SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: RIMSKY-KORSAKOV'S SCHEHERAZADE

 

That's Alexander Souptel's autograph
on the cover of my CD sleeve.

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Scheherazade

GLINKA Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Lan Shui

Sometime in 2001, this self-produced SSO recording came out of nowhere. Neither recorded by Donald Wong nor BIS, but by Paul Zinman for Sound Byte Productions, it sounded very good. Was this the SSO, which had not made a recording since that unauthorised Richard Strauss Alpine Symphony of 1993? Since when has the SSO recorded mainstream repertoire? And since when has the orchestra sounded this polished in ruinously familiar music?

A new broom sweeps clean, so they say. Lan Shui, who succeeded Choo Hoey in 1997 as music director, had main sweeping changes in personnel. He retired several older and past sell-by-date musicians, and recruited new and younger professionals, mostly from USA (where he had conducted in Boston, Baltimore, New York and Detroit) and the SSO was beginning to sound fresh and revitalised.

Russia-born concertmaster Alexander Souptel, who arrived in 1993 during the Choo Hoey tenure, was retained and was the superb solo violinist for this Scheherazade. Sasha (as he is affectionately known) had played for decades in professional orchestras in the bygone Soviet Union, including being Gennady Rozhdestvensky’s concertmaster in the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra in all those Melodiya recordings. The effortless manner in which he handled the storytelling that begins The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship and the final Festival at Baghdad sounds totally natural. The harpist is unfortunately uncredited.

The orchestra performs this familiar favourite with gusto and verve, and the performance survives repeated listening, which was saying a lot. SSO was really this good, and the strings shine particularly well in the filler, Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture. This became the orchestra’s calling card, and little wonder that SSO used this showpiece to open its BBC Proms debut in 2014. By this time, Souptel had retired and the concertmaster position handed to his younger compatriot, the Russian-American Igor Yuzefovich.

CATCHING UP WITH SASHA SOUPTEL

CATCHING UP 

WITH SASHA SOUPTEL

How time flies. It seemed like a short while ago when Singapore Symphony Orchestra concerts opened with the familiar figure of Alexander Souptel (everybody knows him as Sasha) emerging from the wings with his violin raised high above his head to lead a concert. The last time that happened was in 2013, when he officially retired as SSO Concertmaster at the age of 65 years old.

Sasha with his former boss,
Gennady Rozhdestvensky & Viktoria Postnikova.

Sasha first came to Singapore in 1993 as a Russian emigre, having served for many years as concertmaster in the late great Russian conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky's orchestras. He had been head-hunted by Choo Hoey who found him a suitable replacement for the Czech violinist Pavel Prantl. Sasha had an enormous and catholic solo repertoire, and nobody would have expected his first concerto with the SSO to be Sofia Gubaidulina's Offertorium. His second concerto was not by Tchaikovsky, but Stravinsky's Violin Concerto in D major.

Sasha with star student Alan Choo.

He eventually settled down here and became a Singapore citizen, and also taught at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory. Among his students was the young Alan Choo, who became the first Singaporean violinist to win 1st prize in the Artist Category of the National Piano and Violin Competition in 2011 with Khachaturian's Violin Concerto.  That seems a complete world away from the baroque violin. 

Sasha with Masako,
from a 2016 concert at Victoria Concert Hall.

After his retirement, Sasha has taught violin privately and in the Virtuosi Music Centre with his partner Masako Suzuki White. He still gives performances, notably in the From Russia With Love concerts which showcased Russian emigres in Singapore, as well as informal gigs where he is most at home performing bonbons, improvisations and jazz.

Tuesday this week (19 September) saw Sasha entertaining a large audience at the Esplanade Concourse in a short programme called Tango For You Again, together with former SSO principal bassist Guennadi Mouzyka and pianist Aya Sakou. Pieces they performed included Matos Rodriguez's La Cumparsita, Carlos Gardel's Una Por Cabeza and Jakob Gade's Tango Jalousie, amongst other popular favourites. As always, Sasha is a total charmer, one for whom music is a natural extension of an easy and outgoing personality. Russia's loss has been Singapore's gain, and long may he continue to shine.

This is the pose which people
will remember Sasha the most.

Always play with panache and style!

Olga Alexandrova (Mrs Mouzyka),
Masako and Sasha. Just like old times!

A MUSIC VOYAGE AROUND THE ISLAND / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

A MUSIC VOYAGE AROUND THE ISLAND

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Saturday (14 January 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 January 2017 with the title "Playful take on Singapore-inspired music".

Nanyang music featured prominently in this Singapore Chinese Orchestra concert held for the first time in Victoria Concert Hall since its post-renovation opening, reason being that SCO's Singapore Conference Hall home is undergoing its own refurbishment. The sound of Chinese instruments resonated strongly in this reverberant space, opening with Zhang Xiao Feng's Singapura Overture conducted by SCO Assistant Conductor Moses Gay.

Its opening was Western before becoming distinctly Malay with its play of drumming. Then various motifs of a deconstructed familiar local tune appeared in whiffs and wafts. It took more than a few seconds to identify Di Tanjong Katong, which was never heard in its full glory with the music galloping like The Magnificent Seven theme to a raucous close.

More original in conception was Simon Kong's Izpirazione II, its three varied movements inspired by local fruits – Durian, Rambutan and Tarap – and taking the form of a prelude, scherzo and finale. Winds and percussion coloured the music's pungent aroma, joined by the musicians' synchronised clapping and stamping of feet as the suite drew to a colourful end.

There were two concertante works that offered very different aspects of solo string prowess. The first was Wang Dan Hong's Amannisha, named after the 15^th century Uyghur singer-dancer who defined the muqam musical tradition of Central Asia. Conducted by SCO Resident Conductor Quek Ling Kiong, Chinese erhu soloist Lu Yiwen's spectacular showing began with gentle musings in the upper registers before getting earthy in a vigourous and rhapsodic dance that rocked the hall to its rafters.

Lu's immaculate deportment contrasted with the free-and-easy improvisations of former Singapore Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Alexander Souptel in Phoon Yew Tien's Gypsy Rhapsody. This medley included Monti's Csardas, Enesco's First Romanian Rhapsody and variations on the Russian song Ochi Chornye (Dark Eyes) in a riotous mash-up. Souptel was his usual irrepressible self, cavorting on stage with the connivance of conductor Yeh Tsung, including a cheeky send-up to Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto for good measure.

Not to be outdone, the three conductors did their own solos in the world premiere of Journey Around Singapore by SCO Composer-in-Residence Eric Watson. Hoping to catch Yeh on piano, Quek tackling percussion and Gay playing the erhu, while taking turns to conduct? Here was the piece, destined to be a National Day Parade hit.

A musical travelogue in all but name, the work employed popular tunes representing four compass points: Sentosa Isle (South), Di Tanjong Katong (East), Voices From The Heart (West), the Chinese classic Horse-Racing and Rossini's William Tell Overture (North, specifically the Turf Club at Kranji) before closing with the calypso rhythm of Singapore Town.

That the concert was not to be taken too seriously was also underlined by the works that ended each half. Jiang Ying's Hot Melody from Southeast Asia was an Asian pastiche of all those Leroy Anderson “jazz” pieces, while Zhao Ji Ping's Celebration Overture was a spin-off from Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture with Chinese tunes. If you can't beat them, join them.

AN ENCHANTED EVENING WITH ALEXANDER AND MASAKO / Alexander Souptel & Masako Suzuki / Review

AN ENCHANTED EVENING

WITH ALEXANDER & MASAKO

Alexander Souptel & 

Masako Suzuki White, Violins

Victoria Concert Hall

Thursday (28 April 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 April 201 with the title "Partying with Sasha and lollipops".

If a history were written about classical music in Singapore, the name of Alexander Souptel would surely appear alongside the likes of Feri Krempl, Goh Soon Tioe and Lee Pan Hon. Souptel, or Sasha as he is known affectionately, was Concertmaster of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra from 1993 to 2012.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian native emigrated to Singapore where he became a naturalised citizen. Now playing in the rank and file of first violins and coaching conservatory students, he still cuts a commanding stage figure.

His is not one of stern authority but an avuncular, almost carefree charm, blest with the hallmarks of a born entertainer. His often outlandish demeanour was on full show in this concert of lollipops, in tandem with his inseparable companion Masako Suzuki White, herself a fiddler of considerable prowess.

Nobody quite wields the bow like Souptel, circumscribing wide arcs like a light sabre, accompanied by cheeky grins and knowing eyes. The “serious” work on show was Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, and even that had no pretensions to authenticity. With Jonathan Shin on piano and Guennadi Mouzyka's double bass, the baroque work swung like jazz, not least in the 1^st movement's fugato section.

In Massenet's cloying Meditation from Thaïs, the two violins came across as overcooked with schmaltzy sentimentality. Similarly, the gently gliding of Saint-Saëns' The Swan was supplanted by four young ballerinas from Cheng Ballet Academy who were very cute if not self-conscious.

For Brahms' Hungarian Dance No.2, the irrepressible Magyar spirit took over, with frayed bowstrings the inevitable result. More high jinks erupted in Bang Wen Fu's spiced-up version of Paganini's Caprice No.24, alternating between straight variations played unaccompanied and jazz-club raves with Mark de Souza's drum-set providing the heady beat.

The second half was no less fun, with the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria and Kreisler's Miniature Viennese March and Liebesfreud providing a generous flow of joie de vivre. Virtuoso fireworks were not spared for Sarasate's Navarra, where fearsome passages for triplets on both violins were tossed off with nonchalance, followed by the duel of Piazzolla's aptly titled Violentango. 

Swaying LED lights of audience handphones spontaneously lit up Leigh Harline's When You Wish Upon A Star from the Disney animated classic Pinocchio, which the usually overzealous ushers ignored as a legit part of the act. For Jacob Gade's Tango Jalousie, Souptel had a rose clenched between his lips before presenting it upon bended knee to a surprised Masako. Their patented party piece, Khachaturian's Sabre Dance, slashed its way to the programme's official close.

There were five encores, including Chinese lollipops The Moon Represents My Heart and Horse-Racing, and the titular Some Enchanted Evening from South Pacific. The final encore began with the opening solo from Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto before segueing into the Russian song Dark Eyes (Ochi Chornye). By this time, the audience was clapping along with the foot-stamping music, tossing roses on stage, and according a deserved standing ovation. 

SSO Concert: LYNN HARRELL / Review

 

 

LYNN HARRELL
Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (19 October 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 October 2012 with the title "Strings shine in a feast for the senses".

The title of this concert, bearing the name of the great American cellist, gave a clue to only part of the whole story. String Fantasies might have been a more apt title, because besides the obvious main-event of Harrell’s involvement, the concert was a showcase of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s much praised and vaunted strings.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, one of the great all-string repertoire works. Here the ensemble was split into three groups: a quartet of soloists led by concertmaster Alexander Souptel and violist Zhang Manchin, a large body of strings, and nine players seated high up on risers. The idea was to create a cathedral-like sonority with choruses of strings playing off each other in an antiphonal manner.

The chant-like unison of the main theme drawn from The English Hymnal came with much homogeneity, and the other voices soon blended in seamlessly. From muted sotto voce building up to a wave-like fortissimo, this multi-layered masterpiece was worked to magical and spine-tingling effect.

SSO woodwinds were not ignored, as they too shone in Brahms’s Second Serenade in A major, a curious youthful work that omitted violins completely. Low strings mostly played accompaniment to the fine solos and ensemble work with flautist Jin Ta and oboist Pan Yun being the chief protagonists. It was also interesting to note the young Brahms’s early stab at symphonic writing, and how he organically worked on its simple themes within the five movements.  

The second half saw Lynn Harrell make his second appearance in Singapore as soloist. Now in his late sixties, sporting a silver mane and Hemingway-like beard, he cut an imposing figure in Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote, an extended symphonic poem with a significant cello obbligato part. Written in the form of ten continuous variations, there was much scope for fantasy and imagination in its programmatic layout.

Harrell’s commanding sound and vivid characterisation of Cervantes’s eccentric knight errant had the perfect foil in violist Zhang Manchin’s platitude-spewing Sancho Panza, and this seemingly unlikely tandem was played to the hilt. All this could have been negated but for the excellent ensemble offered by Shui Lan’s orchestra and direction, which was crucial in the musical story-telling. From battling windmills, bleating herds of sheep to imaginary flights of fancy, this outing aided by Marc Rochester’s eventful programme notes was a veritable feast for the senses.

Lynn Harrell is united with young
Singaporean cellist Loke Hoe Kit
who was the top cellist in the
Lynn Harrell Concerto Competition
organised by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra
several years ago.

FIDDLE FADDLE INTERNATIONAL / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

FIDDLE FADDLE INTERNATIONAL

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (14 July 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 July 2012 with the title "Cross-cultural experiment succeeds".

Although not emblazoned on the Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s mission statement, one of the orchestra’s passions is bringing  diverse musical cultures of the world closer together. This evening’s concert conducted by Yeh Tsung celebrating string playing from Chinese, Gypsy and Celtic traditions may be judged as its most successful cross-cultural experiment to date.

A concert opening with Leroy Anderson’s Fiddle Faddle transcribed for Chinese instruments already suggests something quite extraordinary. Although the huqins maintained a hushed sotto voce presence through most of this perpetual motion, Chen Ning Chi’s slick orchestration kept the winds and percussion busy to marvellous and mercurial effect.

  

The first fiddler to step up was Alexander Souptel, concertmaster of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and already well-known for his forays into gypsy music. Freed from his usual strait-jacketed role, he gave a most irrepressibly unbuttoned showing in Gypsy Rhapsody orchestrated by Phoon Yew Tien. 

There were portamenti (slides and slurs) galore, and every impulse was to improvise on the spot and dazzle with cheeky play on harmonics and overtones. In melodies like Monti’s Csardas, Whistling Hora and Russian favourite Dark Eyes (Ochi Chorniye), a free-spirited wizardry held court while the orchestra manfully kept pace with his rather elastic concept of timing. 

While Souptel pranced on stage at every turn, Chinese erhu virtuosa Wang Xiao Nan was his polar opposite, maintaining a stolid, rock-like posture for her pieces. In Chen Gang’s Sunshine Over Tashkhurgan and a rhythmic Tibetan medley called Paradise, her playing exuded an amazon-like physicality, sturdy and unflinching in tone yet nimble and agile in her virtuosic passage-work.      

After the interval, Celtic fiddler Chris Stout impressed with a heartfelt amble in the slow and meditative Da Trows Jig before segueing into the tear-jerking strophic hymn of Michaelswood, both original compositions of his. Then came six Celtic melodies in Eric Watson’s foot-tapping medley Fiddlers Free, which saw him flying full throttle, while luxuriating with the familiar O Waly Waly as its glorious centrepiece.  

All three fiddlers were united in Watson’s A Confluence of Voices, a work where the greatest challenge was to engage each instrument at its own idiom and forte, while uniting them sensibly as in a triple concerto. Souptel, Wang and Stout first played in unison, and then their parts separated with chances for individual display. As in the price of globalisation, it was inevitable that each had lost a bit of its uniqueness but gained a little something from the others.

It closed with a hearty jig where all three greatly relished their roles, continuing into the encore-like Race of Three Fiddlers, orchestrated by Watson and based on the erhu-classic Horse Racing. It was a neck and neck tussle, with more ad-libbing before all instruments on stage broke off with the loudest session of synchronised neighing. The result was a photo finish, but with three equal winners. 

SSO Concert: Pictures at an Exhibition / Review

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Saturday (28 April 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 April 2012 with the title "Picture-perfect melodies".

It has been many years since the Singapore Symphony Orchestra last performed a Familiar Favourites Concert. This evening’s offering brought back a flavour of the late-lamented series that was much loved by relative newcomers to subscription concerts, not just because of the friendly repertoire, but also a sense of informality and congeniality.

Central to all this was the final appearance in a concerto by the orchestra’s very popular Concertmaster Alexander Souptel, Russian-born but naturalised Singaporean, whose infectious smile and habitual non-verbal gestures are now standard issues of SSO concerts. In short, he himself had become a “Familiar Favourite” over the past 19 years.

Although not possessing the biggest of tones, infallible technique or spotless intonation, his enduring strength is in coaxing the violin to sing in a most natural and seemingly effortless manner. His namesake and compatriot Alexander Glazunov’s Violin Concerto (left) provided ample opportunities, and how he seamlessly shaped the slow movement’s cloying melody like a crooner who gratefully clings on to every note. 

He makes the listener long that every lingering phrase might never end, not by force of will but by charm of persuasion. After the pyrotechnics of the finale had abated, his encore of Carlos Gardel’s tango Por una cabeza with the orchestra, oozing sentimentality from every pore, was icing on the cake.

More favourites filled the programme, beginning with Dvorak’s rousing Carnival Overture (left), driven at a furious pace by SSO Young Associate Conductor Darrell Ang, but without sacrificing attention to detail. In the same vein was Ravel’s Technicolor orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, also conducted from memory. 

Both instrumental and ensemble prowess shared equal billing, with the plum role falling to free-lance guest trumpeter John Terry Bingham whose stand-out solos in the opening Promenade and the whiny Goldenberg and Schmuyle were outstanding to say the least. Tang Xiao Ping, swapping the saxophone for his clarinet, sang like a forlorn troubadour in The Old Castle, and even the odd raspberry from the tuba helped the lumbering old oxcart of Bydlo sound suitably rickety.

With all the picturesque movements, inspired by sketches from Mussorgsky’s late friend Viktor Hartmann, impressively characterised and deliciously realised, this was a performance to win new friends for the orchestra. Is this a good time to ask for a return of the Familiar Favourites? 

JOJA WENDT Piano Recital / Review

JOJA WENDT Piano Recital
DBS Arts Centre
Sunday (1 April 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 April 2012 with the title "Wendt plays for the fun of it".

It was the Scottish piano historian Kenneth Hamilton who opined that classical pianists have taken themselves much too seriously, turning recitals into fixtures which are endured rather than enjoyed. It is thus a huge relief that non-classical pianists have not read the script, and are still enthralling audiences out to have a good time.

The German pianist Joja Wendt is what certain piano circles refer to as a specialist in “novelty piano”, a catch-all phrase to cover popular historical sub-genres such as ragtime, stride and boogie woogie. I would prefer to call him a darned good entertainer.

From his opening piece, almost improvised at will, one could discern his classical training. Not surprising for someone from Hamburg, the city which also gave the world Mendelssohn and Brahms, the latter honing his keyboard skills playing in bordellos. There was nothing sleazy to Wendt’s art, which had a combination of his three passions: classical, jazz and boogie woogie.

The first was probably the least striking. His arrangement of Die holle rache (Queen of the Night’s Aria) from Mozart’s Magic Flute was unremarkable except for its ending which spoofed Beethoven’s tendency for interminable conclusions and cadences. His jazz stylings relived the prestidigitation of Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson, but his true metier was in the rhythmic rumblings of boogie woogie.

In a way, this is a 20th century updating of the 18th century Mozartean Alberti bass, with lots of bells and whistles thrown in. One number incorporated sleights of hand from his three idols, Pete Johnson, Meade “Lux” Evans and Albert Ammons, each more elaborate than the last. In his own version of Chattanooga Choo Choo, he engaged the audience by getting them to simulate the train’s horn-call. Finger-snapping and hand-rubbing simulated the rain in his original piece Singapore Sling, which shared similar strains with Here Comes The Sun.

The sponsors of this non-ticketed event benefited from some slick product-placement on Wendt’s part, including Singapore Repertory Theatre, Steinway Gallery and Audi. The latter had a hilarious dedication in Audi Boogie Woogie, a souvenir of his eventful road-trip on an Audi through the Swiss Alps. With the aid of smoke machine and hydraulics, the Steinway grand pitched back and forth like a beat-up jalopy (above). Not exactly Vorsprung durch Technik, but who cares?

And the encores, there were five in total. The locals greatly appreciated his inclusion of Teresa Teng’s The Moon Represents My Heart in a duet with Steinway Gallery’s Celine Goh. SSO concertmaster Alexander Souptel on violin (above) then chipped in an unrehearsed medley of Monti’s Csardas, Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumble Bee, all rendered in boogie woogie. Now who said pianists cannot have fun at work?

Joja Wendt as stand-up comedian:

"I would like to thank my parents for making this evening possible, and thank my children for making it necessary."