ONE ALWAYS RETURNS / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestral Institute / Review

The programme leaflet cleverly
made to look like a daily broadsheet.

ONE ALWAYS RETURNS

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory 

Orchestral Institute

Conservatory Concert Hall

Saturday (7 October 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 October 2023 with the title "YST Orchestral Institute struggles with Schoenberg, recovers with Rachmaninov".

 

The unusual title of this concert comes from a 1948 essay penned by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg titled “On Revient Toujours” or “One Always Returns", where he described composers returning to the art of their forebears and past masters for inspiration. For this "father" of atonality and the avant-garde, that meant a return to writing music with fixed tonal centres, the most notable being his riotous reworking of Brahms’ First Piano Quartet.

 

Far less well-known is Schoenberg’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra (1933), an expansion of Handel’s Concerto Grosso in B flat major (Op.6 No.7). He scored this for string quartet as the concertino group, accompanied by a big orchestra with full complement of strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion.

Photo: Chan Chen

 

One wished this performance by the T’ang Quartet and Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestral Institute conducted by Jason Lai to have been an unqualified success. Despite the foursome’s advocacy, all its hard work was submerged beneath a deluge of orchestral textured molasses. What  the original for just strings and continuo achieved in sheer economy could not be matched by its bloated iteration.

Photo: Chan Chen

 

Many fine details of Schoenberg’s fussy new content for the foursome were simply swamped or rendered inconsequential when the quartet struggled in vain to stand out. Even the supposedly festive Hornpipe that closed the busy four-movement concerto sounded unbalanced and off kilter.

  

Photo: Chan Chen

A far better reward was reaped in Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances (Op.45), the exiled Russian composer’s final work. Nostalgia for his homeland influenced his late music, by the 1940s considered hopelessly conservative and anachronistic for its age. The first movement’s flickering opening was sensitively handled, then emphatically punched out chords heralded its striding main theme, more of a march than mere dance.

 

There was a major solo for alto saxophone, lovingly voiced by Michellina Chan, its mellow melody borne by pangs of homesickness. Just as relevent was a return to the defiant quote from Rachmaninov’s First Symphony (1897), then thought to have been destroyed after its disastrous premiere, now sounding retiring and resigned. Lai and his charges judged its denouement perfectly.

 

The second movement’s ghostly waltz was taken at a deliberately broad tempo, a faded reminiscence of bygone ballroom scenes from Tolstoy. That made absolute sense as its rapid gathering of pace towards the end provided just the right push of momentum for the finale’s inexorable ride. Here, the chant of Russian Orthodoxy, with quotes of Dies Irae (Day Of Wrath) and Rachmaninov’s Vespers (Blessed Art Thou, Lord), were the driving forces as the orchestra surged to an imperious and triumphal close.

 

The tam-tam’s final crash had not subsided when applause rang out long and loudly. As for the concert’s catchy title which inspired this programme, Rachmaninov sadly never returned to Russia. He died in 1943 at Beverly Hills, California and his remains still rest in New York State.   

He never returned.
Rachmaninov's grave in Kensico Cemetery,
Valhalla, New York State.
Source: Wikipedia