Flower Dome @ Gardens By
The Bay
This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 November 2012 with the title "Delightful meeting of the old and new".
There is a new orchestra in town, and it is
called ONsemble. Led by 22-year-old New Zealander Ray Chan, it is formed
exclusively by students of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, hailing from afar as
Uzbekistan to Australia. Its repertoire
comprises music that is “old” and “new”, accounting for the first two letters
of its name.
ONsemble’s debut concert could not have been
more public, filling the climate-controlled Flower Dome at Gardens By The Bay
with the sound of music. Rain and dark clouds could not deter the proceedings,
witnessed by a seated audience and thousands more passing by.
Appropriately, the concert began with Alla Hornpipe from Handel’s Water Music. Its celebratory atmosphere,
with a backdrop of Marina Bay and The Singapore
Flyer, roused the spirits and piqued the senses. The sonics within the Dome,
with hardly any reverberative qualities, was rather diffuse, so some
amplification was called for.
However sitting close by, one could truly
appreciate the soloists in the concerti grossi that were performed. Cellists
James Ng and Cho-Hang Oh did the honours for Vivaldi’s Concerto in G minor, and they were joined by a third cellist James
Churchill for a lovely unaccompanied trio that was its Largo slow movement.
Violinists Monique Lapins and Liu Yi Retallick
starred in Corelli’s Christmas Concerto
Grosso, characterised by tightly knit ensemble work, and shared the lively
solo part in Vivaldi’s Autumn from The Four Seasons. The mostly baroque and
early classical segment was completed by a rare airing of Carl Philippe
Emmanuel Bach’s Sinfonia in B minor,
its storms and stresses mirroring the inclement weather, and the first movement
of Haydn’s Oxford Symphony.
This accounted for the “old” and traditional in
ONsemble. The “new” was the World Premiere of young New Zealander composer
David Taylor’s Prime, which provided
the evening’s high point. Far from the world of serialism which passes for much
contemporary music, this was a highly accessible tone poem in the kinetically
charged minimalist style of John Adams. The scoring for strings, winds, brass,
percussion and keyboards gave it a radiant and ear-catching quality, pleasant
yet piquant.
 |
| Young Kiwi composer David Taylor acknowledges the well-deserved applause. |
Closer to home, its intricately-woven and highly
virtuosic figurations reminded one of the gamelan-inspired scores of Canadian
Colin McPhee and East-leaning aesthetics of Australian Peter Sculthorpe, both
masters captivated by the Orient. In short, it was a very palatable treat worth
many further listens.
With the sun setting early, and evening lights clicking
on, the orchestra played the latter half of its 90-minute programme in
semi-darkness. It mattered little, as the ONsemble performed with an inner
illumination borne of passion and professionalism. May this long remain undimmed.
