SINGAPORE-CHINA GALA SYMPHONY CONCERT / Shanghai Nine Trees Philharmonic Orchestra / Review

 

SINGAPORE-CHINA 

GALA SYMPHONY CONCERT

Shanghai Nine Trees 

Philharmonic Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (26 October 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 October 2025 with the title "Classical collaboration marking six decades of Singapore-China ties".

Sixty years of Singapore-China diplomacy was celebrated with a concert by the Shanghai Nine Trees Philharmonic Orchestra led by the world-renowned Chinese conductor Tang Muhai. The resident orchestra of the Shanghai Nine Trees Future Art Center in Fengxian District was augmented by many local players to perform a programme of works representing both nations.

The evening opened with Singaporean Felix Phang’s Pasat Merdu (Melodious Market) which featured six musicians from The Straits Ensemble. This very accessible work skillfully combining elements of Chinese, Malay and Indian music, premiered by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at its 2023 National Day Concert, was a microcosm of the harmonious melting pot that is our nation.

Next came the quintessential Chinese work, Chen Gang and He Zhanhao’s Butterfly Lovers Concerto, in an abridged version scored for strings and piano. Soloists representing the ill-fated pair of lovers were Singapore Symphony Orchestra associate concertmaster violinist Kong Zhaohui and Singapore Chinese Orchestra erhu prinicipal Zhu Lin. This 15-minute edition which incorporated all the work’s essential themes may be described as Butterfly Lovers for short attention spans.

The truncation was necessary to accommodate Chinese composer Danny Dong’s Dreaming of Fengpu, a half-hour four-movement programmatic symphony. Dreams and aspirations of Fengxian residents in constructing the Fengpu Bridge, which spanned the Huangpu River connecting Fengxian with central Shanghai city, were realised in this melodious work which ticked all the boxes of modern Socialist realism. This included Nie Er’s March of the Volunteers, the Chinese national anthem, quoted not once but twice.

The concert’s undoubted highlight was the performance of Frederic Chopin’s First Piano Concerto in E minor (Op.11) by Singaporean pianist William Wei, former child prodigy and recipient of the National Arts Council’s Gifted Young Musicians’ Bursary. A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and Yale University, his very idiomatic reading seemed like a continuation of the recently-concluded Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw.

Those stricken with piano envy that a Malaysian pianist Vincent Ong could star in Poland’s premier event will find consolation in Wei’s artistic sensibilities which combined lyrical poetry with a strong technical arsenal. Performing on a C.Bechstein grand, he projected well in solo entries and kept the audience enraptured all through its 40-minute duration.

With the orchestra not letting up in tuttis, he surmounted the vigorous support with perfect restraint and without resorting to banging. Particularly beautiful was the opening movement’s second subject and the slow movement’s Romanze, where time stood still. This was followed by the Rondo finale’s infectious dance rhythms which literally leapt off the page. Singapore longs for a piano hero, and Wei might just be the answer.

The concert concluded with a hilarious encore for both pianist and orchestra, a medley of 17 of classical music’s most popular melodies which those with long memories will nostalgically remember as Hooked on Classics from the 1980s.

For the record, the melodies played in the slightly abridged version of Hooked on Classics were:

1. Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1

2. Rimsky-Korsakov Flight of the Bumble Bee

3. Mozart Symphony No.40

4. Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue

5. Sibelius Intermezzo from Karelia Suite

6. Mozart Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

7. Beethoven Ode to Joy from Symphony No.9

8. Rossini William Tell Overture

9. Grieg Piano Concerto

10. Bizet Carmen Overture

11. Jeremiah Clarke Trumpet Voluntary

12. Handel Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah

13. Beethoven Emperor Concerto

14. Brahms Hungarian Dance No.5

15. Vivaldi Spring from Four Seasons

16. Dvorak Largo from New World Symphony

17. Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture