PRESIDENT’S YOUNG PERFORMERS CONCERT
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Friday (6 August 2021)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 August 2021
The Covid pandemic has not been kind to the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s annual President’s Young Performers Concert. Last year, the event was reduced to an online presence without a live audience. This year, the programme was substantially altered to meet the heightened alert’s performing restrictions. Mozart’s Ninth Piano Concerto (with Pualina Lim) had to be deferred as the score included two oboes and two horns.
Still on the programme, however, was harpist Charmaine Teo performing Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane (Sacred and Profane Dances), employing only strings as accompaniment. Exuding the elegance of the French Belle Époque, Teo’s nimble fingers and consummate musicianship gave the work the shine it deserved.
The slower opening dance’s pentatonic melody and pastoral character had gracefulness in abundance, merging almost imperceptibly with the closing dance’s scintillating spell. There was nothing profane about the latter, but had an earthy and liberated quality by comparison with what came before. The loud plaudits accorded to Teo yielded an inspirational encore: a short but heartfelt harp transcription of the pop song You Raise Me Up.
Debussy’s staple of the harp repertoire was sandwiched by two Russian works for strings, led from memory by Joshua Tan, who was until July the orchestra’s Associate Conductor. Anton Arensky’s Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky, once rather popular but not often heard these days, opened the concert. It was based on Tchaikovsky’s song Legend: Crown Of Thorns, characterised by its typically Slavic and melancholic mood.
The work’s seven short variations were inventive, covering a range of styles that required the ensemble to adapt and respond at short notice. One variation saw violas and cellos singing the theme while violins negotiated tricky accompanying runs, before the entire ensemble switching into major mode, thus altering the music’s overall countenance.
Much is expected from SSO’s fabled strings, and the players did not disappoint. The performance was incisively delivered while filled with spirit and verve. The final variation was a direct tribute to Tchaikovsky himself, scored in the manner as his tear-jerking Andante cantabile, which made all the sense given the 80-minute-long concert’s closing work.
Tchaikovsky’s Serenade For Strings is so well-known that it can easily be tainted with a bored familiarity. Not so on this occasion as Tan’s charges leapt headlong into its opening measures, with richness and resonance at the outset. Even in the first movement’s busy counterpoint, there was clarity in the details and prestidigitation.
The second movement’s waltz had genuine lilt, with sentimentality and precision poised in a fine balance, while the most sublime moments came in the elegaic slow movement. Its gently rising theme and ensuing melody from the violins can only be described as uplifting, before the rollicking finale brought down the house. The audience may have been small, but the applause was raucous and real.
You can vote for the Singapore Symphony Orchestra as Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year here:
www.gramophone.co.uk/awards/gramophone-classical-music-awards-2021
Gramophone's Orchestra of the Year Award 2021 | Gramophone
No comments:
Post a Comment