PRESIDENT’S YOUNG
PERFORMERS CONCERT
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Victoria Concert Hall
Friday (26 August 2022)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 31 August 2022 with the title "Soloists shine in young performers concert".
The Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s annual President’s Young Performers Concert was inaugurated during the 1990s to provide talented local musicians a platform to play concertos with the nation’s only professional orchestra. The series was supported by the classical music-loving then-President Ong Teng Cheong, who personally graced these concerts and is also the only Head-of-State to have led the orchestra from the podium.
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| New SSO Associate Conductor Rodolfo Barraez, from Venezuela. Vive El Sistema! |
This year’s edition, with President Mdm Halimah Yacob in attendance, had the distinction of featuring three soloists besides introducing the orchestra’s newly-appointed Associate Conductor, young Venezuelan maestro Rodolfo Barraez in his debut concert here.
Opening with Swiss composer Arthur Honegger’s Pastorale d'été (Summer Pastorale), the orchestra lost no time in creating an air of balmy indolence. Sultry strings set the mood, as Jamie Hersch’s ever-steady French horn, backed by excellent woodwinds, gently roused Nature from her slumber.
That made for a totally atmospheric curtain-raiser, after which the orchestra sensitively partnered pianist Pualina Lim in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.9 in E flat major (K.271). One of his longest and technically most demanding concertos, it was unusual for having the piano stake its claim from the outset. Lim did so with total confidence, following up with playing of fluency and elegance.
Unfazed by its digital challenges, there was also room for her to brood in the pathos-inducing slow movement, the poetic heart of the work. The final Rondo was taken a tad cautiously but enough contrasts were made such that the mincing little minuet at its centre came across as a graceful interlude, before the work wound to a brilliant conclusion.
Further virtuosity arrived in Hummel’s Introduction, Theme and Variations (Op.102) with oboist Quek Jun Rui, student of Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, at its helm. Typical of early Romantic showpieces from the 1820s, its main theme was of a comedic and operatic quality. Quek revelled in plaintive bel canto lyricism before launching into variations that got increasingly hair-raising as the minutes progressed. Displaying immaculate articulation and dexterity, its vertiginous heights were conquered with fearless aplomb.
The evening’s fascinatingly varied fare was completed with Richard Strauss’s Four Songs (Op.27), which included some of the German opera composer’s best-known melodies. New York-based soprano Evangeline Ng established an imposing Valkyrie-like presence by possessing a vocal heft that took no prisoners.
Originally scored with piano accompaniment, the dense orchestrations could have easily overwhelmed lesser singers, such as in Ruhe, Meine Seele! (Rest Thee, My Soul!), but Ng comfortably overcame the odds. Cutting through a swathe of sound, her ecstatic outburst in Cacilie was followed by further raptures in Heimliche Aufforderung (The Lover’s Pledge), a drinking song with erotic overtones. In the final song, Morgen (Morning or Tomorrow), concertmaster Kong Zhao Hui’s sublime violin solo provided the gilded edge for Ng’s entreaties for a hope of future happiness. With these three fine soloists, Singapore’s musical scene has a bright future ahead.
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| President Mdm Halimah Yacob meets with all the young talents. |
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