THE
GODDESS
A SILENT
FILM CONCERT
Huayi
Chinese Festival of Arts 2014
Esplanade
Concert Hall
Saturday (15 February 2014 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 February 2014 with the title "SCO brings out tender moments".
Concerts
with a live orchestra accompanying a screened movie are not new here. The first
was the Singapore Symphony Orchestra playing Prokofiev’s soundtrack to Sergei
Eisenstein’s war classic Alexander Nevsky
in 2001. Then came those best-selling Arts Festival presentations with the
Singapore Festival Orchestra, and more recently the Metropolitan Festival
Orchestra in The Fellowship Of The Ring.
This
concert by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra conducted by Yeh Tsung at
Esplanade’s Huayi Festival had a major difference. New music for Chinese
instruments was commissioned to accompany the 1934 Shanghai silent movie The Goddess (Shen Nü) written and directed by Wu Yonggang, and starring screen
siren Ruan Lingyu.
The
story of the 72-minute long film may seem over-simplistic for today’s
sensibilities, but the emotions it engenders are real and palpable. Its
protagonist is a single mother who reluctantly turns to prostitution in order
to support her infant son. The boy even gets to go to school but when her life savings
are stolen by a hoodlum, she sacrifices herself to guarantee his future.
The
actual movie was preceded by a jazzy overture, with the kind of “hot music”
played at the lounges of Shanghai ’s Paramount and Cathay Hotels, to accompany a short
feature on the history of the city’s film industry and Ruan’s short, meteoric
but tragic life. She was the 1930s Joan Chen, one who used a plethora of facial
expressions when words and conversations could not be employed.
The
music, co-written by SCO composer-in-residence Law Wai Lun and Hong Kong film composer Lincoln Lo, did not
conform to the idioms or pentatonic clichés of Chinese music. Instead they
employed themes and motifs that were appropriate to portray the narrative,
moods and emotions. At points, the melodic content was reminiscent of music
from ballets of Khachaturian and Russian composers.
It
was the instruments that conveyed the sense of Chinese-ness, even if the
emotions were universal. Tender moments between mother and son brought out some
of the best music, with Zhao Jianhua’s erhu
and Han Lei’s guanzi carrying the
melodies, and the additional luxury of Clarence Lee’s grand piano adding that
final bit of gloss.
On
witnessing her son’s recitation in a school concert, a heartrending orchestral crescendo
represented the pride swelling up in her heart. Slashing sounds on the guzheng signalled moments of suspense, while
a drum-set beat out the unrelenting pulse of the heartless metropolis. Even
when viewed in black and white, the dazzling neon of Nanjing Lu for all its
glitz became synonymous with vice and squalor.
The
standing ovation that greeted this production should be sufficient inducement
for more classic movies to be screened with orchestral accompaniment. When the
feature film is worth reliving, the medium of music will follow suit.
 |
| Conductor Yeh Tsung and the two composers Law Wai Lun and Lincoln Lo acknowledge the applause. |
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