FORGING AHEAD / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

FORGING AHEAD

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Saturday (21 October 2023)

Singapore Conference Hall

This review was published in The Straits Times on 23 October 2023 with the title "SCO paints evocative scenes in spectacular with huqin player George Gao."

 

Want to experience the far-ranging capabilities of Chinese orchestral instruments en masse? One could do worse than attending this sonic spectacular by Singapore Chinese Orchestra led by Associate Conductor Moses Gay. Chinese orchestral music is largely programmatic in nature, narrating stories or painting sceneries, and the concert had much of both.

 

Beginning with Xie Peng’s Surging Forward, its quiet atmospheric opening was redolent of a corresponding passage in Debussy’s La Mer. The impressionism evoked and furthered by Xu Zhong’s cello solo was short-lived, leading headlong into a cavalry charge in full battle mode. Brilliantly scored with exuberant percussion in terminal velocity, this made for a very effective overture.    

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

 

Canadian-Chinese huqin virtuoso George Gao was guest soloist in two of his original works. Playing on a shaoqin, a modified erhu he invented and named after himself (Gao Shaoqing in Chinese), he amply illustrated the myriad possibilities that could be yielded from the seemingly humble instrument.

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

 

Gao’s Capriccio No.2, or Mongolian Fantasy, was a more traditional ethnic-flavoured concertante work. Employing similar virtuoso techniques and passages (including a florid cadenza), it had much in common with fiddle works from eastern Europe. Considering the full extent of the Yuan dynasty’s geographical reach, this seemed par for the course.  

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

 

The world premiere on Chinese instruments of his Capriccio No.6, or Shaoyin, delivered several surprises. Its modern idiom, evident from its mystical opening, and improvisatory nature set it apart from earlier Capriccios. A prayerful melody soon quickened in pace, culminating in its third section entitled Music, where Lalo Shifrin’s Mission Impossible theme was cheekily quoted and dizi player Lee Jun Cheng ushered upfront for a heady improvisation.

 

Then came the turn of conductor Gay, himself an erhu exponent, who played on Gao’s shaoqin and sealed his spot of improv with stunning spontaneity. The final section, Love, turned from sentimentality to perpetual motion for a final burst of prestidigitation. The usually reticent Conference Hall faithful roared its unequivocal approval, and Gao obliged with the main theme from Butterfly Lovers as a well-deserved encore.

 

Closing the concert was Wang Danhong’s Four Seasons in Lingering Garden, a 35-minute four-movement symphony inspired by Suzhou’s famous Liu Yuan classical garden. Not for the first time, Debussy’s La Mer was referenced, this time as a reflection on some body of water. In this very well orchestrated work, pride of place was afforded to dizi solos, with Lim Sin Yeo, Yin Zhiyang and Zeng Zhi doing the honours. The mellifluous and poetic quality of the flute permeated all the movements, a tribute to the ubiquity of bamboo in Jiangnan landscapes.

 

A recorded operatic female voice came on unexpectedly in the third movement Sweet Scented Osmanthus, intoning a poem in classical Chinese. This led without a break into the finale, Snowy Ke Pavilion, with dizi having a final say in a blissful close resembling Respighi in his quieter moments. With scarcely a break, the encore of popular Yunnan folk dance A Xi Tiao Yue (Axi Dancing In The Moonlight) completed the evening on a rousing high.