SAYANG SINGAPURA! ORIGINS / Asian Contemporary Ensemble / Review

SAYANG SINGAPURA! ORIGINS

Asian Contemporary Ensemble

The Chamber, The Arts House

Saturday (14 November 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 November 2015 with the title "Fun way to discover Singapore".

The Asian Contemporary Ensemble, founded by Singaporean conductor-composer Wong Kah Chun, seeks to preserve Asian musical aesthetics while forging new paths in expression. Its 75-minute-long concert incorporated story-telling, dance and pantomime with eight works (including three world premieres) woven into its fabric.

Aimed at young people, the story of Indian King Rajasuran and how his grandson Sang Nila Utama discovered Temasek was directed by Peggy Ferroa, narrated by Rosemarie Somaiah, choreographed and danced by members of Paragraph. The 11 members of ACE conducted by Wong performed on stage, making for a colourful affair of sound and movement.

Phoon Yew Tien's Variations On A Transfigured Theme Rasa Sayang performed on piano by Jonathan Shin opened the concert, revealing a metamorphosis of a simple song that went through a whole panoply of tonalities and modes. John Sharpley's Glissando On The Black Keys was a pentatonic fantasy that saw Shin's instrument channelling the sound world of a Chinese guzheng.

The three world premieres began with Christopher Clarke's Teeth, a concertino for saxophone accompanied by Indian percussion inspired by the merlion's dentition. Samuel Phua's dusky tone on sax was a revelation, as was Joyce Poh's dizi in Bernard Tan's Keroncong, a cheerful dance that combined Chinese and Malay influences with the Western rondo form. Poh's arrangement of the popular Jiangnan Hao saw the familiar Chinese tune on dizi accompanied by Edward Tan's violin and Dylan Lee's cello.

The musicians then congregated around a collection of gongs and metallophones for the gamelan-inspired Suite of the Thieving Sea by Anne Choo, with solo parts for bamboo flute and bowed rebab. This Javanese-styled music accompanied the dance of Sang Nila Utama surrending his crown to appease buffeting waves, before the premiere of Shin's Sang Nila Utama Meets The Mercat, which saw Li Lingzhi's clarinet, sax and dizi backed by tinkling toy piano.

The mercat is the official mascot of ACE, created by violinist Ayane Sato, and supposedly some descendant of the merlion, Pokemon and Hello Kitty. Even she has a theme of her own, composed by Wong, which combines a march, sea shanty and Anime music.

This final piece of merrymaking saw the appearance of the fluffy blue mascot, also named Ace, in the flesh, who went on to pose for photographs with National Arts Council CEO Kathy Lai and all the children in attendance. Needless to say, everyone present had a good laugh. 

Photographs by the kind permission of Asian Contemporary Ensemble.

COMING HOME / Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra / Review

COMING HOME

Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra

SOTA Concert Hall

Sunday (13 April 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 April 2014 with the title "Impressive acrobatics performed on the cello".

Curious fact: The Singaporean who has had most concertos performed this millennium is Bernard Tan, a National University of Singapore physics professor who composes in his free time. Following the first performances of his Piano Concerto (2002), Violin Concerto (2006) and Guitar Concerto (2013) by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, his Cello Concerto received its world premiere by its dedicatee Noella Yan with the Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra conducted by Adrian Tan.

Yan is a Singaporean cellist residing in Australia, and daughter of the orchestra’s founding conductor Yan Yin Wing. This concerto marked her return to Singapore and to performing after a lay-off to mother two young boys. Any concessions to technical ability were dispensed with in this demanding work that called for utmost concentration and no little agility.

In a way, Tan resembles the Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian in that he uses a few simple themes of local and ethnological flavour and works these exhaustively in a show of soloistic exuberance. The opening movement balanced a repetitive scherzo-like first motif with a lyrical second subject of Asian origin, while the central slow movement was a seamless Chinese melody of Tan’s own device. Here Yan’s cantabile playing, full-voiced yet never cloying, invitingly came to the fore.

The finale took off in a head of steam, in a perpetual movement that obliged the soloist to jump through a seemingly unending series of hoops. The orchestra, hitherto mostly supportive in role, saw its flautist, oboist and clarinettist reciprocating in florid flourishes of their own. The ante had been upped, and following an acrobatic cadenza by Yan, the concerto closed on a dizzying aplomb.

The concert began with just the first movement of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. While that might sound incomplete, it had the effect of an overture. The orchestra warmed up quickly to conductor Tan’s cues, and there was some very satisfying playing from the strings, especially the cello section in the movement’s most familiar melody.

Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony closed the concert. Conductor Tan spoke informally about the moods that coloured the work, and the transformations from darkness to light as the music progressed. While there were moments in its four movements which taxed the musicians and thus revealing their amateur endeavours, these were more than made up by the passion exhibited in the playing.

While clarinettist Ian Lam and French horn Darren Sim impressed with their solos, it was the general ensemble that rose to each climactic high with brass in imperious form. It was not difficult to follow the thread; pensiveness in the slow movement, a more relaxed waltz rhythm for the third movement, before the all-out triumph to end the symphony. This orchestra has made tremendous strides since the homecoming of its music director from his studies. Long may this continue.

Composer Bernard Tan with his wife Jennie.

Music lovers, not politicians:
Mr Goh Kien Chee (son of Dr Goh Keng Swee) with
Dr Lee Suan Yew (brother of MM Lee Kuan Yew).

SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA'S Readings of Singaporean Compositions

SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA’S
READINGS OF SINGAPOREAN WORKS

On a Good Friday (22 April 2011), one week after the passing of Singapore’s “Father of composers” Leong Yoon Pin, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra afforded Singaporean music a most magnanimous gift – a 3-hour reading of symphonic works by four Singaporean composers. It is no secret that the SSO does not perform enough Singaporean music. Its Composer-In-Residence scheme had come to an untimely demise, the New Music Forum suspended indefinitely, so this reading session – a first in its 32-year history - came as a most pleasant surprise.

Judging by what was heard, it amply demonstrated a wealth of creativity that exists in our small but gradually expanding composers’ circle. We have recently witnessed in concert short works by Yuan Peiying and Darrell Ang, but this reading session afforded more time and space for more extended compositions.

The first work performed lasted 17 minutes, the first movement of Tan Chan Boon’s Third Symphony “Eden” (2004). Hailed by SSO Music Director Lan Shui as “greatest Brucknerian outside of Linz”, Tan (above) has written four symphonies, none of which have been performed in their entirety here. Violas introduce the main theme, one which was to permeate the entire movement. String tremolos provided that Brucknerian murmur, accompanied by birdcalls reminiscent of Wagner’s Siegfried. 

There is a second soaring theme heard on violas and solo trumpet, but the serenity of the Garden darkens with dissonance from the brass, but before long a third theme, one resembling “Deep River” is heard. This is the very theme that appears in Tan’s symphonic prelude Cherish and piano work Reminiscence (both written in 2008). The movement ends in a reassuring A major chord. On the strength of this very coherent reading, one looks forward to hearing the whole work sometime soon.

Tan Chan Boon, Tey Mun Sen 

& John Sharpley (L to R)

John Sharpley, originally from Houston, Texas, but resident in Singapore for the last 25 years, was next. The choice was a duet (above) from his yet-to-be-produced opera Fences Of The Heart. Soprano Amanda Colliver and tenor Juan Jackson sang the parts of star-crossed lovers caught in the confusion of Singapore’s 1965 expulsion from Malaysia, and consequent independence. Make no mistake, this is an opera in English by an American composer, not some souped up melange that borrows from Malay, Chinese or Indian inspirations. 

Unapologetically tonal, this duet contains some of Sharpley’s most beautiful music, from its darkly coloured orchestral introduction to its resonant words “A hotel is not a home” (referring to the iconic Lion City Hotel at Tanjong Katong), which spelt the uncertainty of that period of Singapore history. Incidentally, the title of the opera also appears for the first (and perhaps only) time in this deeply felt movement. When this opera will be finally be produced remains to be seen.

Bernard Tan & Jun Zubillaga-Pow (Back) 

with Robert Yeo & Leow Siak Fah (Front)

After a short interval, Kelly Tang’s concertante work Tropicata, for violin and orchestra (above) was performed by soloist Xu Jueyi and the orchestra. Resembling a first movement of a violin concerto, all it lacks is an extended development and cadenza. It is nonetheless an impressive virtuoso showpiece, with opportunities for display although the dense orchestration sometimes gets in the way. Eclectic and neo-Romantic, it superficially resembles the first movement of Kabalevsky’s “Youth” Violin Concerto but with the Stars and Stripes feel of a Bernstein or Barber. Tang has already composed two piano concertos (one dodecaphonic and one jazz) and one quasi-violin concerto (two movements for re:mix), so could a full-fledged violin concerto be due soon?

The final work (above) was by the youngest composer of the four, Hoh Chung Shih, and also the most modern. Avant-garde it might have sounded, but Mountain Bright (Shan Ming) appears a more sophisticated conception than initially perceived. Its relentless swaths of sound, like viewing a vast expanse of hills, peaks and clouds (the vistas of China’s Huang Shan come to mind), is divided between two ensembles. The smaller consists of piano, percussion and cello in obbligato parts, pitted against vast orchestral forces. 

The work is at once immense, static (like clouds gently dispersing and revealing yet more clouds), minimalistic but strangely hypnotic despite its high decibel output. The ensemble stopped several times; did the players get lost, one wondered. Did they know what they were playing? It was all a very good natured experiment, no frayed nerves or ignited tempers, and they picked up where they left. The music ended as abruptly as it began.

If Leong Yoon Pin were present, he would have been proud of his juniors’ efforts, and the gesture of goodwill extended by the SSO. Bernard Tan, now inheriting the mantle of Singapore’s senior composer and instigator of this reading was present, and he was encouraged by this showing. Perhaps SSO reading the works of Singaporean composers should become an annual affair, a platform where the best of our talents can display their creative wares. Let us hope that is not too much to ask for from our national orchestra.

Shane Thio, Hoh Chung Shih 

& Kelly Tang (L to R)