GIL SHAHAM. BRAHMS SYMPHONIES
Esplanade Concert Hall
Friday (7 July 2017 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 July 2017 with the title "A night of lovely fantasies".
The
Singapore Symphony Orchestra's new season opened with the music of a
Singaporean composer. Soir, Reves, Fantaisie (Evening, Dreams,
Fantasy) is the slow central movement of Tan Chan Boon's Second Symphony.
Beginning with a French horn solo from Marc-Antoine Robillard and accompanied
by gentle pizzicato strings, it conjured vistas of a bucolic Alpine scene. This
and a second theme from the strings formed the meat of the movement, which
unfolded with a quiet majesty and aural lusciousness before closing in total
tranquillity.
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| Composer Tan Chan Boon with SSO Music Director Shui Lan. |
Tan
is a 21st century composer with a 19th century soul.
Mining a rich vein ploughed by the Wagner-Bruckner-Richard Strauss axis, he has
already completed five symphonies. On the form of this sensitive reading,
surely the SSO and Music Director Lan Shui has it in them to explore more of
Tan's rewarding music.
American
violinist Gil Shaham, a regular visitor to these parts, was the commanding
soloist in Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto. The enfant terrible of
Russian music, Prokofiev was to painfully pique ears with his brand of lashing
dissonance, one which Shaham delivered in shovels. Crafting a vitriolic tone
that was wholly appropriate for the work's grotesqueries, this performance came
into its own in the lacerating Scherzo.
Shaham's
use of sul ponticello (bowing near the violin's bridge) to create a wiry
metallic timbre made the hair stand, soothed only by the finale's fairy-tale
soundscape which was beautifully rendered with a balance close to perfect. Like
Tan's work before, there was a pleasing symmetry to its fantasy-filled
dream-like ending.
As
an encore with orchestra, the brief and barbed Scherzo was reprised to
no less stunning effect. On his own, Shaham offered the Gavotte from
J.S.Bach's Partita No.3, which elicited even more cheers from the
audience.
The
concert closed with the First Symphony of Johannes Brahms. Like
Beethoven before him, there can simply be no exhaustion from listening to
Brahms' symphonies. Conducting completely from memory, conductor Shui took a
more measured approach compared with his more mercurial stance on Beethoven's
symphonies.
The
sombre opening, full of foreboding and portending tragedy, was taken at a broad
tempo. But this was not one of indolence or lack of volition, but one that
gradually built up to a crushing climactic high. Like a skilled storyteller,
the clarity and final aim of narration was never in doubt. The atmosphere was
more relaxed in the slow movement, where Concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich's lovely
violin solo capped a fine showing near its close.
Woodwinds
had their turn to shine in the light and spirited 3rd movement,
paving the way for the dark clouds ushered in by the finale. How sternness and
brooding in a minor key is transformed into major key sunshine, culminating in
the finale's Beethovenian hymn-like melody was the miracle of this masterpiece.
The opportunity offered to the orchestra was joyfully reciprocated as Shui led
his charges to a glorious end, which was greeted by the applause it richly
deserved.
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| Conductor Shui Lan and violinist Gil Shaham at the post-concert Symphony Chat. |
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