VASILY PETRENKO
& GAUTIER CAPUCON
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Friday (18 September 2026)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 21 September 2026 with the title "SSO demonstrates growth with performance of Shostakovich's epic Fourth Symphony".
This concert of rather unusual juxtapositions led by Russian guest conductor Vasily Petrenko opened with Estonian composer Arvo Part’s Our Garden (1959), a cantata for children’s choir and orchestra. This very pleasant 12 minutes with Estonian words was sung completely from memory by 49 members of the Singapore Symphony Children’s Chorus (Chorusmaster: Wong Lai Foon).
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| Photo: Jack Yam |
Its childlike innocence and concordant tones however revealed a Soviet Communist agenda, about how hard work yielded rich crops of juicy berries. The only hint of dissonance came when describing how weeds and thistles which consumed water should be removed. The message of making this garden grow was far less Voltaire but much more Marx.
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| Photo: Jack Yam |
Following that was a breezy reading of Camille Saint-Saens’ Cello Concerto No.1 in A minor (Op.33) by renowned French cellist Gautier Capucon who shone with a rich and sumptuous tone. Too short by half, its single movement flashed across with virtuosity balanced by daintiness in the slower central section.
As if to make up for its brevity, Capucon’s encore of American composer Bryce Dessner’s Towards The Forest was a series of long-breathed arpeggios and drones, commissioned as part of the cellist Gaia project.
The second half was devoted to Soviet era Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony in C minor (Op.43), receiving its long-awaited Singapore premiere. Logistical considerations accounted for that as the sprawling Mahlerian work called for over 120 players, including multiple woodwinds and brass, two harpists and nine percussionists.
Composed in 1936 but only first performed in 1961, the reason was obvious. The work’s near incomprehensible idiom and formalist tendencies would have cost the composer his life during years of Stalinist artistic oppression.
Conductor Petrenko’s programming was a coup of sorts. The Socialist Realist paradise of Part’s Our Garden now came in stark contrast with the Socialist Realist nightmare that was Shostakovich’s Fourth. A more strident and brutal march that opened the symphony was hard to find, with the orchestra ramping up decibels like no other.
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| Photo: Jack Yam |
Yet there were moments of stasis and relaxation, like a waltz-like second subject that completely changed the mood. Then out of nowhere came a furious fugue for strings, which commentators have dubbed the “fugue from hell”. The message was clear: Shostakovich was decrying a spoilt system and schizophrenic society.
The audience applauded politely the opening movement, later privy to the central movement’s uneasy Landler dance which closed with the bare bones of rattling percussion. This was followed by the finale’s monstrous funeral march, a grotesque cavalcade of instrumental oddities.
Here, multiple opportunities were afforded for soloists to shine - Guo Siping’s bassoon, Allen Meek’s trombone and Andrew Beer’s violin just to name a few, and entire sections which responded with total commitment.
Even the ending was ironic, a massive C major chorale being the supposed apotheosis but passed up for an icy and desolate close, like death in the steppes. With its 66 unapologetic minutes, SSO had completed the full cycle of Shostakovich’s eleven purely orchestral symphonies, which began with the First Symphony in 1980. That, we can call progress.
Another review of this concert was published on 21 September 2026 on Bachtrack.com:
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