RE:SOUND 10TH ANNIVERSARY / BRADDELL HEIGHTS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA 40TH ANNIVERSARY GALA CONCERTS / Review

 

10TH ANNIVERSARY GALA CONCERT

re:Sound

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Saturday (29 August 2026)

40TH ANNIVERSARY GALA CONCERT

Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (30 August 2026)

This review was published by The Straits Times on 1 September 2026 with the title "re:Sound and Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra's anniversary galas prove diversity of classical scene".

Over last weekend, three local musical ensembles marked their respective anniversaries with a gala concert each. These were Red Dot Baroque (8th), re:Sound Collective (10th) and Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra (40th). By actively programming local composers, the latter two groups have helped shape the concert repertoire enjoyed in Singapore today.

Photo: @Joelcaptures

Singapore’s first professional chamber orchestra re:Sound opened accounts with J.S.Bach’s Violin Concerto in A minor (BWV.1041), showcasing 13-year-old Chua Suen Ern in an exacting solo role. With spotless intonation and technique as natural as breathing, she blended seamlessly with players double to quadruple her age. A very bright future beckons.

Photo: @Joelcaptures

Warmth and lushness of re:Sound’s strings were caught in full bloom with harpist Charmaine Teo for the Adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Led by violinist Yang Shuxiang, this love letter to Mahler’s wife Alma felt right at 10 minutes, its passionate climax coming at just the perfect moment.

Receiving its world premiere was Germaine Goh’s Sleepless In Singapore, a re:Sound commission. A suite for chamber orchestra, it played like a 21st century concerto grosso in four movements. Between Concrete and Sky evoked dawn in Little India with use of raga scales. Through Windows recounted a frenetic pace of traffic (and life) with the added impetus of pelting rain.

Highly effective scoring included solos for clarinet and soprano saxophone (Ralph Lim), French horn (Alan Kartik) and bassoon (Lim Tee Heong), the latter starring in its slow movement Sleepless, mimicking the call of a nightjar. The finale Tomorrow, Again combined Malay percussive beats with John Adams-styled minimalism for an excitingly manic conclusion.

Photo: @Joelcaptures

The concert’s main work was Ludwig van Beethoven Fifth Symphony in C minor (Op.67) guest-led by Ohio-based Jonathan Ong, first violinist of the Verona Quartet. Although not performing on period instruments, the ensemble adopted the spirit of early 19th century’s “age of enlightenment”.

Photo: @Joelcaptures

Lithe textures and swift tempos did not translate into thin wispy sounds, instead gained an edginess that kept listeners engaged on the edge of their seats. The use of natural horns (without valves) and calfskin timpani heads were added points of authenticity. For an old familiar favourite to sound this refreshing and revitalised is exactly why re:Sound exists.

Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra (BHSO), Singapore’s oldest community orchestra, was led by Leonard Tan in an unusually creative programme. It opened with the winner of a call-for-scores, Seem Jia Ang’s The Journey Ahead. Within a single minute, a flute solo expanded into something with cinematic aspirations but ended as soon as it began, leaving one guessing myriad possibilities for development.

Tan Chan Boon’s In Memory of Franz Schubert (1997) was built on two motifs from the slow movement of the Austrian composer’s “Unfinished” Eighth Symphony. First heard as fragments, these coalesced into actual quotations before launching into an inevitable fugue. The orchestra’s masterful handling of its scholarly discourse was admirable.

Even more impressive was its partnership with Cheong Kah Yiong, founding member of Morse Percussion, in Chinese-American composer Chen Yi’s Percussion Concerto (1998). A solo tour-de-force premiered here by renowned Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the Singapore Symphony in 1999, Cheong headily relived all its dynamic moments on gongs, drums and xylophones.

In the central movement Prelude To Water Tune, vocal recitation of Beijing Opera was where Cheong had the advantage of language and fine auditory nuances. The rapid-fire Speedy Wind finale drew the longest and loudest ovation of all soloists who have played with the orchestra.

BHSO literally pulled all the stops for Camille Saint-Saens’ Third Symphony in C minor, popularly known as the “Organ” Symphony, in a performance that lacked nothing in full-blooded passion and visual spectacle. On Victoria Concert Hall’s Klais organ, Loraine Muthiah did the honours, in the hymn-like slow movement and the grandstanding finale which unleashed voice and vibration to spine-chilling effect.

Professional or volunteer, long may communal music-making in Singapore thrive.

Jeremy Monteiro's very detailed personal account of the re:Sound concert:

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BRUCKNER AND "THE GREAT" / PROGRESSION III / Braddell Heights Symphony & MacPherson Symphony Orchestras / Review

 

BRUCKNER AND “THE GREAT” 

Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra 

School of The Arts Concert Hall 

Saturday (28 September 2024)

PROGRESSION III 

MacPherson Philharmonic Orchestra 

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall 

Sunday (29 September 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 October 2024 with the title "Community orchestras prove mettle with ambitious programmes".

Community orchestras in Singapore have progressed so much over the years that they now comfortably perform repertoire that was once the reserve of Singapore Symphony Orchestra. Two concerts over the weekend eloquently proved that point. 

Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Tan commemorated the birth bicentenary of Austrian composer Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) by giving the Singapore premiere of his early Overture in G minor (1863). 

Just 10 minutes in duration, its debt of influence to Richard Wagner and Ludwig van Beethoven was evident. Despite a hesitant opening, the orchestra made the most of its fussy string figurations, busy counterpoint and brassy climaxes. 

More impressive was its take on Franz Schubert’s Ninth Symphony in C major, nicknamed “The Great” because of its “heavenly length”. Conductor Tan’s vision took some 49 minutes to complete, with tautness and cogency as qualities. The music benefited from his attention to detail and a propensity for good-natured humour. Nobody would have missed the finale’s heroics and its playful quote of Ode To Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. 

The evening’s piece de resistance was young double bassist Julian Li’s fearlessly virtuosic solo in living Argentinian composer Andres Martin’s Double Bass Concerto No.1 (2012). Its accessible idiom encompassed tango and film music but necessitated playing in high registers approximating the cello’s. 

Li’s tonal projection, accurate intonation and utter confidence all through its three movements were an inspiration to behold. His encore of Giovanni Bottesini’s Elegy No.1, accompanied by his sister Gemma on piano, was simply touching. 

Equally impressive was the showing of pianist Clarence Lee in Sergei Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor with the MacPherson Philharmonic Orchestra led by Lester Kong. His was an expansive view, with big-boned barnstorming tempered by sensitivity and subtlety such to be able to smell the flowers. 

The slow movement’s full-on lyricism and the finale’s big melody could have been laid on with a shovel, but in Lee’s hands, poeticism ruled instead. Nobody could have expected an excerpt from Nobuo Uematsu’s Final Fantasy X as an encore, but it was lovely. 

Clarence presenting flowers to his mother,
bringing tears to her eyes.

The orchestra supported him to the hilt and was just as alert to the nuances of Gioachino Rossini’s Overture to The Barber of Seville. Its tricky dotted rhythms, decorative running note passages were well-negotiated, with wit and good humour being the end result. 

Its biggest test was Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.5 in E minor, a concert warhorse so often heard as to be tainted with over-familiarity. Conductor Kong took the well-filled hall to be mostly concert newbies by addressing them and playing examples before each movement. 

The ostensible aim was to demonstrate the symphony’s “Fate” theme being transformed over four movements. That was laudable but the music’s natural flow was disrupted by these stops and starts, with audience applause between movements being encouraged. 

The performance itself was very good, with tightly-knit ensemble and a palpable pulse propelling the music along. The string sound had a nice sheen, and the brass was excellent, with the solo French hornist acquitting himself generally well in the slow movement. 

Breathless excitement ruled the finale and the inevitable happened, with an over-eager audience prematurely applauding at the climactic pause just before the coda. That would have been embarrassing at an SSO concert, but this was a family-friendly event, thus easily forgivable. 

As long as our community orchestras purposefully continue to engage the public and make new friends for the classics, that cannot be a bad thing.

Watch the Rachmaninov concerto performance here:

GERMAN CLASSICS / ASIAN CONCERT TOUR 2023 / Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra / Academy of Taiwan Strings / Review

GERMAN CLASSICS

Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra

School of the Arts Concert Hall

Saturday (26 August 2023)

 

ASIA CONCERT TOUR 2023

Academy of Taiwan Strings

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (27 August 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 August 2023 with the title "Invigorating showcases by Braddell orchestra and Academy of Taiwan Strings".

 

 

After the tragic passing of music director Adrian Tan in 2021, Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra, Singapore’s oldest community orchestra, has found a worthy successor in conductor Leonard Tan. Leonard, who is no relation of Adrian, has an excellent track record of having helmed The Philharmonic Winds, Singapore’s leading wind ensemble, for some 15 years. He also continued in Adrian’s friendly manner of demystifying the classics by addressing the audience with simple, well-chosen words.

 

More important was the music-making, and straight off, Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture was possessed with tension and energy befitting its drama and tragedy. The opening chords were punched out with incisiveness and clarity, and soon the musical narrative sizzled.

 

Far more substantial was Brahms’ Second Symphony in a performance which highlighted the music’s expansiveness and sunlit vistas. The string playing stood out and if a symphony had a smile, this was it. From the lilting lullaby-like theme from the opening movement, the scherzo’s chattiness to the finale’s trail-blazing close, the results were invigorating.

  

In Dvorak’s masterly Cello Concerto in B minor, the orchestra partnered talented young cellist Theophilus Tan, Goh Soon Tioe Centenary Award recipient and founding member of the Concordia Quartet. His solo playing was one of much sensitivity, which occasionally got submerged by dense orchestral textures and over-enthusiastic projecting. It was passion which ultimately shone through, in the slow movement’s love song and finale’s irrepressible march.

 

Singapore was the first leg of the Academy of Taiwan Strings’ Asian tour, which also includes concerts in Kuala Lumpur, Taipei and Kaohsiung. Why it is considered an elite ensemble was immediately apparent by the sheer volume and richness of sonority generated in Elgar’s showpiece Introduction and Allegro, suggesting a group far larger than its 21 members.    

 

The major work in the 2-hour long concert was the World Premiere of Singaporean composer Tan Chan Boon’s newly commissioned Symphony For Strings. Tan is not one for half-measures, and his 38-minute long work relived the Mahlerian dictum that, “A symphony is like a world. It must have everything.” And the kitchen sink one might add, as its three movements got progressively longer.

 

The first two movements explored ethereal and otherworldly sound textures, including harmonics, slides, pizzicatos and other exotic devices. From the morass of the amorphous issued forth hints of melody, like a newly revitalised world emerging out of Covid-induced chaos. The final slow movement had Brucknerian ambitions, a hymn-like tune without worries or neuroses, later turning into some elegy for lost souls. Its life-affirming close saw a collective stomping of feet from all performers, a trickle turning into a torrential rainstorm.   

 

Applause from the small audience was fulsome but genuine, also accorded to the absorbing reading of Brahms’ Second String Quintet (Op.111) in its string orchestra version. Its charm and luscious melodies were gratefully lapped up by the players, leaving one wondering why it is not more often heard.   

 

Taiwan-based Japanese film composer Koji Sakurai’s Last Forever inspired by Eileen Chang’s novella Red Rose, White Rose was quasi-baroque in style. Reminiscent of a cross between Albinoni’s Adagio and Scarlatti’s “Aria” Sonata in D minor, this elegiac number tugged on the heart-strings like no other. Joined by eight string players from Singapore’s own chamber outfit re:Sound, the concert closed with two tangos by Astor Piazzolla, sultry and brooding Oblivion with violinist Cheng Tze Hsun as soloist and the ever-lively Libertango.

 

Encores were demanded even after the ensemble had left the stage, and who could resist enjoying that most quintessential of Taiwanese melodies, Teng Yu-Hsien’s Wang Chun Feng or Pining For The Spring Breeze?

IN MEMORIAM: A TRIBUTE TO ADRIAN TAN / Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra / Review

IN MEMORIAM:

A TRIBUTE TO ADRIAN TAN

Braddell Heights 

Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (11 September 2022)

 

A year and a bit has passed since the tragic and premature passing on 12 July 2021 of Singaporean conductor Adrian Tan, music director of the Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra (BHSO). A successor has yet to be appointed. This well-conceived memorial concert led by Taiwanese conductor Apo Hsu was a moving memorial to one truly passionate about music, and a timely reminder of our massive loss.

The Maestro Adrian Tan
all of us remember.

 

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was an appropriate opener as it was Fate that took Adrian away. Beethoven’s fist-shaking defiance, expressed so dramatically in C minor, was what identified most with Adrian’s “can do” spirit. A naval officer with an arts degree in theatre studies who wanted so badly to be a conductor that he gave up a stable career to study music from scratch deserved our time and attention. His pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was the BHSO, which he whole-heartedly and single-mindedly honed into a fine ensemble capable of very convincing performances.

 

Under Hsu’s baton-less direction, a tautly gripping performance was the just result. The ensemble played their hearts out for her (and Adrian), often as if their lives depended on it. The opening Allegro con brio had vim and vigour, displaying an admirable cohesiveness. The slow movement sang unabated, the few rough spots from woodwinds doing little to derail the effort.  Time seemed to fly and spirits never flagged leading into the valedictory finale, culminating in glorious C major. From the stress of uncertainty to ultimate triumph was the path taken in this symphony and Adrian’s life, and he would have been immensely proud of it.

 

After the intermission, Singapore-based Filipino pianist Albert Tiu, regular collaborator with Adrian, was soloist in the slow third movement of Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto. Last year, he had crafted a solo piano transcription dedicated to Adrian, and here was the full monty with orchestra. It would have been great if Noella Yan (daughter of BHSO founder Yan Ying Wing and close family friend) had performed the cello obbligato part, but BHSO principal cellist Peh Xiang Hong was no slouch. Her solo was poignantly felt, the perfect introduction to Tiu’s impassioned reading which scaled the emotional heights yet found peace and resolution at its serene conclusion.

 

Twin composers Low Shao Ying 
and Shao Suan remember Adrian fondly.

Coinciding with the passing of HM Queen Elizabeth II, Nimrod from Elgar’s Enigma Variations was also a fortuitous choice. There can be no music more moving than this, a regal nobilmente which aligned publisher A.J.Jaeger’s (Nimrod was his nickname) championship of Elgar’s music with Adrian’s keen support of Singaporean composers. The performance was a particularly rapturous one, which Song For Adrian by twin sisters Low Shao Ying and Shao Suan became the most logical follow-up. Scored for just strings, this was an elegy but one which channeled sadness into hope and optimism. Cast in C major, its musical idiom may be said to be a cross between Elgar and Sibelius.  

Singapore Symphony Orchestra's
fourth chair first violinist Chan Yoong Han was
an uncredited performer in this tribute concert.

Sama-sama maju ke hadapan
pandai cari pelajaran...

 

A familiar note (particularly for those growing up in the 60s and 70s) was struck with BHSO Arranger-in-Residence Mohd Rasull’s Fantasy on Zubir Said’s Semoga Bahagia (May You Achieve Happiness). Known popularly as the “Sama-sama Song", its melody brought back lots of primary school memories. It was sung in unison gusto by The Joy Chorale (Khor Ai Ming, Choirmaster) and some members of the audience (with whatever childhood memories of those bygone day). This work, which included a fugue among its variations, pulled out the stops in the best way possible.   

Handphones were not
prohibited in this concert!

A magical atmosphere
for Dick Lee's Home
Photo: Muhd Firdauz Bin Sapii

 

The evening concluded with Dick Lee’s Home as transcribed by Kelly Teng. A popular favourite, it had to be encored, this time accompanied by swaying lights emanating from hundreds of handphones within the audience. It was a spontaneous act that captured the spirit of the event, providing magical moments for all who attended. The Last Night of the Proms might have been cancelled in London, but nobody was to deny Adrian Tan his spot in our collective memories. His passion, zeal and courage will never be forgotten.

This is how Adrian Tan will be
remembered by all who knew him well.