SOUTHEAST ASIAN
GOLDEN AGE SYMPHONY
Yong Siew Toh
Orchestral Institute
Conservatory Concert Hall
Saturday (28 October 2023)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 October 2023 with the title "Ambitious new symphony by Asean talents covered panoply of styles".
New symphonies are as rare as gold dust. Prohibitive costs of commissioning, reluctance of orchestras and phobic audiences all militate against symphonies being principal vehicles of musical expression by composers. Thus when philanthropic entrepreneurs like Nicholas Nash and Phalgun Raju step up to finance a major new symphony in Singapore, it is cause for celebration.
The Southeast Asian Golden Age Symphony, a joint effort by seven composers from six Asean nations, was the crowning glory of the Performers(‘) Present 2023 symposium for international artistic research held at the Conservatory. Its seven movements were performed by the YST Orchestral Institute conducted by Jason Lai.
One could easily be bewildered by the disparate voices heard in its 55-minute collage of seemingly unrelated scores which covered a panoply of styles. It did not help that the hall was plunged into darkness, such that none of the programme notes describing each movement could be read, nor did screen projections indicate what one was listening to. Perhaps that was deliberate, so that the audience had to rely wholly on ears to make out what was going on.
The overarching theme of the symphony was tied to this year’s symposium, titled Flowing Resonances, which had rivers and the sound of gongs as unifying factors in history, geography and culture of the region. Southeast Asia is possibly in its golden age, with diverse nations busy in development, globalisation and wealth-making, all within a milieu of relative peace and stability. The sum of the symphony’s parts was to reflect this prosperity of cultures and ideas.
It could not have opened more grandly with Trail to the Highlands by Hoang Pho (Vietnam), with big brassy sonorities, vocalisations and foot-stomping, representing vibrancy and possibly violence. Percussion and gongs, naturally, stood out. Quivering woodwinds created an eerie and ethereal effect in Qilin by Lee Chie Tsang (Malaysia) which accompanied video projections by Moira Loh. Just a pity that the two screens were just too small to do justice to the art.
In Awakened by Syafiqah ‘Adha Sallehin (Singapore), the Southeast Asian theme became audibly more palpable, with flutes, xylophone and drums heard in scales common to Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia and Brunei. A taped recording of Azman Shariff represented the gruff voice of the gong.
For Te-Tabu(h) by Gema Swaratyagita (Indonesia), Tessa Priyanka trooped through the aisle playing a gong, then settling in the role of a vocalising dalang (puppet-master) accompanied by Bunga Dessri Nur Ghaliyah on rebab (spiked fiddle). Their roles represented female empowerment in Indonesia today.
Bato Bato Pik by Danny Imson (Philippines), the Pinoy equivalent of scissors-paper-stone, was a reminiscence of childhood games, fronted by Roldan Ramonito Abantao reading Rodrigo dela Pena Jr’s texts on a loud-hailer. It also cheekily included a quote of popular song Dahil Sa’yo (Because Of You) within in the mix.
In Memory: Audiotape-Aluminium Foil-Styrofoam by Thatchatham Silsupan (Thailand), a multi-media piece, video footage were an added dimension but as before, screen size was the limiting factor. The symphony closed as sonorously as it began with Singaporean Jonathan Shin’s The Maker’s Last Gong, a rousing finale that encompassed the familiar sound worlds of early 20th century composers including Scriabin, Szymanowski and Bartok. How the 75-strong orchestra lapped up this symphony, and the audience’s equally enthusiastic response showed this unprecedented experiment to be a stunning success.
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