MENDELSSOHN VIOLIN CONCERTO & BEETHOVEN'S EROICA / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

MENDELSSOHN VIOLIN CONCERTO

& BEETHOVEN'S EROICA

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall 

Friday (24 January 2025) 

This review was published in Bachtrack.com with the title "Mendelssohn and Beethoven light up Singapore Symphony’s first concert of 2025". 

The Singapore Symphony’s first concert of the year, led by Canadian conductor Julian Kuerti included two popular crowd pleasers, but it was good to open with something completely unknown. György Ligeti’s Concert Românesc (Romanian Concerto), composed in 1951, was not one of those atonal mysteries of the macabre, but “Ligeti without tears”. A continuation where Bela Bartok left off, its four movements based on folk musical idioms were tonally and gratifying. 

Lush unison strings distinguished the first movement, while the scherzo-like second relived the animation of dance music. In case one wondered, Austin Larson’s French horn not out of tune but deliberately shifting between microtones in the slow third movement while guest concertmaster Andrew Beer’s unbuttoned Romani fiddling lent the finale an infectious élan. 

That was the prelude to Mendelssohn’s evergreen Violin Concerto in E minor from Taiwanese violinist Yu-Chien Benny Tseng, well-remembered by local audiences as the first winner of the Singapore International Violin Competition in 2015. He is reminiscent of those old-fashioned violin virtuosos, who minced no notes in the name of period performance practice and were unafraid of flexing vibrato muscles. And how the beloved opening melody sang, the way people used to like it. 

The cadenza showed he meant business, its flashiness balanced by revealing a tender side in the slow movement. That melody’s connection with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s I Don’t Know How To Love Him (Jesus Christ Superstar) is subliminal and tenuous at best, despite intimations in the programme notes. 

The flighty and mercurial finale was Mendelssohn in his best scherzando-mode, with Tseng reveling in its free-wheeling display. Bringing out the cheers, he was not readily let off, even after a radiant encore of the Gavotte from J.S.Bach’s unaccompanied Partita No.3 in E major. 

The concert’s second half saw Beethoven Eroica Symphony conducted from memory by Kuerti. It is significant to note that another Kuerti, the Vienna-born pianist Anton (and Julian’s father), had given the first-ever Beethoven piano concerto cycle in Singapore with the SSO in the same hall in April 1983. History aside, Kuerti’s interpretation of the Third Symphony using smallish forces found lightness in textures but without sounding lightweight in the least. The opening chords were rock steady, and very soon the body of the first movement gathered pace and momentum. There was no hammer-and-tongs battle in the development but still exhibited sufficient tension to be taken seriously. 

Similarly, the second movement’s Funeral March was not a lugubrious trudge, instead one where the gravitas was built up steadily to a stentorian climax. This was not the physical demise of Beethoven’s eponymous hero reenacted but the metaphorical death of republicanism when a little man from Corsica crowned himself as emperor. The Scherzo reveled in high speeds and in the Trio, the trio of French horns distinguished itself with a show of fearless bravado. A split note mattered little in the greater scheme of things. 

The Finale’s fantastical variations from themes from The Creatures of Prometheus unfolded magisterially, and here rather than the Seventh Symphony was a true “apotheosis of the dance”. The G minor variation, with Beethoven in mode alla Turca, even saw an emphatic stamp on the podium from the conductor himself. Its conclusion had the audience’s own stamp of approval, as it applauded long and hard. 

Star Rating: ****

This review may be read on www.bachtrack.com:

https://bachtrack.com/22/296/view/28092