wit that makes light of all the horror that came before. It was Shostakovich’s unique way of saying, “the tyrant is dead, and the independent spirit is now freed”. SSO’s performance showed it clearly identified with Shostakovich’s idiom.
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| The venerated Leong Yoon Pin, Singapore's only Nadia Boulanger student. |
Leong Yoon Pin’s Dayong Sampan (1980) was the rather apt coupling. For more than thirty years, this was Singapore’s best-loved and most-performed symphonic poem, only displaced by Wang Chenwei’s The Sisters’ Islands - another maritime-themed work - during the 21st century. The Malay melody (known to the Chinese as Tian Mi Mi) emerges from an introduction of dense orchestration and counterpoint to become its main subject. The work is a sober take on the Chinese diaspora who ventured across the South China Sea to seek new lives in Malaya, a quintessential piece of Nanyang music even before the term came into being.
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| Wan Soon Kam's water colour painting |
The orchestra plays both works with passion and conviction. SSO has Dayong Sampan pretty much to itself, and even if the Shostakovich is not quite in the same exalted level as classic Kondrashin or Mravinsky, there is still much to be proud of. There are biographical and programme notes (by Bernard Tan) in English, German and French. The cover design of Victoria Concert Hall is from a water colour painting by Wan Soon Kam. A piece of musical nostalgia well-worth owning.
This recording was one of two CDs issued by SSO in the year 1989. The other was its only Beethoven recording, of his Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos (with John Bingham) on the Meridien label. That was reviewed here: pianomania: CD Reviews (The Straits Times, March 2014)
