FANTASIA, FAREWELLS & FAURE
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Victoria Concert Hall, Singapore
Friday (16 September 2022)
This review was first published in Bachtrack on 20 September 2022 with the title "A Requiem of repose: Stephen Layton conducts Fauré in Singapore"
British choral conductor Stephen Layton was to have led the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and its choruses in Fauré’s Requiem in March 2020. The Covid pandemic put an end to that. Two and a half years later, with the virus now endemic, Layton finally arrived and never has there been a more appropriate time for this masterpiece to be heard. The passing of HM Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September had cast a pall around the world, but this concert held in a historic hall memorialising Queen Victoria in the former Straits Settlements colony of Singapore seemed like the most timely response.
Thomas Tallis’s Why fumeth in fight sung by an offstage chorus opened the evening’s music, those being the very strains quoted by Ralph Vaughan Williams in his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis which followed without a break. Despite having just 28 string players onstage (21 in the main body and 7 standing behind), Layton coaxed from the ensemble a cathedral of sonority. Having former SSO Concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich (now with the BBC Symphony) as leader certainly helped with crafting textures of evenness and homogeneity. His own quartet of soloists, including violinist Michael Loh, violist Zhang Manchin and cellist Yu Jing, also stood out above the harmonious throng. Seldom has three choirs of strings sung with such moving intensity.
Still with string music, two short pieces from William Walton’s film music for Henry V lent further relevance and significance with their inclusion. In Passacaglia – Death of Falstaff, a slow throbbing pulse held sway, later giving way to the more richly harmonised Touch her soft lips and part in gentle sicilienne rhythm. There was no pretence to lugubriousness, just the regret of parting and bidding farewell.
The Singapore Symphony Youth Choir (Choirmaster: Wong Lai Foon) with woodwinds, French horn and harp joined the string orchestra for Gabriel Fauré’s lilting Pavane. Has anyone actually paid attention to Robert de Montesquiou’s words, which include Les reines de nos coeurs (Queens of our hearts) and Adieu donc et bons jours aux tyrans de nos coeurs (Farewell and good days to the tyrants of our hearts)? A soothing benediction followed in Cantique de Jean Racine, with the splendid choir’s reassuring mellowness approximating voices of angels.
Photograph: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra
The concert’s centrepiece was Fauré’s Requiem, in John Rutter and Stephen Layton’s edition for soprano and alto voices, performed by the boys, girls and ladies from both the Singapore Symphony Children’s and Youth Choirs (Choirmaster: Wong Lai Foon). Sung completely from memory, this was a show of perfect deportment and discipline. Yet there was a depth of feeling from the opening Requiem aeternam, allied by vocal clarity and excellent enunciation of consonants, all through to the close.
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| The soloists: Baritone Martin Ng, soprano Victoria Songwei Li and violinist Igor Yuzefovich (behind harp) |
Organist Isaac Lee provided steadfast support on the hall’s Klais organ, and Yuzefovich’s delightful obbligato violin solos in Sanctus and In Paradisum were the gilded edge. Two of Singapore’s finest young opera singers also had spots to shine. Baritone Martin Ng lent gravitas in Hostias and the rapturous Libera me, while London-based soprano Victoria Songwei Li’s cameo in Pie Jesu revealed a voice of rare beauty. The closing In Paradisum floated on angels’ wings, its ethereal lightness finding a perfect match in the purity of the voices. It would have been hard to find dry eyes among the audience in this requiem of repose.
Photo: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Star Rating: *****
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