HANS GRAF FAREWELL SERIES: MOZART AND SALIERI / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

HANS GRAF FAREWELL SERIES:

MOZART AND SALIERI

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Thursday (21 May 2026)

This review was first published in Bachtrack.com on 26 May 2026 with the title "Mozart and Salieri under the spotlight in Hans Graf’s Singapore farewell".

Let’s first get this out of the way. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was a musical genius while Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) a skilled journeyman. The premise of Hans Graf’s final concert in his six-year tenure (2020-2026) at the helm of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra was not just to compare achievements of both composers, but to ponder the gulf between hard work and divine inspiration, and how we live with both.

The evening opened with Salieri’s Piano Concerto in C major (1773), from a rising 23-year-old who still had 52 years to live. The opening Allegro maestoso was a martial ritornello that exuded the same vibe as Mozart’s K.503, also in the same key. Big chords paved the way for young pianist Adrian Tang’s clean and accomplished delivery, which lacked nothing in polish and purpose. 

The problem was how Salieri worked his musical ideas and themes. While Mozart delighted in variety and nuance, Salieri resorted to what virtuosi of the day did best, note-spinning and striving for effect. The development and cadenza had lots of that, and one soon tired of listening. The slow movement in A minor had an opening solo resembling the corresponding movement of Mozart’s K.488, but fell short of his combo of gravitas and elegance. The finale’s Rondo saw delicate and nimble fingerwork on display with passages of Sturm und Drang by way of contrast. While pleasant and euphonious to the ear, it proved ultimately unmemorable.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.14 in E flat major (K.449) was premiered when he was 28, right at the cusp of greatness. What a big difference it made with the workmanlike Salieri. Young soloist Toby Tan did the honours, giving a dream performance of fluency and care for detail. He truly got into the spirit of Mozart, imbuing the score with a singing quality and en point articulation. 

The slow movement was a lyrical gift that kept on giving, milked for all its worth, while the finale’s theme and variations sparkled, going full buffo in a comedic coda for a final flourish. Both pianists, students of Albert Tiu, joined hands for a delightful encore, the finale from the Sonata for four hands in D major by ... Mozart (K.381), thank goodness.

Photo: Chris P.Lim

Toby Tan and Adrian Tang
with their teacher Albert Tiu

Rimsky-Korsakov’s one-act opera Mozart and Salieri (1897), based on Pushkin’s little tragedy from 1830 and sung in Russian (with English surtitles), received its Singapore premiere. This piece of speculatory fiction had spawned an industry built on the scurrilous rumour that Salieri murdered Mozart. He did nothing of the sort, but judging by Russian bass Mikhail Svetlov’s self-pitying monologue as the industrious but pedantic Salieri, might as well have done so. By poisoning the god-given genius of an irreverent and flippant Mozart, played by the much younger-looking Russian tenor Boris Stepanov, he was preserving hoards who bore the badge of mediocrity.

This was not so much a lyrical opera in the traditional sense but a psychological melodrama that pitted earth-bound against celestial talent. Rimsky-Korsakov was also comparing himself with the cultural giants that were Pushkin and Mussorgsky. 

Photo: Chris P.Lim

A chamber-sized orchestra accompanied the action, and there were cameos by Matthias Oestringer as the blind street violinist and Adrian Tang in the pastiche piano part. Members of the Singapore Symphony Chorus (Eudenice Palaruan, choral director), placed high in the balcony sang the opening page from Mozart’s Requiem, as the musical rivals memorably walked into the pages of infamy. Graf’s final act as music director of the SSO could not have been more poignant.

Rating ****

Posterity has shown
who's got the last laugh.

The original review on Bachtrack.com:

Mozart and Salieri under the spotlight in Graf’s Singapore farewell | Bachtrack

HANS GRAF FAREWELL SERIES: MYSTERE DE L'INSTANT / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

HANS GRAF FAREWELL SERIES:

MYSTERE DE L’INSTANT

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (15 May 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 18 May 2026 with the title "Conductor Hans Graf tests virtuosity of musicians with French programme of avant-garde and fun fare".

The second concert programme of Singapore Symphony Orchestra music director Hans Graf’s Farewell Series was an all-French affair. Although well-known for his interpretation of Austro-German and Central European repertoire, his sympathy for modern French music extended to two albums of orchestral music by 20th century master Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013).

Dutilleux’s Mystere de l’instant (Mystery of the Moment), composed as recently as 1989, received its first Singapore performance. Scored for strings, cimbalom (dulcimer) and percussion, its rarefied palette of shades and dissonances was a revelation all through ten short but volatile movements.

All form of string techniques encapsulated in 24 independent parts were experimented, while Patrick Ngo’s yangqin (doubling as cimbalom), Mario Choo’s percussion and Christian Schioler’s timpani were used sparingly but strategically. Graf was putting to the test the virtuosity of his players, succeeding admirably while also opening the ears of listeners unaccustomed to the avant-garde.

The rest of the concert offered much easier listening in the form of lollipops. Two showpieces for violin highlighted the uncommon prowess of young Salzburg-based Chinese violinist He Ziyu. Opening with Camille Saint-Saens’s popular Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso, he exhibited a singing tone and spot-on intonation.

Arguably more challenging was Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane, a gypsy rhapsody that opens with an extended solo of immense difficulty, leading to an unbuttoned dance which gave a new meaning to gay abandon. The natural ease at which he negotiated the music’s myriad twists and turns was further highlighted in his encore, Ukraine-born violin virtuoso Nathan Milstein’s Paganiniana, a fiendish mash-up of Nicolo Paganini’s Caprices with the infamous No.24 as a starting point.

The celebration of miraculous youth continued into the concert’s second half with Singapore’s most prominent classical saxophonist Samuel Phua in Darius Milhaud’s Scaramouche. Originally conceived for two pianos, this orchestral version delighted in its sheer busyness, with the opening movement pitting sax against the forces of some implacable big band.

His voice finally came to the fore in the slow movement, a creamily-tone romance turned bluesy by discreet pairs of trumpets and trombones, which sounded even better than the original. The finale was a Brazilian samba with the irrepressible spirit of a Mardi Gras in Rio. Speaking of festivals, his encore of local composer Wang Chenwei’s Thaipusam, originally for violin solo, swung like cool Carnatic jazz.

Despite its diminutive title, Francis Poulenc’s four-movement Sinfonietta (1948) is a major 30-minute work in four movements which exceeded the lengths of most Mozart symphonies. Conceived in neoclassical style with influences by Igor Stravinsky and the cabaret, the line between popular and serious music became blurred beyond recognition.

Wit and humour abounded in its pages, captured with requisite verve by Graf and his charges. The scherzo-like second movement relived the jive of the earlier Milhaud (both composers were part of a Parisian clique called Les Six), while the slow movement lilted with the gentle grace of a baroque-era dance. It was left in the Mozartian finale to pull out all stops for a delightful conclusion of an intriguing but enjoyable programme.

All photos by Yoricko Liu, 

courtesy of Singapore Symphony Orchestra

HANS GRAF FAREWELL SERIES: SCHEHERAZADE / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / A Reminiscence

 

HANS GRAF FAREWELL SERIES:

SCHEHERAZADE

Esplanade Concert Hall

Thursday (7 May 2026)

Thank you, Music Director Hans Graf. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra embarked on a final chapter with its third Music Director Hans Graf with three programmes in his Farewell Series of concerts. From 2020, Graf’s tenure began with the troubling episode which we will remember as the global Covid-19 pandemic. There was a total suspension of concert activity for several months, and then the very gradual process of reintroducing concert via online streaming, then socially distanced live concerts for very limited audiences. It was only in April 2022, when full-length concert programmes returned, with Graf and his SSO presenting an all-Shostakovich concert.

Adventurous programming has characterised Graf’s choices. Singapore had local premieres of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (complete incidental music), Ravel’s complete ballet Daphnis et Chloe and his single-act opera L’Heure Espagnole (The Spanish Hour). Even before that, he led the Singapore premiere of Alexander Zemlinsky’s Die Seejungfrau (The Mermaid).

Photo: Jack Yam

This mostly Russian concert opened with Rachmaninov’s early tone poem The Rock. From the outset, refinement of ensemble was evident, and so was the solo playing, particularly from Evgueni Brokmiller’s flute and Li Xin’s clarinet. The warmth of SSO strings continued to radiate as the music shifted gears from its dour opening to passionate highs. The Lermontov poem and Chekhov story becomes secondary to the musical narrative which offered hope for the eponymous old man in the presence of a young lady but isolation and resignation at its end. SSO has recorded this on BIS but a live performance is always the preferable experience.

The inclusion of Polish composer Karol Szymanowski’s Second Violin Concerto (1932) was a touch of inspiration. Some 25 years ago, SSO performed the First Violin Concerto (1916) with Pierre Amoyal playing the Kochanski Strad, once owned by Polish violinist Pawel Kochanski, the dedicatee of both concertos. That was also the violin which premiered both concertos, and that seemed like a historical moment in SSO’s archival history. Young Spanish violinist Leticia Moreno’s performance seemed like the logical follow-up a quarter of a century later.

Photo: Jack Yam

This is a gorgeous and sumptuously orchestrated work, with a thornily difficult solo with chromaticisms which Moreno took in her stride. The main impetus was the earthy and vigorous folk music of Poland’s Tatra Mountains, the pungency of which would inform much of Szymanowski’s later music. Moreno fought hard to battle the rugged orchestral forces, and succeeded intermittently, coming to the fore in the bristling cadenza provided by Kochanski that linked two halves of the 20-minute concerto. 

The work deserves many more listens, and if pushed to cite a similarly inspired work, I would think of Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto, a far more familiar quantity. Moreno was accorded much applause for her efforts, and her encore was sublime – the Nana lullaby from Manuel de Falla’s Siete Canciones Populares Espanolas (Seven Popular Spanish Songs), accompanied by pianist Nicholas Loh.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade – symphonic suite in four movements – might seem like common garden repertoire, but Graf and his charges made it sound special. By now, I had decided to put down my pen to just enjoy the performance, and soak in the lush orchestration the Russian composer was famous for. Its musical narrative included concertmaster Erik Heide’s violin solo, with principal harpist Gulnara Mashurova, as the yarn-spinning queen for 1001 nights. The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship set sail with a sense of purpose and direction, while The Story of the Kalender Prince had principal bassoonist Guo Siping in great form. 

Photo: Jack Yam

The orchestral balance was close to perfect, and seldom had I been so captivated by the roles of these soloists backed by an equally engaged ensemble. The Prince and the Princess saw veterans, principal flautist Jin Ta and principal clarinettist Ma Yue (who will be retiring at season’s end), give their level best. It was clear that all on stage were playing for the maestro and the audience was the biggest beneficiary. By the time Festival at Baghdad and Storm at Sea concluded, there was an eruption of applause that indicated the audience had heard something rather special. I was not alone. 

Was this the best Sheherazade ever witnessed live? Perhaps, possibly likely, and given the sense of occasion, it will remain long in the memory. Again, thank you Hans Graf for making this happen. Your six years with our national orchestra will not be forgotten.

The HANS GRAF FAREWELL SERIES continues with further concerts at Victoria Concert Hall on: 

15 May 2026

Hans Graf Farewell Series: Mystère de… | Singapore Symphony Orchestra

21 & 22 May 2026

Hans Graf Farewell Series: Mozart and… | Singapore Symphony Orchestra