TRANSCRIPTION
The Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Esplanade Recital Studio
Thursday (15 October 2026)
CELLISSIMO
Cellos of Yong Siew Toh Conservatory
Conservatory Concert Hall
Friday (16 October 2026),
This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 October 2026 with the title "Transcriptions centre voices and cellos in two enjoyable concerts".
The Philharmonic Chamber Choir led by Lim Yau performed an excellent programme of choral transcriptions. These are reworkings for choir of music that was originally conceived for other instruments. The evening opened with Elgin Neils’ transcription of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Vocalise, originally for high voice and piano. Over choral accompaniment, its familiar wordless solo line was first sung by sopranos and later passed on to the other singers.
Just as effective and haunting was Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei, a vocal setting of his ubiquitous Adagio for Strings. The music, usually associated with mourning, took on new dimensions as a plea for mercy in sung Latin, rising to a passionate climax rarely matched by the original for string quartet.
The true rarity was Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending transcribed by Paul Drayton. This version retained the ethereal solo violin part, performed with refinement and perfect intonation by Zhu Zunzun. The wordless choral accompaniment which began the work later gave way to words by George Meredith, who lent the work’s avian inspiration.
Zechariah Goh’s Abandoned Qin not a transcription per se, but beautifully captured the spirit of Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi’s lament (“I can play but who will listen?”) about younger generations forsaking the old for the new and trendy. A song of regret in Chinese, it also incorporated onomatopoeic sounds of the ancient plucked instrument.
Late German composer Clytus Gottwald was responsible for four transcriptions, Olivier Messiaen’s Louange a l’eternite de Jesus (Praise to the Eternity of Jesus) from Quartet for the End of Time being the most striking. Its lofty spirituality was gloriously expressed by the 39 singers, who completed the evening with further music by Franz Schubert, Gustav Mahler and Hugo Wolf.
There were transcriptions aplenty too at the concert by Yong Siew Toh Conservatory’s cello studio in a programme conceived by visiting professor Swiss-Taiwanese cellist Wen-Sinn Yang of Munich Conservatory. Opening with J.S.Bach’s solo Cello Suite No.1 in G major, Yang exhibited a lovely tone unafraid of vibrato all through its six dance movements.
He was the soloist for Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto in E flat major in Yang’s own arrangement for cello quartet. One simply did not miss the full orchestra here, or the solo French horn, as his three partners (students and alumnus of the Conservatory) all contributed to a score that matched the searing intensity of the Russian’s 15 string quartets.
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| Photo: Toh Yan Ee |
Yang simply emoted in the slow movement of hand-wringing pathos, later upping the ante for the cadenza before launching into the Klezmer-like rave of its finale. The laser-sharp focus shared by all four players clearly gripped the audience, which had unknowingly but enthusiastically greeted the unofficial world premiere of this special transcription.
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| Photo: Toh Yan Ee |
The concert got lighter while the stage became more crowded in the second half with Joseph Haydn’s Divertimento in D major (originally for cello trio) arranged by Werner Thomas-Mifune for cello orchestra. Its four movements were those found in serenades, its melodies delivered with a fullness and richness of tone on 19 cellos.
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| Photo: Toh Yan Ee |
Thomas-Mifune also arranged for five cellos a Carmen Fantasy on beloved themes from Georges Bizet’s opera. This brilliant showpiece, which included the Habanera, Toreador’s Song and Bohemian Dance was contrasted by Antonin Dvorak’s slower and nostalgic Slavonic Dance (Op.72 No.2) as arranged by Lothar Niefind.
A full ensemble of 22, including the Conservatory’s head of cello Qin Li-Wei, went full pelt in three German Schlager songs (hit pop songs) of the 1930s arranged by Carl Clemente. An uproarious encore, Wilhelm Kaiser-Lindemann’s Mambo, threw tapping on wood and shouts into the enjoyable musical melee.
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| Photo: Toh Yan Ee |
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