TO MUM WITH LOVE 2022 / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

TO MUM WITH LOVE 2022

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (7 May 2022)

 

One of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s favourite annual fixtures is its patented Mother’s Day Concert. For two years this popular and well-attended event had been cancelled or deferred because of the Covid pandemic. Thus it returned this year with some style even though it was a rather muted affair. The general sobriety brought on by a masked audience and social distancing measures did remove some of the gloss from the event. Everybody is now two years older, and perhaps more cautious in exhibiting happiness and joy, knowing that something bad might just happen around the corner.

 

Nonetheless, this concert led by SCO Resident Conductor Quek Ling Kiong had many bright moments including its opening number Wang Chun Feng (Longing For The Spring). In this arrangement by sheng-meister Wu Tong and Li Xun, the popular 1930s Taiwanese melody by Teng Yu-Hsien (famously covered in the Minnan-Hokkien dialect by Teresa Teng) had an unusual bedfellow in J.S.Bach’s equally ubiquitous Prelude in G from Cello Suite No.1. Doing the honours were SCO’s own Taiwanese lasses, Yang Sin-Yu on sheng and Huang Ting-Yu on cello, who were simply a spectacular sight. When one thought that this immortal melody could not be further milked, this arrangement did just that and more.

 

Next was Little Note (Xiao Zhi Tiao), a 2009 short film by Royston Tan with music by Jim Lim, rearranged by Sim Boon Yew. Set sometime in the 1980s in rural Malaysia, the loving relationship between a single mother and her pensive son is represented by an exchange of short messages (written on paper, not Whatsapp) over the course of growing up. “No fear” and “No regrets” were among these, and the music included that children’s classic Shi Sang Zhi You Ma Ma Hao (Mothers Are The Best In The World), besides a lesson on the strength and resilience of lotus leaves. One would be excused for being teary-eyed after watching this touching work.  

 

For good measure, Xian Gei Ta (For Her), a medley arranged by Tan Kah Yong relived some memories for Sinophones with songs like Mother’s Words, Mother I Love You and Listen To Mother’s Words, all of which proved unfamiliar to this listener.

 

Special guest of the evening was popular jazz singer and Sing! China finalist Joanna Dong looking her most motherly to date. Nonetheless, she was still an engaging host, enthralling the audience with various bon mots. Lo Ta-Yu’s Love Tunes 1990, orchestrated by Phang Kok Jun and involving a jazz band withup pianist Chok Kerong, was a good showcase of Joanna’s satin-smooth vocals and her stock-in-trade trumpeting.   

 

Stealing the show was Wo Yao Ni Di Ai (I Want Your Love), the Chinese version of Jon Hendricks’ hit I Want You To Be My Baby, orchestrated by Ong Jiin Joo. What has this suggestive and lust-inducing number have to do with Mother’s Day? Joanna explained that the line “Listen to your Mama and you never will regret it” certainly merited its inclusion. Its sauciness was played up to the hilt, which made the final work A Grateful Heart by Chen Chih-Yuan, orchestrated Phang Kok Jun, a slow ballad seem somewhat downcast. There were no encores, but few in the audience would deny that this was an hour with mother (and/or wife) pretty well spent.