CONFLUENCE / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

 

CONFLUENCE 

Singapore Chinese Orchestra 

Singapore Conference Hall 

Saturday (6 July 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 July 2024 with the title "SCO's China tour programme celebrates Nusantara heritage".

When an orchestra goes on tour, it usually performs the chosen repertoire as a test run before embarking overseas. The Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO) did the opposite by having a homecoming concert instead, recounting its three-city China tour which took place in March and April. Led by conductor emeritus Yeh Tsung, it was a case of better late than never. 

What can an orchestra of Chinese instrumentalists from Singapore perform in China without “carrying coals to Newcastle” or “selling sand to the Saudis”? Very astutely, it was the repertoire that mattered most. By playing contemporary Chinese works and Nanyang music, the SCO could count itself unique among Chinese orchestras in Asia. 

Both the Chinese works were large-scaled concertante pieces involving virtuoso soloists. SCO concertmaster Li Baoshun performed on three huqins (gaohu, erhu and zhonghu) in Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun’s Fire Ritual, a half-hour of what has been described as “orchestral theatre”. Part orchestral showpiece, part religious ceremony, the music also involved vocalisations from the shaman-like Yeh and orchestral members, as well as extra-instrumental sounds like paper rustling. 

Offstage wind players strategically placed around the hall provided antiphonal effects, enveloping the hall with a temple of sonorities. The wails of suonas and guans, usually associated with funerary music, stood out. Adapted from Tan’s film score Nanjing 1937, the full ensemble memorialised victims of war, and did so with stunning and dramatic impact. 

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Perhaps even more riveting was Luo Maishuo’s Stairway To Heaven with SCO pipa principal Yu Jia, cladded in silvery tinselled finery, as trenchant soloist. She simply stole the show, opening with an imposing cadenza, then revelling in dance-like moves and a meditative slow movement for contrast. 

The work which included a prelude, five movements and finale was inspired by the Sanxingdui tree of Chinese mythology, adorned with animals including a golden crow and dragon. The link between human and spiritual realms closed kinetically charged, where rhythmic exuberance and violence became all but indistinguishable. 

Nanyang music, works which included Southeast Asian influences, came from two former SCO composers-in-residence who have long been residents here. The concert opened with Eric Watson’s Tapestries – Time Dances, which was awarded the top prize at the First International Competition for Chinese Instrumental Compositions in 2006. 

There were influences from Gustav Mahler and perhaps Ralph Vaughan Williams heard in the orchestration but percussive and gamelan-like textures placed this work right smack in the Indo-Malayan archipelago. Speaking of the Straits of Malacca, Law Wai Lun’s Zheng He – Admiral of the Seven Seas, adapted as a three-movement symphony, was a tour de force of programmatic writing and orchestral textures.

In Wandering Spirits, The Voyage and Sea Destiny, the last movement a heady marriage of Chinese and Nusantaran musical cultures, SCO’s Chinese audiences would have gotten the full sonic experience of Nanyang. The concert closed with an encore, the merry strains of Hua Hao Yue Yuan (Blooming Flowers and Full Moon) with a hearty clap-along.