CELEBRATING BACH II / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

CELEBRATING BACH II

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

4 December 2020 

(Streamed on SISTIC Live from 26 February 2021)

This review was published on Bachtrack on 1 March 2021.

With Covid-19 precautions in force, concerts in Singapore are still limited to chamber groups performing hour-long programmes for small and socially-distanced audiences. In the second of three concerts celebrating the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) continued on this thread but shifted the focus from Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral Suites to his violin concertos.

 

It so happened that SSO had quite recently lost the services of two first violinists beloved and familiar to local audiences. Co-Leader Lynnette Seah, ever-present since the orchestra’s inaugural season in 1979, retired last year, while Concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich left to join the BBC Symphony Orchestra the year before. The performances of Bach’s two solo violin concertos were however in good and steady hands.

 

Chan Yoong-Han was the elegant soloist in the A minor concerto, exuding a warm tone and  healthy vibrato. Known as an accomplished chamber musician, he blended seamlessly within the ensemble in the tuttis, and illuminated his solo with ear-catching ornamentations. Exercising his right in all three movements, these were tastefully rendered and unobstrusive.    

 

Acting Concertmaster Kong Zhao Hui gave a more straight-forward account of the E major concerto, without adornments of his own device. Playing from a score, his was also a highly musical reading that revelled in the vigour and athleticism of the outer movements. It was the central Adagio with its songlike repose that lingered most in the memory.   

 

It was a stroke of programming pique to include music by Bach’s older compatriot Georg Philipp Telemann, which is rarely heard in Singapore. His seven-movement Don Quixote Suite or  Burlesque de Quichotte provided an early example of programmatic music. Depicting scenes from Miguel de Cervantes’ epic novel, the art of story-telling by varied orchestral effects was vividly unveiled by the ensemble. The Overture’s busy play of counterpoint was followed by a series of most amusing vignettes.

 

A delicious sense of irony dripped from its pages, such as the Don strirring from his slumber in a lilting rhythm resembling a cradle song, to tilting at windmills with octave leaps from the strings. Dulcinea’s sighs punctuated by the knight’s incessant laughter, Sancho Panza being roughly tossed, and his donkey’s stop-start forward motion were also sharply characterised. Even Don Quixote at Rest, which concluded the suite, was unusually animated, hinting at imagined misadventures to come. All these movements were possessed with a playful zest, performed tongue firmly in cheek, under SSO Associate Conductor Joshua Tan’s flexible guiding hand. Providing a cheery close to the concert, whoever said that the hyper-prolific Telemann had to be boring?  

 

Star Rating: ****

SSO CONCERT: THE BUTTERFLY LOVERS / Review

THE BUTTERFLY LOVERS

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (19 February 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 February 2016 with the title "Butterfly Lovers takes flight with 87-year-old conductor".

The Chinese New Year season was good enough reason as any for the Singapore Symphony Orchestra to perform an entire programme of Chinese music. The Butterfly Lovers was an obvious selling point, but the real privilege was witnessing guest conductor Zheng Xiao Ying in action. She is the doyenne of China's woman conductors, and at 87 this year, also the oldest maestro to lead the SSO.

Unique is her ability to engage an audience by addressing before the performance of each piece. She spoke in Mandarin with clear, radiant tones, enthusing and waxing lyrical about the music. This was probably a relief for Chinese-speaking audience members who specially came, as Marc Rochester's very comprehensive programme notes had not been translated into Chinese.

The show began with Li Huan Zhi's Spring Festival Overture, where raucous percussion ruled the roost. Lyrical moments came in Pan Yun's plaintive oboe solo, providing dynamic and narrative balance to this festive piece. The orchestra responded with much alertness and rhythmic savvy to Zheng's directions, but timbral colours were the forte in the next work, Xu Zhen Min's A Tone Picture Of Border Village.

Imagine a scene in China's Far West clothed in luscious Technicolor, a score combining Debussy's impressionist hues, Bartok and Rosza's sensuous renderings of folk music, and infectious frontier-town rhythms of Copland and Ginastera. Big solos for Jamie Hersch's French horn, Evgueni Brokmiller's flute and Igor Yuzefovich's violin all distinguished themselves in this delightfully indulgent wallow.   

The orchestration prowess of Respighi were relived in the Asian premiere of Huang Ruo's Three Folk Songs. One will not hear more opulent readings of Feng Yang Hua Gu (Flower Drum Song), Kang Ding Love Song and The Girl From Da Ban, all familiar tunes, than this. It would seem that these composers could not wait to break out from traditional heterophony to engage in unashamedly decadent polyphony.

Conductor Zheng quipped that nobody in China knows The Butterfly Lovers as Hu Die Ai Ren, but rather the immortal legend of Liang Zhu (short for Liang Shanbo & Zhu Yingtai). Composed by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao in 1958, it was a bold experiment to translate the characteristic expressions of Chinese opera into a totally foreign idiom of Western musical composition. The result was a virtuoso violin concerto in single-movement sonata-fantasy form. 

The soloist was SSO Associate Concertmaster Kong Zhao Hui, who has performed this work over a hundred times, including in SSO's concert tour to Switzerland in 2000. Garbed in resplendent hong bao red, his reading came as naturally as breathing and vocalising for an opera singer. His expressive use of portamentos (slides) were well judged, blending perfectly in duet with Ng Pei Sian's cello, and even furthering the music's fraught emotions with violent stamps on the floor. The orchestra provided perfect partnership, including highlighting several portamentos of their own to good effect.

Huang Yi Jun's lovely orchestration of  Liu Tien Hua's Liang Xiao (Beautiful Evening) saw the first violins' melody gently accompanied by pizzicato strings. The concert concluded with Chen Le-Gang's Sainaim Rhapsody, based on Xinjiang and Central Asian melodies, a showpiece which could have been first cousin to Ippolitov-Ivanov's Caucasian Sketches. 

After standing for two hours, still sprightly and energised by a standing ovation, Zheng offered as encore another seasonal favourite: Huang Yi Jun's popular Hua Hao Yue Yuan (Beautiful Flowers, Round Moon). An audience clap-along was the inevitable result for this feel-good concert. 

Photo: Teo Li-Chin

SSO CONCERT: THE FAMILIAR AND THE FANTASTIC / Review

THE FAMILIAR AND THE FANTASTIC
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Saturday (21 August 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 23 August 2010.

It isn’t often these days that the Singapore Symphony Orchestra performs a full-length symphony for the first time. It was a programming coup of guest German conductor Günther Herbig to couple two Czech symphonies for comparison and contrast – Antonin Dvorak’s popular Eighth Symphony and Bohuslav Martinu’s by far lesser-known Sixth Symphony.

The latter, also titled Fantaisies Symphoniques (Symphonic Fantasies) was a revelation. Its three movements each sprouted like exotic plants out of murky and nebulous primordial orchestral stew. Gratifyingly tonal, kernels of themes (including a pivotal motif quoting from Dvorak) were developed, transformed gradually by Martinu’s (left) distinctive dynamic and kinetically charged style.

The orchestra dived headlong into its complexities, performing the half-hour work as if it were a long-trusted and well-loved friend. Concertmaster Lynnette Seah’s extended solo in the first movement was a picture of confidence, while the brass’ reassuring chorale closed the work on a sublime calm.

Familiarity with the Dvorak (left) did not lead to contempt, but rather a freshly minted reappraisal. Taken at the brisk clip, there was little time to get bored yet much of orchestral details shone through. Jin Ta’s flute was heard in his resonant best in all four movements while the overall string tone was glorious in full flow. There was an insouciant country lilt in the dance-like third movement, contrasted with a well-paced finale, never rushed for effect, which closed the concert on a rousing high.

Sandwiched between both symphonies was Mendelssohn’s E minor Violin Concerto. SSO Assistant Leader Kong Zhao Hui, often fondly remembered for his playing of the Butterfly Lovers Concerto, was a paragon of understated virtuosity. Never one for extravagant outward display, his aristocratic mien and thoughtful musicality were inspiration itself.

Producing a sweet but smallish tone, this was no impediment to crafting a reading that was generous with warmth and largesse of spirit. His perfect control in the encore – the Adagio from Bach’s unaccompanied Sonata No.1 in G minor – was further proof of this. Many a young and budding soloist can do well to learn from his example.