pianomania: FLYING HIGH - BEYOND OUR ISLANDS' SHORES / Philharmonic Wind Orchestra / Review

FLYING HIGH –

BEYOND OUR ISLANDS’ SHORES

Philharmonic Wind Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (23 June 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 June 2024 with the title "Philharmonic Wind Orchestra plays wide repertoire with aplomb".

The Philharmonic Wind Orchestra (PWO), formerly known as The Philharmonic Winds, will travel next month to South Korea for the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE) conference. Its pre-tour concert led by music director Leonard Tan was a showcase what an excellent local ensemble can achieve in a variety of repertoire.

The concert opened with American composer John Mackey’s Asphalt Cocktail, an exhilarating showpiece that was literally a short ride in a fast machine. Its big brassy sonorities, accompanied by a relentless percussion beat and effects, suggested this was not a subway train but a runaway taxicab carrying the warning, “fasten your seatbelts!”

More serious was American Kent Kennan’s Sonata for trumpet and wind ensemble in three movements with PWO alumnus Chong Loo Kit in the demanding solo role. Described as neoclassical, the music recalled ceremonial brass of olden times, but viewed through a tonal modern idiom of German modernist Paul Hindemith. Its acerbic quality however yielded unusual lyricism in the central movement’s aria-like melody, lovingly voiced, before closing with dance movements and busy counterpoint for its lively finale.

The legendary 86-year-old British wind orchestra maestro Timothy Reynish, PWO’s principal guest conductor, made a cameo appearance directing Spanish composer Luis Serrano Alarcon’s attractive Spanish Dances. This local premiere delighted in complex rhythms which the orchestra mastered with aplomb, including a Moorish-flavoured central movement with offstage piccolo and drum-beat, and a finale lit up by solo trumpet and the ring of castanets and tambourine.

Photo: Pianomaniac

The concert’s second half comprised wholly works by Singaporean composers, beginning with Leong Yoon Pin’s only wind band piece, Day-break And Sunrise (1992). Typical of the late doyen of local composers, his melodic intent is not revealed immediately. Instead, motivic shards and fragments emerge like nascent beams through the morning mist. Full illumination was achieved, albeit briefly as the music soon swiftly dissipated into fine ether.

Conductor Leonard Tan holds aloft
Leong Yoon Pin's orchestral score.

Photo: Pianomaniac

Baltimore-based young composer Lee Jia Yi’s newly commissioned betwixt and between received its world premiere. Written in four short connected movements, the music shifted imperceptibly between Noise, seemingly random squeaks, slashes, swooshes and slides, and Harmony, represented by more stable long-held notes, which wavered into quarter-tones and overtones. Bewildering as this might sound, there was a strangely calming quality when the ears began to adapt to each of the different alternating sonic milieus.

Photo: Pianomaniac

French horn player Alan Kartik
demonstrates playing the conch.
Photo: Pianomaniac

The 21st century Singaporean work that has received the most performances has to be Young Artist Award recipient Wang Chenwei’s symphonic poem The Sisters’ Islands (2006). Eighty as of this evening, to be exact. Originally scored for Chinese orchestra, the world premiere of its wind orchestra version was no less vivid. Using the Indo-Malay pelog scale, Wang crafted motifs representing the eponymous sisters, the sea and its legends in this programmatic work.

The use of qudi and rebana lent
The Sisters' Islands an exotic Nanyang flavour.
Photo: Pianomaniac

Its lush scoring was well-realised on wind and brass, with the blare of the conch shell and ocarina’s diminutive voice being pivotal extras. Closing with a grand apotheosis of sisterly love, one can foresee the world band conference in Korea getting an unadulterated taste of true Singaporeana.