ASCO IS 5! / Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra / Review

ACSO IS 5!

Asian Cultural 

Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Tuesday (30 August 2022)

 

The Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra (ACSO), founded in 2016, occupies an important niche in Singapore’s music scene by performing works that merge Asian cultures and sensibilities with the western symphony orchestra. By championing music by Singaporean and Asian composers, it has complemented the good work fostered by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra and its Nanyang music projects. It also filled the gaping lacuna left by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, which had earlier in this century marketed itself as a “destination orchestra by bringing together musical cultures from the East and West”, but quietly dropped that tagline somewhere along the way.

 

ACSO is led by a team of two conductors, Dedric Wong Deli, well-known as a conductor of the Chinese instrumental chamber group Ding Yi Music Company, and Adrian Chiang, General Manager of re:Sound Collective and conductor of numerous ensembles thus representing the western classical music caucus. They share conducting duties in its concerts, taking turns in leading different works with the programme.

 

Wong opened the evening with Confluence by Wang Chen Wei (present Composer-in-Residence of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra), a rousing overture-like work that typified the Nanyang sound. Using the pelog scale in its lilting main theme, there is a recognisable Indo-Malayan character to the music, which also benefitted from the use of liberal portamenti and sheer colour of symphonic instruments. To seal this colourful marriage between cultures, a fugue was also thrown into the fray, livening the proceedings besides offering further proof of the composer’s academic credentials.  

 

Following this were four concertante works, more than amply demonstrating the wealth of solo instrumental talent on our shores. The first was Germaine Goh’s Kaleidoscope, a single-movement fantasy for clarinet and orchestra with Ralph Emmanuel Lim as exuberant soloist. Opening with a solo accompanied by harp ostinatos, the music opened dreamily and then came to life with a series of animated dance-like rhythms. Influences from Debussy may be discerned, as well as Copland and Bernstein in the more jazzy bits, but she does not imitate them. Much is attractive and enjoyable in this work, where the demi-mondaine world of smokey speakeasies and Hollywood glamour is not just hinted at but relived.    

 

Chinese composer Wang Dan Hong is a well-known name in Chinese orchestra circles and her guzheng concerto As Thus is as glitzy as they come. Its slow introduction with gentle string accompaniment established soloist Yvonne Tay, in an advanced antenatal state, as a sensitive protagonist. However the amplication of her guzheng was garishly overdone, with distorted sound detracting from her brilliant narrative. As with Wang’s rhapsodic and quasi-cinematic scores, the pacing hastened to an exciting climax, and a faux ending which had the audience applauding prematurely. A true apotheosis and close came later, and the payoff was no less vociferous.

 

Singapore-based Briton Eric Watson’s Dialogue for tabla and orchestra is a well-travelled work commissioned by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. Its iteration with western instruments was no less trenchant, held together by the virtuosic drumming of Govin Tan, young tabla virtuoso who comes from a Hindu Chinese family. If one wondered what mileage could be had with a pair of drums which essentially plays single notes, one is prepared to be surprised. For the first half, the tabla provided accompaniment to a series of varied themes from the orchestra (including one resembling a motif from Stravinsky’s Firebird), then it takes a life of its own – a good four minutes or so of solo improvisation. As cadenzas go, this was simply breathtaking.

Edmund Song is better known as the double bassist of Red Dot Baroque and re:Sound. This evening, he took on duo-mantle of composer and conductor, leading the World Premiere of his Triple Concertino entitled Till The End Of Time. A work that employed a mix of Asian scales, the music emanated a variety of aromatic incenses. The soloists Niranjan Pandian (bansuri, North Indian bamboo flute), Jacky Ng (suona) and Azrin Abdullah (oud, Middle Eastern lute) had their moments in the spotlight, and how precious these were. The bansuri was positively haunting, the suona took on cor anglais tones resembling Rodrigo’s Aranjuez, while the oud could have had more air time. Some degree of counterpoint with all three together should have been the end-result but the opportunity was not taken, with heterophony prevailing instead.

 

It would still have been a totally satisfying experience had the concert ended there, but ACSO possessed several encores up its collective sleeve. Surprise celebrity cameos took the form of busker-of-the-season Jeff Ng in a medley of JJ Lin songs, while legendary songstress and 2021 Cultural Medallion recipient Rahimah Rahim irrepressibly strutted her stuff with two Malay songs and Bob Gaudio’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off You (Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons). That was mere icing on a wonderfully baked cake, and long may the Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra thrive, and entertain.

 

All the soloists joined in the finale
Can't Take My Eyes Off You.

PREMIERE / Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra / Review

PREMIERE

Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Saturday (8 July 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 July 2017 with the title "Rousing blend of music".

The Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra was inaugurated in 2016 to perform Asian symphonic works, with the mission of “celebrating them with equal regard as their Western counterparts”. Its third concert got off to an excellent start with young Singaporean composer Wang Chenwei's Confluence.

Implied in its title, the work cleverly fused themes based on Indian and Indonesian scales with Western compositional techniques. The flavour was unmistakeable Asian, down to raucous rhythms and slurring of melodies, before thematic material developed into a Bachian fugue. Originally composed for Chinese instruments, the World Premiere of its Western orchestration made for a rousing opener. 

Another World Premiere was Taiwanese composer Wang Yi-Lu's The Blue Planet: Earth, an erhu concerto featuring soloist Wong Qin Kai. Alternating between violence and serenity, the work pondered about the planet's origins and future, with the virtuosic erhu being its muse. Melodic interest included a theme reminiscent of Edelweiss (The Sound Of Music) while the often lively orchestral parts reminded this listener of works by Revueltas and Bernstein.

Xin Huguang's Gada Meiren (Ga Da Mei Lin) of 1956 is an established Chinese repertoire classic. The symphonic poem used a well-known Mongolian melody inspired by the eponymous warrior and national hero, first heard on solo oboe and developed into a full-blown rhapsody. Conducted by Dedric Wong, the music ambled from a pastoral opening into battle mode, the sort now often regarded as epic film music, before settling to an elegiac denouement. 

The young orchestra members coped well in the two-hour long concert, playing with much effervescent energy and in many occasions, no little refinement. Their Asian adventure continued with late Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar's 40-minute-long Symphony (realised by David Murphy), conducted by Adrian Chiang.

Composed in 2010 while in his nineties, the work was closer in spirit to the 1960-70s when he found worldwide fame in his association with the Beatles and Yehudi Menuhin. Each of its four movements is based on a raga, with the orchestra introducing the themes before brothers Krsna Tan (sitar) and Govin Tan (tabla) entering the fray.

Actual raga performances can last the best part of a morning or evening, but confined by the symphonic form, their scope for improvisation was limited to the score's dictates. Such is the “conflict” between Asian music and Western concert genres, stereotypes we often label as symphonies, concertos, suites and the like.

Nonetheless, this did little to curb the enjoyment of both soloists, with the finale (Banjara) culminating in Govin's extended tabla improvisation, Krsna's sitar spiel, an apparent duel and with the orchestra, an ecstatic romp to the finish.

Jeffrey Tan's exuberant Train To Euston, featuring the 6-man fusion band Flame Of The Forest (violin, sitar, tabla, percussion, keyboard, electric guitar and electric bass) served as an enjoyable encore. With cheers aplenty, the evening which started like a serious gig closed like a rock concert.    

TWIN TRAVELLERS / Tan Su-Min & Tan Su-Hui / Review

TWIN TRAVELLERS

Tan Su-Min & Tan Su-Hui

Esplanade Recital Studio

Thursday (26 May 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 May 2016 with the title "Intoxicating performance from musician twins".

Every once in a generation, there comes a pair of musical twin sisters to take the local music scene by storm. During the 1990s, it was duo pianists Low Shao Ying and Shao Suan, who were graduates of the Paris Conservatory. This decade belongs to the Tan twins, zhongruan player Clara Su-Min and guzheng exponent Sophy Su-Hui, who both completed their education at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and Shanghai Conservatory.

Their debut recital, part of Esplanade's Chinese Chamber Music Series, was a confident 70-minute showcase of their performing, composing and arrangement skills. The first three works were of classical origin, beginning with the sisters' arrangement of Mei Hua Yin (Impressions of the Plum Blossom), where they were joined by xiao (vertical flute) player Tan Qing Lun.

The xiao's plaintiveness and contrasting qualities of the strummed and plucked string instruments transported one back to a time of antiquity. The mood was initially subdued but worked itself to a stirring climax. A similar schema applied to Ruan Ji's The Drunkard (from the era of Three Kingdoms), where the duo took turns to carry the serenade's melodies and accompaniment to a tipsy conclusion.

Su-Hui's performance of the old Hakka tune Chu Shui Lian (Lotus On Water) revelled in its high registers where a wealth of detail was gloriously expressed. Not to be outdone, Su-Min's highly virtuosic performance of the toccata-like 1^st movement of Liu Xing's Zhonghu Concerto No.2 (with Kseniia Vokhmianina on piano) was a revelation.

This Western-style concertante work had little in Chinese influences, resembling more a Spanish guitar concerto with repetitive minimalist rhythms and harmonies. That Su-Min was invited to perform its World Premiere at the 2014 Hong Kong Arts Festival said much about her standing in the Chinese music world.          

In Wei Jun's Desert Trail, the guzheng was tuned to the exotic scales heard in Arabic music. With Chen Kangren's hand drum providing the beat, the sultriness and hazy incense of the Middle East were relived in this leisurely-paced work.

The final two works were jointly composed by the sisters, both of whom have a penchant for the popular and contemporary mainstream. Mystic Forest was quiet and serene, a vivid night scene which gradually turns to nascent dawn as the music picks up in pace. Govin Tan's tabla set provided a steady beat and almost gave the work an Indian feel.

Taped sounds with reverberating echoes and distant chants accompanied the titular Traveller, a rousing fusion work which imagines a caravan making its way through a swathe of foreign lands along the legendary old Silk Road. Here, the fully-subscribed house was witness to the three Tans in exuberant mood as the concert closed on a intoxicating high.

There was time for an encore from the twins, and the lively post-concert discussion revealed that a CD recording will be on its way sometime later this year. Based on this evening's show, patience will be a virtue as one can hardly wait.