MEMOIRS IN MUSIC / Nanyang Collective / Review

 

MEMOIRS IN MUSIC

Nanyang Collective

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday (9 December 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 December 2025 with the title "Musical narrative of Singapore history deserves encore".

The SG60 commemoration continued with Memoirs In Music, a multi-disciplinary hour-long concert presentation by Nanyang Collective conducted by Dedric Wong. Its timing, coinciding with the Albatross File public exhibition at the National Library Board, seemed almost uncanny but it tapped on our nation’s sense of becoming by facing up to Singapore’s history as a modern city-state.

Photo: Aaron Ang

The story and script by Jasmin Wong thankfully avoided jingoism and self-congratulation, instead took on a wistfulness that people of a certain age tend to harbour while looking at the past. Actor Clement Yeo played the part of storyteller by being Everyman, with multiple roles including children and adults relating their accounts in both English and a smattering of Mandarin.

In these assorted vignettes, not necessarily presented in a chronological order, one may relate to by suggesting, “Hey, that’s me!” while others may appear as vague and tenuous memories.

Photo: Aaron Ang

The concert opened with musicians placed within the audience and behind, playing isolated tunes and melodies before gathering onstage to form the ensemble proper. This was representative of diverse peoples who hailed from different lands coming together in composer Gu Wei’s Hope / Divergence, the opening work.

Photo: Aaron Ang

One might have expected jarring dissonances when instruments from the West (violin, cello, clarinet and euphonium) collide headlong with Chinese (pipa and sheng), Indian (veena), Indonesian (gamelan and suling) and those that cross cultures (accordion and percussion).

Photo: Aaron Ang

But no, the music remained remarkably harmonious for most part including Gu’s Fracture / Ascent, representing separation from Malaysia. If truth be told, Singapore’s independence was not exactly bloodless, with dozens paying with their lives in 1964 race riots, leading to the eventual split.

Symbolism was strong in the running tableaux, especially in Yeo’s obsessive activity in building, planting, watering and cultivating. Soil and sand littered centrestage, plants were uprooted and re-potted, Lego bricks were assembled into various structures, and assorted toys were played with.

One is soon guided into the notion that ever-busy Everyman was encapsulated in a singular person, the founding prime minister. To his credit, he never had to proclaim, “I am Lee Kuan Yew!”

Young Artist Award recipient Chen Zhangyi’s segment From Scratch related events including the 1961 Bukit Ho Swee fire (dramatic shouting), the 2004 Nicoll Highway MRT collapse (Lego pieces falling apart), and the 1981 completion of Changi Airport (toy planes taking off). Memories are made of these, and with Cultural Medallion recipient Eric Watson’s Passing The Baton and Legacy And Beyond / After The Rain, one is transported to present times.

Photo: Aaron Ang

It did not matter if one could not distinguish when each work ended and the next began, as the musical narrative accompanying the acting was seamless. The multiple instrumental parts were helmed by no less than virtuosos, and one could easily enjoy their work even if one was no longer following the story. Memoirs In Music deserves to be replayed, at least to a bigger audience that gathered on this lazy Tuesday evening.

Photo: Aaron Ang

HEALING ARTS SINGAPORE OPENING CONCERT / Photographs

This was the Opening Concert (Monday, 8 December 2025) of the 5-day symposium (8-12 December 2025) organised by Healing Arts Singapore in conjunction with the Centre of Music and Health based in Yong Siew Toh Conservatory. There was lots of music performed, and here are some of the photos from a colourfully varied concert.

Opening the evening were excerpts from
Chen Zhangyi's opera Lily, a probing work
about the ravages of dementia.

Soprano Wong Su Sun played the role of Lily,
a singing teacher alongside her son,
sung by tenor Jonathan Charles Tay.

Singapore's only hearing-impaired concert pianist
Azariah Tan related how his performance of
Beethoven roused a patient with dementia.

Here Azariah Tan performed the first movement
from Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.5 "Emperor".

It was a reading of true grandeur,
which he mastered in a matter of a few weeks!

Applause alongside YST Orchestral Institute
conductor Jason Lai.

Seeding The Floor - 
performing mindfulness of everyday
by Arts Fission

Movement and plants.

Finding beauty in the mundane.

The pastoral setting was telling:
country folks are happier people.

Musicians from Beautiful Mind Charity and
YST Orchestral Institute perform popular tunes.

Teng Ensemble joins the fray.
Young Artist Award recipient Syafiqah Sallehin
plays the accordion in Chow Junyi's Journey
with Geylang Sipaku Geylang and Rasa Sayang.

Phoon Yu's contrapuntal
Transi For The Common Man.

Western and traditional Chinese instruments
are highlighted in these works.

A rousing end to the concert
with Chow Junyi's Little White Boat.

BACH CONCERTOS EXTRAVAGANZA / Red Dot Baroque / Review

 

BACH CONCERTOS EXTRAVAGANZA!

Red Dot Baroque

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (7 September 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 September 2025 with the title "Celebrating 60 years of Singapore-Germany diplomacy with Bach extravaganza".

Red Dot Baroque (RDB), led by violinist and Young Artist Award recipient Alan Choo, is Singapore’s only professional group playing period instruments. In 2023, it performed all six of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos in a single sitting. Its latest concert, celebrating SG60 and marking sixty years of Singapore-Germany diplomacy, saw four favourite concertos of the German baroque master aired.

Photo: Yong Junyi

Opening the show was the Concerto for violin and oboe in C minor (BWV.1060) with soloists Placido Ho (violin) and Veda Lin (oboe). Both played as members of the general ensemble before assuming their solo parts and standing out with piquant tones. There were few moments as beautiful as the slow central movement’s duet, before a flurry of counterpoint completed the fast finale.

The title of Orchestral Suite No.2 in B minor (BWV.1067) may seem a misnomer as there were just six players partnering Rachel Ho on traverso (baroque flute) for the set in seven movements. Partita or Overture might have been more apt titles for this, but Ho’s lovely tone presided over dances including a Rondeau, Sarabande, Bourree, Polonaise and Menuet.

Photo: Yong Junyi

The audience’s erratic response of applauding between some movements may have distracted the ensemble, leading to a false start for the Badinerie. However, playful bantering between players was the idea of this mercurial finale, closing the work on an irrepressible high.

Photo: Yong Junyi

After the interval, a rare performance of the Harpsichord Concerto in A major (BWV.1055) featured Mervyn Lee as soloist. His understated but crystal-clear articulation was the highlight in this forerunner of the piano concerto, with brooding and emoting in the Larghetto slow movement, before breaking free of fetters in the fast outer movements.

Photo: Yong Junyi

Closing the matinee was the popular Concerto for two violins in D minor (BWV.1043) with leader Choo and Gabriel Lee in the spotlight. The unspoken chemistry between two founding members shone through despite having quite different stage demeanours, Choo’s animated movements versus Lee’s steadfast stance. The performance, true to form, exuded joy from every pore.

Inserted between the concertos in each half was the Asian premiere of Rainforest Refrains (2025), composed for RDB’s Italian tour earlier this year by Young Artist Award recipient Chen Zhangyi. This is a modern update of the multi-movement baroque suite or partita. With narration and delightful singing by soprano Teng Xiang Ting, this could also pass off as a neo-baroque cantata.

Photo: Yong Junyi

Tropical flora and fauna were the subjects in its nine movements. Burung Hamba Kera (The Monkey’s Servant Bird), a reimagination of the Malay song Burung Kakak Tua contrasted with Pangolin Passacaglia, a doleful lament. The lively finale became a play on the Chinese words “liu lian”, which was to linger besides being the name of a thorny but aromatic fruit.

Composer Chen Zhangyi
acknowledges the applause.

The encore of Phang Kok Jun’s A Barojak Suite (2020) comprised four dance movements which were settings of local songs in the form of antique dances: the allemande, corrente, sarabande and gigue. Commissioned out of pure fun, one has not lived without having heard Munnaeru Vaalibaa or Jinkli Nona played on baroque instruments.

SYMPHONY OF NATION. HARMONY OF YOUTH / Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra / Review

 

SYMPHONY OF NATION / 

HARMONY OF YOUTH

Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Wednesday (20 August 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 23 August 2025 with the title "Singapore Youth Philharmonic off to raw but promising start".

The Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra (SYPO) made its debut as recently as last year, and in a very ambitious SG60 celebratory concert, attempted to fly before it had barely started walking. Joined by 31 members of the China Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, a very big orchestra assembled and conducted by Luo Wei had a fair share of stumbles but ultimately stood up tall to be counted.

Photo: Andy Tan

Amilcare Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours from La Gioconda, recently performed by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in its Disney Fantasia concert, opened the evening. The young musicians took a little time to warm up but soon had a good feel of its dance rhythms, provided a rousingly animated start.

There were two world premieres of works by Singaporean composers. Solace (Op.10) by 20-year-old national serviceman Chia Ren Cher dwelled on ruminations of troubled youth, with a neo-Romantic feel reminiscent of Russian composers like Alexander Glazunov and Anatol Liadov. Brimming with ideas, the work featured difficult passages for woodwinds and brass with many pushed to the limits of abilities. Despite the rawness of playing, there is much to suggest Chia is a compositional talent mature beyond his tender years.

Young Artist Award recipient Chen Zhangyi’s Istana Woodneuk opened with ceremonial drumming on Malay hand-held frame drums, a work celebrating the derelict 90-year-old palace off Tyersall Road once owned by the Sultan of Johore. Major solos by cellist Fong Tze Meng and violinist Kaleb Toh representing Sultan Ibrahim and his Scottish bride Helen played like a movement from a double concerto, remembering a romance that did not last.

Closing the first half was Liu Tieshan and Mao Yuan’s Dance of the Yao People, based on ethnic music by indigenous tribes in China’s Guangxi province. It received a suitably boisterous reading. More significantly, this was originally performed at the Singapore Symphony’s inaugural concert in January 1979 led by its late founding conductor Choo Hoey. One legacy of Singapore’s musical pioneers is why this nation has so many good young orchestras today, including the SYPO.

Playing for some 50 minutes, one wondered whether the young musicians could weather the storms of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No.3 in E flat major (Op.55), also known as the Eroica Symphony. Under Luo’s taut direction, the performance was a very encouraging if not a totally polished one.

Photo: Andy Tan

From the manner of its punched-out opening chords, one knew this was going to be a serious account, as the tension and urgency that came after so proved. The second movement’s funeral march carried the weight of the entire symphony, and while it dragged a little, the most lucid moments were provided by excellent solo oboist Hu Qiuzi.

The Scherzo bristled with energy, with the trio of French horns in the Trio beginning promisingly but losing steam midway through. The finale’s variations on the dance from Beethoven’s own ballet The Creatures of Prometheus were well held together with busy counterpoint taken in its stride. SYPO will no doubt have many fine concerts ahead, and they have only just begun.