YAN HUICHANG & SCO / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

 

YAN HUICHANG & SCO 

Singapore Chinese Orchestra 

Singapore Conference Hall 

Saturday (23 November 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 November 2024 with the title "Yan Huichang dazzles in guest conductor stint with SCO".

Every concert needs to be special. That seems to be the credo of Cultural Medallion recipient Yan Huichang, who is the Artistic Director and Principal Conductor for Life of the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra. The festive spirit of his HKCO concerts at Esplanade’s Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts in recent years was replicated as the Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s guest conductor this evening. 

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Opening with Da De Sheng (Triumph), as arranged by Zhang Shiye, antiphonal drumming and a chorus of suonas provided a raucous atmosphere, and one wondered whether the sheer excess of decibels generated could be topped. In a word, yes. 

Yan’s considerable prowess as a composer were demonstrated in two original works. Charms of Hainan, inspired by a 1981 visit to China’s southernmost island, had nothing to do with beach resorts, naval bases or culinary delights, but ethnic folk music of its indigenous Hlai hilltribes. 

The slow opening movement, Stroll, was impressionist in colour and evocatively so. Cottage, a romance between courting couples, paired the distinctive timbres of Zhang Shuo’s sax-like guanzi with Zhang Li’s lute-like xiaoruan in a beautiful duet like no other. This tender serenade could have gone on forever and nobody would have objected. The closing Gathering, recounting bull-fighting scenes, had more festive dancing than blood-letting. 

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Yan’s second work, Rhapsody of String Puppets, was more personal as it celebrated the art of Heyang string puppetry from his home province of Shaanxi. This also showcased the multi-faceted talents of 23-year-old Wang Kun whose mastery of gubanhuai (an ancient drumset), pixianhu (a huqin unique to Shaanxi, played with an outsized bow) and vocalisation may be modestly described as a veritable one-man-band. 

A fiddler’s dexterity, jazz-drummer’s rhythmicity and story-teller’s theatricality make for a rare combination. All of these came to a vivid confluence in the central movement entitled Dazzle: Presto of Guxian. Yan hailed Wang as one of two such virtuosi in the Chinese musical world, and the audience was witnessing the better one this evening. 

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

The other significant concertante work was Kuan Nai-Chung’s four-movement Peacock, featuring SCO’s sheng principal Guo Changsuo on a 36-reed sheng. Colourful in extremis might just sum up its contents, which opened with a leisurely song, later quickening in pace for a lilting Dance of Peacock Maidens. 

Then came the big surprise with Peacock in the Cage, taking a serious turn in a form of a Baroque passacaglia followed by a rather idiomatic transcription of the E minor Fugue from Book One of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. One has not truly lived without witnessing Bachian counterpoint on a sheng accompanied by huqins. 

The closing work was the battle classic Shi Mian Mai Fu (Ambush From All Sides) arranged by Liu Wenjin and Zhao Yongshan, where one could hear the frenzy of warfare, charging steeds and the clash of metal with sparks flying. Loud and prolonged applause yielded a high octane encore, Sai Ma (Horse Racing), complete with the obligatory whinnying and neighing.

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

VIRTUOSO SERIES III: WINDS / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

VIRTUOSO SERIES III: WINDS

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (25 September 2021)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 September 2021 with the title "Wind instruments take centre stage".

 

The third concert of Singapore’s Chinese Orchestra’s Virtuoso Series of chamber concerts was devoted to plangent sounds of Chinese wind instruments, focusing on the dizi, sheng and suona. Responsible for unique and distinct timbres in orchestral concerts, these took on a life of their own as solo instruments when played by the orchestra’s principals.

 

Guo Changsuo brought out a full range of colours from the sheng in Yan Haideng’s Alluring Span Of The Peacock, which included the tricky technique of tremolo-tonguing. Even with an instrument that plays multiple tones simultaneously, this lent an otherwordly feel to a rhapsodic work that began slowly but gave way to an exuberant dance. This same liveliness also possessed the Henan folktune Grand Prelude, arranged Li Guanglu, which was brief but unremittingly flashy.

 

Yin Zhiyang commanded two flutes, opening with the vertically-played xiao in the ancient tune Autumn Yearning At The Dressing Table arranged by Du Ciwen and accompanied by Xu Hui on guzheng. Lower registers were plumbed in this slow piece which expressed the melancholy of solitude like no other.

 

For the Hunan folktune Partridges Flying arranged by Zhao Songting, techniques of the transversely-played dizi were fully exploited. These encompassed fluttering trills simulating the flitting of wings, followed by circular breathing in the work’s dynamic final third. Here, the audience may be excused for feeling somewhat breathless.        

 

Suona principal Jin Shiyi opened accounts with Mao Kuangping and Hu Zhihou’s arrangement of  Eighteen Songs On Nomad Flute, which despite its title, was performed on the xinguan. This is a new reed instrument developed by Jin and his SCO colleague Liu Jiang which looks like a sawn-off clarinet, as well as sounds like one. In this meditative number accompanied by harpist Fontane Liang, a wealth of expressive feeling relived the trials and tribulations of Han dynasty heroine Lady Cai Wenji.  

 

Jin’s own arrangement of the Henan folktune Tribute To Homeland, accompanied by sheng and bangzi (wood blocks), was the perfect vehicle for his suona, played with the stentorian stridency of a ceremonial trumpet. Also filled with playful humour, there were slurs and slides aplenty which added to the sense of occasion.

 

Finally, an ensemble of nine assembled to perform Yu Huiyong and Hu Dengtiao Theme Of Pioneers rearranged by Yeo Puay Hian. There were now two each of dizis, shengs and suonas supported by three percussionists.

 

This Socialist Realist potboiler was a rowdy and raucous affair, celebrating the glorious years of “vigorous technological innovation” (as quoted in the programme notes) during the late 1950s. Was this referring to the Great Leap Forward? One surmises the “indomitable, courageous spirit of fearlessness” of the millions who perished should never be forgotten.

 

The hour-long concert was followed by an equally lively question-and-answer session where the spontaneity and candour displayed by the three principals revealed another side to their virtuosity. 

EIGHT TONES UNINTERRUPTED / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

EIGHT TONES UNINTERRUPTED
Singapore Chinese Orchestra
Singapore Conference Hall
Friday (17 February 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 February 2012 with the title "An Asian feast for all".

This concert, part of the island-wide musical marathon in conjunction with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s 15th anniversary, showed how much Chinese instrumental music has evolved. The long-held notion of small chamber groups playing ancient Chinese melodies in strict unison has given way to a diversity that is rapidly expanding.

The concert began with Wang Dan Hong’s rhapsodic Eight Tones, with the solo suona boldly opening accounts. Raw and earthy, the motto theme based on Zhuang ethnic music was subjected to a series ceremonial fanfares and elaborations before erupting into a full-blown dance procession.

Moving southerly was Sabah-native Simon Kong’s Izpirazione II, which won 2nd Prize in the International Chinese Orchestral Composition Competition in 2006. The two movements performed, Rambutan and Tarap (a jackfruit’s relative, above), attempted to infuse Southeast Asian elements into what is now known as Nanyang music.

The former was a rhythmic scherzo-like movement with strong presence of tuned percussion, while the latter revelled in Borneo aboriginal rhythms and conductor Quek Ling Kiong’s ad libitum grunts and chants. Audience participation was included, with synchronised foot-stomping and rhythmic clapping.

When it came to Zhang Xiao Feng’s Nong Yu Sheng, a three-movement virtuoso concerto for sheng and orchestra, the idioms were so removed from Chinese sources as to sound positively occidental. What were Zhang’s inspirations? French, Russian or Bernstein’s Americana? It was hard to tell from the first movement’s lilting serenade, or the slow movement’s atmospherics which lightly balanced muted strings with Guo Chang Suo’s sensuously beautiful solo, or the busy toccata-like figurations of the furious finale. Suffice to say, it was a surprising and original departure from the norm, and a quite brilliant one at that.

As if to appease more conservative tastes, the second half was more traditional with Yang Chun Lin and Zhan Yong Ming’s Never-Ending Resentment, a concerto about the ill-fated romance of the Tang Emperor and concubine Yang Gui Fei. Originally scored for two erhus, this version showcased Zhan’s amazing range on a composite flute that combined both registers of bangdi and qudi. Lovers of the Butterfly Lovers Concerto would have warmed up to this.

To close was A Trip To Lhasa by Kuan Nai-Chung, a picture postcard suite with its programmatic depictions of the Potala (solemn and sacred), the Yalu Tsangpo River (flowingly lyrical), a sky burial (eerie and macabre) and the Vanquishing Demons dance (noisily joyous). it was a raucous close to a concert with something for everybody.