YO-YO
MA & THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE
Singapore
Symphony Orchestra
Esplanade
Concert Hall
Friday & Saturday (11 & 12 November 2016)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 November 2016 with the title "Memorable festival of musical riches".
How does one get people to attend
concerts of new music? One way is inviting a celebrity artist to perform, and
audiences will pretty much swallow up whatever music is offered. That is a
cynical way of looking at things, but what would explain Esplanade Concert Hall
filled to rafters on two evenings featuring superstar Chinese-American cellist Yo-Yo
Ma in mostly modern works?
To be fair, his imprimatur ensured much
good contemporary music played by other excellent soloists with the Singapore
Symphony Orchestra conducted by Shui Lan got heard by far more people than
otherwise. Widening our ears, breaking down barriers and fostering warm ties
between diverse global cultures were always the mission of Ma's Silk Road
Ensemble, truly a worthy cause for celebration.
To sweeten the deal, Elgar's Cello Concerto was programmed in the
first evening. Here was a rerun of Ma's 1999 performances of the same work at
Victoria Concert Hall, except he seemed to adopt broader tempos in the 1st
and 3rd movements. His opening solo had that unmistakable air of an
elegy, breathtaking in its intensity and gripping listeners by the lapels.
Its famous Adagio was a sigh heard across the century, all the more poignant
taking place a hundred years after the monumental sacrifices of the Somme. The
faster movements were nimbly negotiated, and the finale's catharsis – with pain
and agony palpably etched on his face - was greeted with a standing ovation.
Three solo encores were also rapturously received.
Earlier in the evening, Ma played equal
partner to SSO Principal Cellist Ng Pei-Sian in Sicilian cellist-composer
Giovanni Sollima's Violoncelles, Vibrez!,
a concerto grosso-like movement accompanied by strings. Whether in unison,
interplay or counterpoint, the pair was nigh inseparable through its
quasi-minimalist and neo-Romantic course; a wallow for string fanciers.
On the second evening, Ma joined Chinese sheng virtuoso Wu Tong in Duo by Zhao Lin. Belying its simple
title, the double concerto was a lushly orchestrated score that resembled film
music, of the James Bond meets Pirates Of
The Caribbean variety. The sonorous solo wind and string parts were well
integrated into the canvas, culminating in a deeply felt slow duet to close.
Soloists from the Silk Road Ensemble were
also highlighted in concertante works. Kurdish-Iranian kamancheh (spike fiddle) player Kayhan Kalhor starred in his own Silent City (on Friday), another moving
elegy for strings and percussion, this time to the million lives lost in the
1980s Iran-Iraq War. Hypnotic and meditative turned to breathless and bounding
in Gallop Of A Thousand Horses (on
Saturday), which got communal pulses racing.
Wu Man's pipa substituted for the Japanese biwa as she joined Kojiro Umekazi's shakuhachi (bamboo flute) in Takemitsu's November Steps, where contrasted but ultimately complimenting
timbres broke the etheral orchestral spell of rapt stillness. Umekazi's own Cycles, a modern relook at Dvorak's Largo with recorded fragments of Walt
Whitman's voice, opened the first evening's fare.
 |
| Mark Suter leads the percussionists. |
The
second evening's programme was more eclectic, with short chamber pieces to
begin: Wu Tong's ceremonial Fanfare
for suona and percussion, Mark
Suter's Weavings for four
percussionists wielding eight caxixis
(Brazilian bead-filled shakers), Wu Man and Wu Tong's Duo for pipa and sheng, all of which exhibited a rare and exuberant
artistry from the performers.
The
full ensemble with orchestra also showcased Uzbek composer Dmitri
Yanov-Yanovsky's Sacred Signs, with
five likeable movements that explored the Euro- and Central Asian folk
influences which paved the way for Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring. Completing the memorable two-day festival of
musical riches was Siamak Aghaei and Colin Jacobsen's arrangement of
traditional Persian music, Ascending Bird,
a exhilarating accelerando about a bird's metaphorical flight to the sun and
spiritual transcendence.
 |
| Can you spot a casually attired Yo-Yo Ma who performed in the general ensemble? (He's in blue, near the extreme right.) |
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