NAFA CHINESE ORCHESTRA
GALA CONCERT
Thursday (12 April 2018 )
The
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts is the premier Singaporean tertiary institution
for the study of traditional Chinese instruments. Its Chinese orchestra,
rightfully, is also the finest of its kind among the local educational
institutions. In a concert celebrating the institution’s 80th
anniversary helmed by veteran Chinese conductor Wang Yongji, the NAFA
Orchestra, with its student body augmented by alumni and Singapore Chinese
Orchestra members, rose to a rarefied standard of playing that lovers of
Chinese music will all be proud of.
Like
the Singapore Chinese Orchestra's concert the week before, this was a programme
of excellent showpieces – with no kitsch – that displayed the best of the
orchestra's abilities besides highlighting solo prowess. Lady composer Wang Dan
Hong's works are a case in point. Opening the concert was her Ode To The Sun,
which worked from a slow opening to a rousing allegro. A winsome dizi
melody accompanied by plucked strings (pipas and ruans) later
soaring to a high with raucous drumming, were highlights in this music which
resembled that of an epic film.
Similarly
emotive was an abridged version of Wang's Ru Shi, a concerto for guzheng
which featured as soloist one of NAFA's most brilliant alumni Yvonne Tay, now a
principal member of Ding Yi Music Company. This concerto was derived from music
from Wang's score for the film of the same title, about the legendary
courtesan, her trials and tribulations. The slow to fast form was again
employed, culminating in a show of digital virtuosity, one which also employed
modern technical devices. There was a faux ending, which induced some
premature applause, a ruse to further its narrative to a definitive but
emphatic close.
Qiao
Haibo, Principal dizi in the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra, played on no less than
four instruments in Qu Xiaosong's Divine Melody. These included the dizi,
xun (ocarina), xiao and shakuhachi, each producing a
distinctively different timbre. Based on the poems of Qu Yuan, the music was
atmospheric and lyrical, before following an increasingly furious martial beat
to a rousing and heroic end.
In
the second half, Zhou Chenglong's Nao Hua Deng (Playing Flower
Lanterns) provided an imperious show for the orchestra's very impressive suona
section. Theirs is a highly plangent sonority, ceremonial in intention and
ritualistic in intensity. Subtler harmonies were also highlighted in the playing,
that was later accompanied by an 8-member battery of percussion. It was
revealed after the work that no less than four of its members were actually guzheng
players standing in! Much detail of the music came through amid this racket,
confirming the orchestra's mastery of this most piquant piece.
NAFA's
Head of Chinese instrumental studies, erhu player Sunny Wong Sun Tat, was the
soloist in Jin Fuzai's concertante work When The Rivers Thaw In Spring.
Arguably the best work of the concert, it was a rhapsodic wallow through the
string instrument's extremes of registers.
Inspired by Su Shi's poetry, it
began lyrically and plotted its congenial course before arriving at an
impressive cadenza. Disaster struck midway through the concerto when a string
snapped. Wong coolly swapped an erhu with a front-desk member before
excusing himself for two agonising minutes. Returning with an intact
instrument, he blazed a path through this beautiful music to a splendidly
animated close. If anything, the rupture galvanised all the players into an
altogether excitable finish.
The
final work was Peng Xiu Wen's arrangement of a Beijing
A
very eventful and enjoyful concert, and one that foresees a very bright future
for all these talented young musicians, and the strong case for the pursuit of
great Chinese orchestral music.
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