THE AGE OF BECOMING / Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute / Review

 

THE AGE OF BECOMING

Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute

Conservatory Concert Hall

Saturday (6 September 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 September 2025 with the title "A deft combination of art and music by Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute".

There was a time during the early 1980s when the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s first performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony was a major landmark for the local music scene. To illustrate how that scene has progressed, the last 17 days saw no less than three performances of the 50-minute masterpiece.

After performances by the Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra (20 August) and re:Sound (30 August), third in line was the Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute led by Jason Lai. Each reading had its own selling point: the SYPO’s youths, re:Sound’s use of early instruments, and YSTOI’s tie-in with two major figures of 18th century Enlightenment. They were Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746-1828) and German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).

Enlightenment figures:
Goya & Beethoven

Both were artistic visionaries. While documenting the trials and tribulations of their times, they also cast long shadows into the future. Their very personal and banal frailties also marked them for greatness and immortality. This thoughtfully curated hour-long concert linked the two through music accompanied by projected paintings and drawings by Goya animated by Yong Siew Toh alumna Stephanie Tan.

Opening the evening was the Interlude and Dance No.1 from Spanish composer Manuel de Falla’s opera La Vida Breve (The Brief Life). Its verismo elements echoed Georges Bizet’s Carmen where the jilted female protagonist gatecrashes her duplicitous lover’s wedding and dies at his feet. The music turned from still and atmospheric to raucous and animated, well realised by the orchestra.

Photo: Lucas Kwai Ming Yang

Another Spanish composer, Enrique Granados, would have been more appropriate as he had himself written an opera – Goyescas – inspired by Goya’s art. But as a stirring prelude, Falla’s offering worked very well all the same.

The Orchestral Institute’s view of Beethoven’s symphony, with its original dedication to Napoleon Bonaparte angrily scratched off after he crowned himself emperor, was the most mainstream of the three performances. This is meant in a good way as students get future music jobs by simply mastering and excelling in the basics, which this performance represented.

Photo: Lucas Kwai Ming Yang

The opening movement bristled with passion and tension, never flagging in pulse or impetus. The sound generated was full-bodied and vividly projected. Visual artist Tan’s use of Goya’s art poignantly came to the fore in the second movement’s Funeral March. The Third of May 1808, of terrified civilians facing execution by firing squad, is the most celebrated painting, but his stark black and white images of war and death could have come from Gaza today.

This beating heart of the symphony, unfolded with purpose and its inexorable trudge was not so much a last rite but an indelible memory of lives and innocence lost forever. Accompanied by Goya’s famous El Pelele (The Straw Man), the Scherzo and Trio bubbled over exuberantly, with the trio of French horns distinguishing themselves at every turn.

The finale’s variations on a simple dance from Beethoven’s ballet The Creatures of Prometheus was a case of turning the ridiculous to the sublime, bringing the concert to an impressive close.