ASCO IS 5! / Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra / Review

ACSO IS 5!

Asian Cultural 

Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Tuesday (30 August 2022)

 

The Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra (ACSO), founded in 2016, occupies an important niche in Singapore’s music scene by performing works that merge Asian cultures and sensibilities with the western symphony orchestra. By championing music by Singaporean and Asian composers, it has complemented the good work fostered by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra and its Nanyang music projects. It also filled the gaping lacuna left by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, which had earlier in this century marketed itself as a “destination orchestra by bringing together musical cultures from the East and West”, but quietly dropped that tagline somewhere along the way.

 

ACSO is led by a team of two conductors, Dedric Wong Deli, well-known as a conductor of the Chinese instrumental chamber group Ding Yi Music Company, and Adrian Chiang, General Manager of re:Sound Collective and conductor of numerous ensembles thus representing the western classical music caucus. They share conducting duties in its concerts, taking turns in leading different works with the programme.

 

Wong opened the evening with Confluence by Wang Chen Wei (present Composer-in-Residence of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra), a rousing overture-like work that typified the Nanyang sound. Using the pelog scale in its lilting main theme, there is a recognisable Indo-Malayan character to the music, which also benefitted from the use of liberal portamenti and sheer colour of symphonic instruments. To seal this colourful marriage between cultures, a fugue was also thrown into the fray, livening the proceedings besides offering further proof of the composer’s academic credentials.  

 

Following this were four concertante works, more than amply demonstrating the wealth of solo instrumental talent on our shores. The first was Germaine Goh’s Kaleidoscope, a single-movement fantasy for clarinet and orchestra with Ralph Emmanuel Lim as exuberant soloist. Opening with a solo accompanied by harp ostinatos, the music opened dreamily and then came to life with a series of animated dance-like rhythms. Influences from Debussy may be discerned, as well as Copland and Bernstein in the more jazzy bits, but she does not imitate them. Much is attractive and enjoyable in this work, where the demi-mondaine world of smokey speakeasies and Hollywood glamour is not just hinted at but relived.    

 

Chinese composer Wang Dan Hong is a well-known name in Chinese orchestra circles and her guzheng concerto As Thus is as glitzy as they come. Its slow introduction with gentle string accompaniment established soloist Yvonne Tay, in an advanced antenatal state, as a sensitive protagonist. However the amplication of her guzheng was garishly overdone, with distorted sound detracting from her brilliant narrative. As with Wang’s rhapsodic and quasi-cinematic scores, the pacing hastened to an exciting climax, and a faux ending which had the audience applauding prematurely. A true apotheosis and close came later, and the payoff was no less vociferous.

 

Singapore-based Briton Eric Watson’s Dialogue for tabla and orchestra is a well-travelled work commissioned by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. Its iteration with western instruments was no less trenchant, held together by the virtuosic drumming of Govin Tan, young tabla virtuoso who comes from a Hindu Chinese family. If one wondered what mileage could be had with a pair of drums which essentially plays single notes, one is prepared to be surprised. For the first half, the tabla provided accompaniment to a series of varied themes from the orchestra (including one resembling a motif from Stravinsky’s Firebird), then it takes a life of its own – a good four minutes or so of solo improvisation. As cadenzas go, this was simply breathtaking.

Edmund Song is better known as the double bassist of Red Dot Baroque and re:Sound. This evening, he took on duo-mantle of composer and conductor, leading the World Premiere of his Triple Concertino entitled Till The End Of Time. A work that employed a mix of Asian scales, the music emanated a variety of aromatic incenses. The soloists Niranjan Pandian (bansuri, North Indian bamboo flute), Jacky Ng (suona) and Azrin Abdullah (oud, Middle Eastern lute) had their moments in the spotlight, and how precious these were. The bansuri was positively haunting, the suona took on cor anglais tones resembling Rodrigo’s Aranjuez, while the oud could have had more air time. Some degree of counterpoint with all three together should have been the end-result but the opportunity was not taken, with heterophony prevailing instead.

 

It would still have been a totally satisfying experience had the concert ended there, but ACSO possessed several encores up its collective sleeve. Surprise celebrity cameos took the form of busker-of-the-season Jeff Ng in a medley of JJ Lin songs, while legendary songstress and 2021 Cultural Medallion recipient Rahimah Rahim irrepressibly strutted her stuff with two Malay songs and Bob Gaudio’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off You (Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons). That was mere icing on a wonderfully baked cake, and long may the Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra thrive, and entertain.

 

All the soloists joined in the finale
Can't Take My Eyes Off You.