DUO RECITAL / Qin Li-Wei & Ning Feng / Review

DUO RECITAL

Qin Li-Wei & Ning Feng

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Tuesday (29 January 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 31 January 2013 with the title "Feast ahead of chamber music fest".

It is one more day till the official opening of the Singapore Chamber Music Festival at the Conservatory, but no one would have guessed or bothered given the hive of musical activity this evening in the company of cellist Qin Li-Wei and violinist Ning Feng. Their duo recital, a rare occurrence in Singapore for this instrumental combination, was more than just a meeting of mighty musical minds.

It was a feast. The first half alone lasted some 55 minutes, showcasing the two most intense and musically exhausting works in the repertoire. Zoltan Kodaly’s Duo and Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for violin and make for challenging and concentrated listening, but the rewards were bounteous. Both works used pentatonic themes, and given the inflections and nuances that resembled Oriental music, seemed to suit the two Chinese virtuosos to a tee.

It was the interplay between the violin’s higher-pitched impassioned cry and the cello’s deeper and mellow sigh that impressed the most. Though possessing separate voices, they breathed and moved in one accord; one part singing the melody and the other providing the accompaniment. Within a split second, they exchanged roles, so seamlessly and effortlessly that one took the treacherous thorns and myriad intricacies in the score almost for granted.

In the Lent slow movement of the Ravel, the voices were so densely intertwined in its prayer-like countenance that it was nigh impossible to extricate the two penitents. This innate chemistry then diffused into the wild dance-like finales, bristling with not so much gypsy elan, but exuding a raw and lusty earthiness. This performance of the Kodaly has completely effaced memories of the version by Pinchas and Amanda Zukerman at the Singapore Sun Festival in 2007. 

If the first half was decidedly hard core, the second half was positively congenial. Feng and Qin were joined by pianist Albert Tiu, with true singing qualities brought forth in Mendelssohn’s First Piano Trio in D minor. Far from being totally relaxed, the threesome was made to work hard to bring out the Victorian niceties and filigree. Tiu’s scintillating fingers stood out in the extremely tricky yet delicate role, elevating the pretty and precious into some higher plane.

At the music’s stirring conclusion, deafening cheers from the clearly enthused audience was rewarded with further confectionary, a bite-sized titbit by Shostakovich. The plentiful riches of the chamber music festival had begun one day early.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, January 2013)

ENCORES

ALFRED CORTOT, Piano

Naxos Historical  8.111261 / *****

Sceptics who wonder about why French-Swiss pianist Alfred Cortot (1877-1962) was considered of the piano’s greats need only sample this disc of 78 rpm recordings he made for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1925 and 1926. The title “Encores” is misleading because of the limitations of the recorded medium, which dictated a maximum of four plus minutes per side. That would explain the presence of half a performance of Chopin’s First Ballade from 1925, the first half having mysteriously gone missing from posterity. A 1926 complete performance of the same work reveals his majesty and command.

Cortot the virtuosic showman is never in doubt when one listens to his takes on Weber’s vertiginous Invitation to the Dance or Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies No.2 (with his own fancy cadenza ad libitum) and No.11 and a seemingly effortless Rigoletto Paraphrase. The occasional wrong notes, caught in the white heat of performance are more than tolerable. For more subtle pleasures, his own transcription of Brahms’s Lullaby, the Schubert-Liszt Litany, Chopin’s Aeolian Harp Étude, Berceuse and a most elegant Waltz in C sharp minor (Op.64 No.2). Here is mandatory listening for all serious students of the piano.

THE SILVER VIOLIN

NICOLA BENEDETTI, Violin

Bournemouth Symphony/ Kirill Karabits

Decca 478 3529 / *****

The Silver Violin is an anthology from the Golden Age of music for the silver screen, a bygone era when there was little or no distinction between serious composers and movie composers. This is best personified in the character of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957), the Viennese Jewish child prodigy composer whose emigration to American saved his career and life from the Nazi Holocaust. His gorgeously lyrical Violin Concerto, premiered by Jascha Heifetz, recycles music from four feature films, including Another Dawn and The Prince And The Pauper. It rightfully takes its place among the 20^th century’s most popular concertos. From the same pen come Pierrot’s Dance-Song and Marietta’s Song from the opera Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City), arias which sound just as beautiful on the violin.

Young British violinist Nicola Benedetti performs these with sumptuous beauty, her selections leaning more towards Eastern Europe, which tend to be melancholic and wistful in temperament. Shostakovich offers three haunting tracks, from films The Gadfly and The Counterplan. Even American John Williams’s Main Theme from Schindler’s List falls within this aesthete. The inspired choice is the inclusion of Mahler’s early but dark single-movement Piano Quartet. Mahler died just before movies became in vogue, but this music has earned its place in the 2010 psychological thriller Shutter Island starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Whoever thought that? With the magic of music and movies, everything becomes possible. 

BOOK IT:

NICOLA BENEDETTI plays Korngold’s Violin Concerto with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra

conducted by Neeme Järvi

1 & 2 February 2013

Esplanade Concert Hall at 7.30 pm

Tickets available at SISTIC

OMM PROM 2013: ALL AMERICAN / Review

OMM PROM 2013: ALL AMERICAN

Orchestra of the Music Makers

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (26 January 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 January 2013 with the title "Music Makers reach out with pops concert".

The Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) has made its name by performing the larger works of the classical repertoire in subscription concerts. When the young volunteer orchestra chooses to perform shorter pieces and popular classics, it does so in an outreach event called the OMM Prom, its name derived from the BBC Proms. As the Singapore Symphony Orchestra has ceased its Familiar Favourites series, the OMM Prom has become the de facto pops concert of the masses.

A very large audience greeted the latest OMM Prom which was an enjoyable salute to American music. The heady spirit of the Boston Pops was immediately relived with the opener, George Gershwin’s Girl Crazy Overture, with popular melodies like Embraceable You, I Got Rhythm and But Not For Me flowing out with the slickness that these Broadway musicals demand.

Rhapsody in Blue was next, and clarinettist Vincent Goh’s slinky opening solo set the tone for a totally commanding performance by young pianist Clarence Lee. Not only does he have the physical heft to project above the orchestra, he also gave the score an improvisatory feel by dictating the pace, slowing at will and then upping the ante when it mattered. The orchestra’s razor-sharp reflexes served the music’s rhythmic intricacies to a tee, with woodwinds and brass in splendid form.

Conductor Chan Tze Law then touched upon how 20^th century American music and popular culture was closely linked, and the next three works were proof of that. Philip Glass’s Heroes Symphony (inspired by David Bowie) provided seven minutes of repetitive tedium in its fourth movement despite some fine solo trumpet and clarinet playing. This was offset by film music from John Williams and Alan Menken, Star Wars and Enchanted respectively, which brought out the loudest applause.

The second concertante work was the slow movement of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, with Edward Tan the stylish and sensitive soloist. His beautiful tone, rising to impassioned high, provided the evening’s most reflective moment. Then it was back to the bluster of brass and percussion in Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, that familiar standard now subsumed as the final movement of his Third Symphony. Busy counterpoint and development on the theme brought the concert to a rousing close.

For its obligatory encore, OMM surprised with that old chestnut, Old McDonald Had A Farm in Leroy Anderson’s uproarious orchestration, complete with barnyard sound effects from five percussionists. The downside to that programming pique was this: it is now almost impossible to rid that melody from the mind!

SSO Concert: SUMMER NIGHTS / Review

SUMMER NIGHTS

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (25 January 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 January 2013 with the title "Summer of vocal fireworks".

The German soprano Juliane Banse and her husband conductor Christoph Poppen have appeared with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra on numerous occasions, but never in a concert performance together in Singapore. This evening set things straight, but there was little doubt who was the outright star, and who was the sympathetic supporting cast.

In Berlioz’s cycle Les nuits d’été (The Summer Nights), Banse flexed her wide expressive and dramatic range through its six songs in French. In the opening Villanelle, lightness and nimbleness in her articulation was matched by the orchestra’s subtle pulsing accompaniment. Banse was in full control, as Poppen kept the orchestral forces at bay, and no word or nuance was allowed to be submerged.

The four central songs were all slow, and it was Banse’s imaginative colouring and phrasing that prevented the music from lagging. A lovely cantabile in Le spectre de la rose (The Ghost of a Rose), darker shades for Sur les lagunes (On the Lagoon), an operatic intensity that distinguished Absence, and the ability to sustain high registers for extended periods in Au Cimetiere (In the Cemetery) made this performance a memorable one.

The final L’ile inconnue (The Unknown Isle), breezy and carefree, provided some sort of rapture, and it seemed a pity that the sublime work had to end. Banse returned after the interval for the vocal fireworks of Beethoven’s Abscheulicher! Wo eilst du hin? (Accursed One! Where are you hurrying off to?) from the opera Fidelio. She shook off the sonic challenge of three French horns and leapt heroically to a climactic high.  

The concert began and ended with the music of Mendelssohn. His Ruy Blas Overture, a favourite curtain-raiser of the orchestra’s, showcased brass fanfares and svelte strings to best effect. The Third Symphony, nicknamed the Scottish, was the main work. Although not strictly programmatic, its travelogue-like musical narrative made it an enjoyable listen.

Poppen, who conducted from memory, kept the music flowing with well-judged speeds. The solemn beginning leading to a tempest-tossed Allegro conjured up a vision of ancient legends, while Ma Yue’s jaunty clarinet lit up the swift highland dance of the scherzo. It was the warrior-like legacy of Braveheart and his ilk that pervaded the final movements, with the flying colours of Saint Andrew vividly emblazoned for the vigourous and valedictory close.

One may be accused of an over-active imagination when listening to this music, but when it is as well played as this, the occasional indulgence is a forgivable sin.                       

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, January 2013)

MISSION

CECILIA BARTOLI

I Barocchisti / Diego Fasolis

Decca 478 4732 / *****

This new release confirms Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli’s legacy as one of opera’s greatest voices and minds. The intelligence and adventurousness of her concept albums now takes her to the operas of little-known Baroque composer, Roman Catholic bishop and polymath Agostino Steffani (1654-1728), who for many years served as a diplomat in the royal courts of Germany. The copiously illustrated accompanying book has Bartoli costumed as a priest and stereotypical movie spy, the shadowy envoys get into, including attempting to reconvert the Protestant Germans back to Catholicism.

What about the music? Bartoli sings 24 arias and duets (with countertenor Philippe Jarrousky) from twelve operas, selected for their virtuosity, variety and dynamic range. Just savour the vertiginous runs and gravity-defying feats from Tassilone, Il Trionfo del Fato, La Superbia d’Alessandro and La Liberta Contenta, to hear how he might have influenced Handel’s own operas. On a more subtle note, there is great beauty in Amami, e Vederei (Love Me, and You Will See), accompanied by just a lute, and the duet Serena, O Mio bel sole (Tamper, My Beautiful Sun), both from Niobe. Was Steffani the greatest Italian composer between Monteverdi and Vivaldi? With Bartoli’s amazingly vivid and irrepressible proselytising, he might very well have been.

RESPIGHI Violin Sonatas

TANJA BECKER-BENDER, Violin

PETER NAGY, Piano

Hyperion 67930 / ****1/2

The Italian composer Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) is justly celebrated for his Roman Trilogy and sumptuously orchestrated works. In his less exposed chamber music, he sounds like a totally different creator. In this collection of violin and piano works, only the Violin Sonata in B minor of 1917 bears some familiarity, having been recorded by Jascha Heifetz and Kyung-Wha Chung. A dark, smoky aroma and Straussian opulence lend the music much beauty and poignancy. The nocturne-like slow movement radiates much warmth as it works to a climactic high, while the finale is a well-written passacaglia, a contemporary tribute to the Baroque form and finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony.

Rather more influenced by Brahms is the early Violin Sonata in D minor (1897), an attractive student piece of late Romanticism that is not particularly distinctive. More memorable are the Five Pieces (1906), which are well characterised and include a Romance, Berceuse and Humoresque. Almost out of character are the salon charms of Valse Caressante and Serenata, which are totally disarming. The German violinist Tanja Becker-Bender and Hungarian pianist Peter Nagy are most sympathetic advocates, lavishing the music with much needed colour and vitality. Recommended listening. 

THE ALPHABET SERIES: C IS FOR CHILDREN CANTILLATING / The Sing Song Club / Review

THE ALPHABET SERIES:

C IS FOR CHILDREN CANTILLATING

The Sing Song Club

The Living Room @ The Arts House

Saturday 19 January 2013

This review was published in The Straits Times on 21 January 2013 with the title "C is for charming chants".

The Sing Song Club’s ambitious 26-part Alphabet Series of art song recitals has reached the letter C. Its 90-minute recital of 20^th century song cycles inspired by the subject of childhood and extreme youth was attended by just 21 people, but that did not dampen the spirits of the performers on a dank, rainy evening. 

The group’s leader, the youthful tenor Adrian Poon, had the honour of singing two song cycles. The first was Francis Poulenc’s Quatre Chansons pour Enfants, where he negotiated its tricky and rapidly articulated French with relative ease. The playful, ironic spirit of the personalities who inhabited these songs were well characterised, lyricism and wit being the hallmark of the French composer whose 50^th death anniversary was being commemorated this year. 

The extremely versatile Richard Rodney Bennett, who died just a few weeks ago, was also remembered with his Songs Before Sleep. These six very diverse shorts, contemporary and occasionally jazz-inflected, also found a sympathetic interpreter in Poon. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, began with the same words as the familiar version, but took on the style of a Broadway musical number.

Benjamin Britten, born exactly one century ago, had a lifelong affinity for children. His five songs in A Charm of Lullabies gave mezzo-soprano Anna Koor and pianist Shane Thio a share of dissonant moments, the melodic line often at odds with the thorny piano writing. No fault of the performers, such was Britten’s sense of aesthetics which juxtaposed A Charm with its strident declamations “Quiet! Sleep!” that would wake the dead, with the truly soothing The Nurse’s Song, which Koor delivered as well as a mother could.  

The only familiar song cycle was Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), sung by the veteran baritone William Lim. Here is a voice that has matured over the years, such that the reflections on mortality rang out with a world-weary yet burnished poignancy that sounded heartfelt and sincere. Through the tempest of In diesem Wetter (In This Weather), Lim easily overcame the onslaught from the keyboard accompaniment.

Lim closed the evening with Singaporean Zechariah Goh Toh Chai’s Where Are You, My Little Ones?, a lament composed on the aftermath of the 2004 Asian tsunami tragedy. The words “Did you call my name? Did you say goodbye?”, spoken rather than sung, hung on like a pall through the song’s clear and unequivocal message. It was a sober and contemplative end to a concert that should have been attended by far more music-lovers.

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CD Reviews (The Straits Times, January 2013)

THE CHOPIN ALBUM

LANG LANG, Piano

Sony Classical 88725449132 / *****

After the success of his all-Liszt album, Lang Lang’s attention to Frédéric Chopin’s piano music is no less keen or sincere. Where a certain degree of self-indulgence is tolerated and even encouraged in Liszt, Chopin is far less amenable to manipulation and vulgar heart-on-sleeve display. Here, the 30-year-old Chinese wunderkind treads a fine line and comes off with much credit. In the Twelve Études Op.25, the technical becomes secondary to the poetry. How Lang floats a seamless singing line in the Aeolian Harp (No.1) or weaves melody through the filigree and bluster of the E minor (No.5) and B minor (No.10) studies are admirable. Needless to say, the finger-twisters that are the Study in Triplets (No.6) and Winter Wind (No.11) hold no terrors for him.

His true skill is in building the music up to a crucial point, and delivering the coup de grace by milking the climax with a pique of dynamic licence or outsized sonority. By playing up these moments unseen in the notated score, he relives an art last practised and preached by the master magician that was Vladimir Horowitz. This album also includes the Andante Spianato & Grande Polonaise Op.22, three Nocturnes, Waltz Brillante Op.18 and the humble Minute Waltz. Each comes with the grace, poise and respect that they deserve. Even from the hands of the maverick that is Lang Lang, that is true advocacy for you.  

BLOCH Schelomo / Voice in the Wilderness

NATALIE CLEIN, Violin

BBC Scottish Symphony / Ilan Volkov

Hyperion 67910 / ****1/2

If one has enjoyed the music in those epic biblical movies of the last century, mostly starring Charlton Heston, chances are one will also respond to the works of the composer who influenced that genre. The Swiss-American Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) also wrote much secular music, but he will be best remembered for the works that reflect his Jewish heritage. The best known is Schelomo, the 1916 Hebraic rhapsody on the life of Kong Solomon, scored with the cello as his incarnation. The triumphs, trials and tribulations are indelibly captured in the instrument’s deep and wide emotional reach, but its abiding message is to be found in Solomon’s Ecclesiastes, “All is vanity”.

Its companion is the six-movement Voice In The Wilderness (1936), a more diffuse work that carries the same burden of toil and torment, always a Judaist trait of the generations. Far lighter in mood are the three Hassidic-related movements of From Jewish Life (1924), orchestrated by Christopher Palmer. Completing this gorgeously performed anthology by young British cellist Natalie Clein is Max Bruch’s popular Kol Nidrei. It uses several genuine synagogue chants to sympathetic effect, remarkably so because Bruch was not Jewish himself. Essential listening. 

ANN SCHEIN Piano Recital / Review

ANN SCHEIN Piano Recital

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Tuesday (15 January 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 January 2013 with the title "Grand dame's quicksilver fingers".

Some of the best concerts in Singapore can be had for free, if one undertook the small task of venturing westward to Kent Ridge where the national music conservatory is located. Despite the paucity of publicity, this morsel of wisdom was not lost on the hundreds who turned up for a piano recital by Ann Schein,

In her mid-seventies, Schein is surely America’s “Grand Dame of the piano”, and one who is still pursuing an active concert career worldwide. Her substantial recital unfurled pianism in the grand tradition, one unfazed by the flash and hyperbole that obsess younger keyboard practitioners of today. The unmannered way she played the first three chords of Beethoven’s Les Adieux Sonata (Op.81a) was a case in point.

Utter clarity and clean lines, topped with a generously sumptuous sonority, distinguished her view of this programmatic work, which capture the feelings of parting with a loved one, and longing absence. One could feel the sadness, and the sense of anticipation which turned to joyous exhilaration upon the return of the beloved.

Exemplary pedalling made Ravel and Debussy a pleasure to listen. When used sparingly, the former’s neoclassical Sonatine became a graceful jaunt, especially in the elegant central minuet movement. When applied more liberally, the misty haze that shrouded the latter’s L’Isle Joyeuse (The Happy Island) added to the mystique, which gradually evaporated as the work flew to its ecstatic conclusion.

As if to prove she was totally comfortable with prestidigitation, the repeated notes of Liszt’s vertiginous Tarantella (from Years of Pilgrimage) were dispatched with disarming ease. The big chords and octaves that followed truly astonished, coming from someone of a petite physical stature.   

The piano stool was already raised to its maximum height. Adding to that, Schein further elevated herself by sitting on a handbag. This diametrically polar opposite of Glenn Gould (who managed just 14 inches off the floor) then brought forth a Chopin Third Sonata of nobility. She chose a deliberately moderate tempo, and let the music unravel majestically with a Patrician sense of purpose.

Here was an object lesson of how to be seen and heard without being gimmicky or outwardly showy. Quicksilver responses in the Scherzo were exchanged with the slow movement’s gentle calm, and a rock-steady Finale then roared to life. There were missed notes in the fray, but who cares when passion could be expressed with the vehemence of thunder.

There were two encores, the third of Chopin’s Trois Nouvelles Etudes and Rachmaninov’s rapturous Prelude in B flat major (Op.23 No.2). In the last, Schein scrolled back the years and showed that her septuagenarian fingers could still make far younger virtuosos green with envy. 

IMPRESSIONS OF JAPAN / Xposé Guitar Ensemble / Review

IMPRESSIONS OF JAPAN

Xposé Guitar Ensemble

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (13 January 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 January 2013 with the title "From Shibuya to Mardi Gras".

Japan-themed concerts are not exactly rare in Singapore. The Singapore Chinese Orchestra and Philharmonic Winds have both doffed their collective caps to the rising sun, and Xposé Guitar Ensemble, formed by alumni of the Guitar Ensemble of National University of Singapore, has followed suit. It is not too surprising either, as the Niibori concept of the guitar orchestra – an ensemble formed by guitars of different pitches - originated in Japan.

Conducted by Ow Leong San, a livewire with close-cropped hair tied into a Cossack tail, the young ensemble was enthusiastic if a tad raw. In Ow’s own arrangement of James Barnes’s Impressions of Japan, originally scored for wind band, there was little by way of harmony on the guitars. The movements with simple melodic themes were dominated by percussive effects, which evoked dawn, a solemn Buddhist ceremony and a vibrant shrine festival.

Joe Hisaishi’s Departures, rewritten by ensemble member Zhao Jin as a concertante work for bass guitar, was over-cautious and Lim Sheng Jun’s solo hardly stood out from among the throng. Ow’s transcription of the theme from Final Fantasy X, more movie music, was just as soporific, until Zhao (below) downed his soprano guitar to belt out Atsushi’s Sagittarius, a hit song from the movie Nodame Cantabile. Karaoke is probably Japan’s most significant cultural export since the sushi bar.

The ensemble gained in composure and confidence in the second half, due in no small part to the highly animated guest conductor Kazuyuki Terada, Chief Conductor of Japan’s Niibori Guitar Music Academy. He literally danced his way through Hatanaka Yudai’s Sweets Suite, a salute to Japanese confectionary dressed up as a csardas, waltz and Latin dance.

As the tempo was upped, so was the interest of the music. Michio Miyagi’s concerto for two alto guitars, Variations on Sakura, gave Melissa Wan and Michelle Lim (above) some minutes under the spotlight. They were steady pairs of hands if not outright spectacular. Kengo Momose’s two works on flowers, Hana No En and Tinsagu Nu Hana, further expanded the sound palette of the group.

The former idiomatically merged pop music with Traditional gagaku court music. Strains of the piccolo and shakuhachi spiced up the proceedings, while others showed how to use the guitar as a percussion instrument. Sounds of the sea, sanxian (a close relative of the plucked shamisen) and tribal chanting lit up the latter, an Okinawan children’s song.

Toshio Mashima’s Gelato Con Caffe, the final piece, took on a bossa nova and samba beat. As exuberant percussion overwhelmed the far more subtle guitars, one could be forgiven for thinking that the streets of Shibuya had led right smack into a Mardi Gras in Rio. So much for all things Japanese, the sheer eclecticism and infectious energy all around was what the audience enjoyed most. 

   

What it feels like to see your name at a bus-stop

Ever wonder what it feels like to see your name at a bus-stop? Hopefully it isn't a shock in the form of graffiti. It has happened just once, and it is quite a pleasant surprise. Above is the scene at the SBS bus-stop outside of Esplanade this weekend, and the advertisement in question highlights a forthcoming concert by the Orchestra of the Music Makers. Here it is in its full glory.  



So I have been quoted, big deal! Obviously the orchestra and Esplanade see the importance of reviews (and hopefully music reviewers), in order to help promote a concert and the artists. Anyway, both violinist Edward Tan and pianist Clarence Lee are among the finest young musical talents Singapore have produced, and they certainly deserve all plaudits possible. 

At this concert on Saturday 26 January 2013 (Esplanade Concert Hall at 5 pm), Edward Tan will be performing the slow movement of Barber's Violin Concerto while Clarence Lee puts the glitz on Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. The Orchestra of the Music Makers conducted by Chan Tze Law will also perform works by Copland, Philip Glass, John Williams and Alan Menken. Be there or be square. 

What did Helene Grimaud perform as her encores?

Helen Griamud speaks at the post-concert Symphony Chat as Maestro Shui Lan  looks on.

After performing one of the most exciting and adrenaline-driven performances of Brahms's First Piano Concerto with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in recent memory, Helene Grimaud obliged with two encores:

1. Chopin Étude No.1 from Trois Nouvelles Études

2. Rachmaninov Étude-tableau in C major, Op.33 No.2

For the record, the SSO under Shui Lan also performed at the Gala Concert on 12 January 2013 Richard Strauss's Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) and the Asian premiere of Christopher Rouse's Third Symphony.

RHAPSODIES OF SPRING 2013 / Singapore Chinese Orchestra/ Review

RHAPSODIES OF SPRING 2013

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Friday (11 January 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 January 2013 with the title "Casual air at SCO concert with DJs in the mix".

The Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s first concerts of the calendar year often coincide with the Lunar New Year and the celebration of spring. Like the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s Christmas Concerts which closed the preceding year, they are jolly and light hearted affairs. Conducted by Music Director Yeh Tsung, semi-serious music was mixed with the popular and downright frivolous.

The opener, Li Huanzhi’s Spring Festival Overture, is so familiar that it even appears in the SSO’s latest CD of popular classics alongside Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Raucous and rowdy, the percussion section had to work overtime but there were moments for a lovely sheng solo to stand above the hustle bustle. As a tribute to the coming year of the snake, Nie Er’s brief Jin She Kuang Wu (Wild Dance of the Golden Snake) did not slither or strike but displayed some energetic dragon-like feints.

The involvement of eleven deejays from the Chinese-speaking radio station UFM 100.3 gave the concert the casual air of televised variety shows so loved by heartlanders. There was a finger-snapping Mandarin rap An Exceptional New Year Song that played on the ubiquitous New Year greeting Gong Xi Gong Xi.

The comedy team then acted and sang New Legend of Madame White Snake, updated to 21^st century Singapore to include Hokkien, Singlish, product placement, cross-dressing and a sly dig on our stressful modern lifestyles. The totally irreverent reboot of an old tale centred on the romance of Xu Xian and the eponymous heroine, which almost foundered on that typically Singaporean malady – subfertility.

A new look at the Legend of Madame White Snake, updated to 21st century Singapore.

After the interval, jazz drummer Tama Goh ad-libbed in the spiced-up Cantonese classic Han Tian Lei (Thunder Storm and Drought) while two suona masters Jin Shi Yi and Liu Jiang (above) had a virtuosic pas de deux in Huan Tian Xi Di (Exuberance). Jin’s stunning reed technique which approximated Donald Duck in falsetto brought out the most cheers from a startled audience.

Less impressive was Begin’s Accompany Me to See the Sunrise, sung in unison by two lady deejays accompanied by their colleagues on four ukuleles. Popular Malaysian singer-songwriter Wu Jiahui (below) then crooned three sentimental songs Although I’m Willing, Do You Love Me? and One Half.  The last was the Hokkien theme song of the Royston Tan getai movie 881, also sung by the personable Wu himself.    

Like the Christmas Concerts, there was an audience sing-along, which resulted in a rather tepid clap-along instead. Whether audiences at SCO concerts are more reticent, or because the lyrics to Chinese New Year standards such as Da Di Hui Chun (Spring Returns), Bai Nian (New Year Greetings) and Gong Xi Gong Xi Ni are so banal as to render them speechless, it was difficult to say. 

The longest autograph line in town!

Here is one Straits Times reader's response to the concert and review, published on 19 January 2013 in the Weekend Mailbag letters page.