REUNION – HARMONIES OF SPRING
Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra
Victoria Concert Hall
Saturday (17 February 2024)
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR CONCERT 2024
Ding Yi Music Company
China Cultural Centre Theatre
Sunday (18 February 2024)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 21 February 2024 with the title "Liu Lingling, Boon Hui Lu shine in festive concerts".
Chinese New Year celebrations do not usually end until after the fifteenth day, so this pair of concerts conducted by a very busy Dedric Wong De Li was par for the course.
Both festive events opened with works by Young Artist Award recipient Wang Chenwei. The Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra (ACSO) relived popular melodies in his Gong.He.Ying.Chun (Medley of Chinese New Year Songs). Although orchestral scoring and harmonies were decidedly Western, the tunes were unmistakable, with each word of its title representing a seasonal song.
There was also a huge helping of nostalgia in the brassy MediaCorp Channel 8 Medley arranged by Yap Sin Yee. Familiar were themes from The Awakening and Kopi-O (The Coffee Shop), both popular 1980s television series during the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) era, but how many of the young musicians on stage would have sung or hummed to these? One also suspects that the medleys of Wakin Chau and Frankie Kao songs held greater resonance with the middle-aged demographic which dominated the audience.
Li Baoshun on erhu
The inclusion of Asian instruments like Chen Ning's erhu, Ansari Abd Razak’s oud (Middle Eastern lute) and Raghavendran Rajasekaran’s bansuri (Indian flute) added to the colour of the music performed. Star quality came in the concert’s guest performers, Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s concertmaster Li Baoshun and “Goddess of Getai” Liu Lingling.
In Love from Zhao Jiping’s Qiao’s Grand Courtyard Suite, the sole serious work on show, Li’s erhu waxed lyrical from elegiac to virtuosic. It was the gaudily attired Liu, however, who stole the show with her chatty and outsized personality, singing in Hokkien and Mandarin. Memorable was the glittery 881 Medley from the iconic 2007 getai feature-film directed by Royston Tan, which she starred in, and her encore Jit Lang Jit Bua (一人一半,Yi Ren Yi Ban) which had the audience singing along.
Even before echoes of “Huat ah!” (Get rich!) had died down, it was Ding Yi Music Company’s turn to celebrate. Also led by conductor Wong, this was a more intimate and decorous affair with Wang Chenwei’s Minnan Medley, featuring three popular Taiwanese songs, opening the concert. Following that was Luk Wei Chung’s Tan-tiao Rock which highlighted the plucked string sonority of two ruans and one pipa, which might have sounded just as vivid on three guitars.
This concert also saw a collaboration with two visiting virtuosos from Hong Kong’s Windpipe Chinese Music Ensemble. In Medley of Guangdong Classics arranged by William Wu, Ding Yi’s Chen Ning and Windpipe’s Chan Kai Him were paired on two erhus for immortal Cantonese melodies like Han Tian Lei (旱天雷), Ping Hu Qiu Yue (平湖秋月) and Bu Bu Gao (步步高).
The best work on show was Germaine Goh’s Odyssey – A Rock Fantasia for Double Ruans, receiving its world premiere, with Ding Yi’s Wong Wai Kit and Windpipe’s Chan Sze Tung as dual soloists. This sojourn on the Silk Road wafted with exotic scents and aromas of the Middle East and Central Asia, the strummed timbres of both instruments leaving an indelible impression.
The concert’s obligatory vocalist was singer-songwriter Boon Hui Lu, who projected a wholesome girl-next-door image, in contrast to the worldly-wise getai auntie from the evening before. Her songs, including Hang Around (theme from television series Jalan Jalan), Reset and Till the End, may someday become instantly recognisable.
The concert closed with Sim Boon Yew’s Chinese New Year Medley (Gong Xi, Gong Xi and more) and as an encore, Boon in a song heard in both concerts, the Tsai Chin classic Chun Feng Wen Shang Wo De Lian (春风吻上我的脸,Spring Wind Kisses My Face). Just delightful.
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