LAN SHUI & BOMSORI / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

LAN SHUI AND BOMSORI

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (1 March 2024)

This review was first published in Bachtrack.com on 4 March 2024 with the title "Conductor Laureate Lan Shui's poignant return to the Singapore Symphony". 

This concert marked a return of Lan Shui, Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s second music director, after a hiatus of five years. His tenure from 1997 to 2019 was pivotal, transforming a competent regional orchestra to one of international standing with highly-acclaimed recordings and international tours. He assumed the post of Conductor Laureate after a farewell concert with Mahler’s Second Symphony in February 2019. 

The evening also saw Korean violinist Bomsori Kim return, remembered as the first international soloist to perform in Singapore after pandemic travel restrictions were lifted in 2021. On the cards was a relative rarity, Carl Nielsen’s Violin Concerto, often twinned with Sibelius’ violin concerto in recordings despite being very different. Besides their birth-year, another thing in common was a homage to J.S.Bach. While Sibelius heavily revised his to make it less Bachian, Nielsen stuck to his guns. 

Photo: Chris P. Lim

A punched-out C minor chord, followed by an opening violin cadenza in G minor with the orchestra holding a pedal-point in G provided an early shock. Kim’s adroit handling of the Praeludium, reminiscent of the Bachian beginning of Saint-Saens’ Second Piano Concerto, was admirable, with the thread of lyricism maintained throughout. Even in the boisterous Allegro cavalleresco, orchestral textures were kept light and transparent to let her musical lines shine through. The thorny cadenza at its end was superbly handled. 

The second movement’s spelling of Bach’s name – B flat, A, C and B natural – was sensitively voiced by oboist Pan Yun, later echoed by violin in a ruminative but short-winded wallow. In the light-hearted Rondo, one of Nielsen’s cheeriest melodies with whimsicality and rusticity standing out, Kim’s nimbleness and dance-like take were totally enjoyable. Culminating in another elaborate cadenza, the concerto wound down to a retiring close and another shock - a loud orchestral chord in D major to end. Kim’s encore of Grazyna Bacewicz’s Polish Caprice, also folk-inspired, was an inspired choice. 

It was pure happenstance that Singapore audiences got to witness Mahler’s First Symphony twice within eleven days, by the Hong Kong Philharmonic (Jaap van Zweden) and now the Singapore Symphony. Comparisons were inevitable, making for a fascinating study in critical listening. 

The rapt stillness in the opening’s evocation of dawn was assiduously observed. Trumpets were kept onstage yet these sounded as if in der Ferne (in a distance), no mean feat. Principal clarinettist Ma Yue’s cuckoo calls were more sharply-delineated, leading into the movement proper which felt more organic in its build-up. The music’s natural flow, pregnant with tension-filled quiets, ensued before a fulsome climax was reached, also prompting premature applause at movement’s end. 

Lan Shui was the Singapore Symphony's
Music Director from 1997 to 2019.
Photo: Chris P. Lim

The Scherzo was not as vigorously driven as Hong Kong’s, instead taking a gentler and more nuanced look at the Austrian Ländler, including a Trio section that wallowed in schmaltz. Yang Zheng Yi’s excellent double-bass led the way in the funeral march, droll minor key iteration of the Frère Jacques theme. The klezmer interludes were a little more subdued, thus lending the quote from Wayfarer song Zwei Blauen Augen an added poignancy. 

The titanic struggles of the finale, emanating from that “cry from the wounded heart”, were not so much blazing triumph but a subconscious tide that constantly tugged and pulled at the heart-strings. The grandstanding close with eight French horns, trumpet and trombone up on their feet was an impressive look, but much more were concealed from plain sight. One just had to listen. 

While Hong Kong Philharmonic awed and thrilled with virtuosity, Singapore Symphony touched and moved with its humanity. Fortunate and privileged were those to have savoured both performances – and orchestras - in their prime and glory.  

Star rating: *****

The original review on Bachtrack.com may be found here: Conductor Laureate Lan Shui’s poignant return to the Singapore Symphony | Bachtrack 

Read Mervin Beng's review in The Straits Times here: 

Concert review: Lan Shui enraptures with Bomsori Kim pairing and SSO conducting comeback | The Straits Times

CD Review (The Straits Times, October 2019)

DEBUSSY Nocturnes / Printemps etc.
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
LAN SHUI
BIS 2232 / *****

This is the final instalment of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s three-disc survey of orchestral music by Claude Debussy (1862-1918), under the direction of former Music Director Shui Lan. Having recorded major works La Mer and Three Images for Orchestra, this disc concludes with the Three Nocturnes (1897-99), which helped establish the Frenchman as a frontline composer.

Impressionist in thought and colour, Nuages (Clouds) and Fêtes (Festivals) are musical tableaux distinguished by contrasting moods which are vividly evocative. The ennui of grey skies and frenetic pace of human activity are soon effaced by the haunting finale, Sirenes (Sirens), which features wordless women’s voices from the Philharmonic Chamber Choir of Europe  

There are also two concertante works, beginning with Rapsodie (1901-11), showcasing the variegated shadings of superb French saxophonist Claude Delangle, reminding one of the sinuous opening to the famous Prelude to The Afternoon Of The Fawn. The beautiful Two Dances (1904, Danse sacré et Danse profane) are graced by SSO principal harpist Gulnara Mashurova, who brilliantly brings out their alternatingly formal and sensuous faces, backed by just strings.

This interesting album is completed by various lesser-known odds and ends, the Scottish March On A Popular Theme (1890), Berceuse Heroique (1914), which quotes La Brabançonne, the Belgian national anthem, and the early Printemps (1887, orchestrated by Henri Busser), a reminder of the French Belle Epoque. SSO is served with spectacular sound, and the ecologically friendly packaging (with no plastic) does its part to save the planet. 

With this review, I conclude my fortnitely/weekly column of CD reviews for The Straits Times which began 22 years ago in 1997. There have been a total of 1186 CD reviews in total since the very first one (Paul McCartney's Standing Stone on EMI Classics). 

I thank The Straits Times for their faith in me, and indulging me in my musical whims and pianomaniac fancies. 

END OF AN ERA / MAESTRO LAN SHUI'S FAREWELL CONCERT

It seemed only a short while ago when Lan Shui succeeded Choo Hoey as the Music Director of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. In actual fact, that was back in 1997, long before there was such a thing as Esplanade or a music conservatory in Singapore.

On Saturday 26 January 2019, Lan Shui conducted his final concert with the SSO. The work was Mahler's Second Symphony, or the Resurrection Symphony, symbolic in the sense that farewell is not a goodbye, but the birth of a new future - a resurrection, so to speak. 

Lan, as he is affectionately known by many, was responsible for turning Choo Hoey's already-considerable creation into a truly world-class symphony orchestra. Now that the SSO has a season that rivals the top orchestras of the world is not an accident, but one of design, built on vision, hard work, perseverance and artistic genius.   

The concert, second of a pair, could well be one of the most memorable concerts ever given in Esplanade. It featured the full orchestra and many extras, the combined choirs that formed the Singapore Symphony Chorus and soloists soprano Miah Persson and alto Anna Larsson.  It had many heart-wrenching moments, not least in the finale's march to the abyss and then the proclamation of Klopstock's Auferstehung, the resurrection and beginning of a new life. There was a prolonged standing ovation, and chorus of bravos. There were tears of sadness, and tears of joy.

On that evening, Maestro Lan Shui was conferred the title of SSO's first ever Conductor Laureate, and one eagerly looks forward to his next phase of musical life with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. Thank you, Lan. We will miss you but there will be great joy when you next return.  

Watch the concert here:

SSO Chairman Goh Yew Lin
introduces the new SSO Conductor Laureate.

One will not find a more spontaneous standing ovation.

Concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich and
Bass Principal Guennadi Mouzyka.

Maestro Lan Shui has always been a hit with the ladies,
here with Culture Minister Grace Fu et al.

Mister and Missus Lan Shui

SSC Three Tenors!

KAVAKOS PLAYS SHOSTAKOVICH / Singapore Symphony Orchestra Gala / Review

KAVAKOS PLAYS SHOSTAKOVICH

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (5 May 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times with the title "SSO again displays mastery in Russian music".

The last gala concert in the Singapore Symphony Orchestra's 2017-18 season was an all-Russian programme conducted by Shui Lan. The orchestra has had a long love affair with Russian music since its early years under Choo Hoey, and this concert was another demonstration of its mastery in this repertoire.

The atmospheric Prelude to Mussorgsky's unfinished opera Khovanshchina, also called Dawn On The Moscow River, provided an excellent start. Over the hushed tones of violas, Evgueni Brokmiller's flute and Li Xin's clarinet sung a folkloric melody, immediately conjuring an air of melancholy that typified the Russian spirit. A quartet of French horns relived the peal of distant church bells, raising the spectre of Mussorgsky's greatest opera Boris Godunov, but a still calm returned as this mini-epic drew to a quiet close.

While Mussorgsky was Russia's musical conscience in the 19^th century, and his modern-day counterpart was Shostakovich, whose First Violin Concerto in A minor has become one of the most performed of 20^th century violin concertos. Its first performance had to be suppressed until after Stalin's death. It was thought that music posed dangerous ideas, including promoting dissonance, dissent and defeatism, all taboo in the totalitarian Soviet Union.

These were laid bare in Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos' blistering performance. From the darkest of orchestral openings, Kavakos' crystalline tone shone like shafts of clear moonlight through murky clouds in the 1^st movement's Nocturne. Here the night was synonymous with bleakness and unease, in particular the fear and dread of that knock on the door after midnight.

Shostakovich lived a life of chronic gloom, and even if his music sometimes appeared cheerful, it was invariably dripping with vitriol. Kavakos' searing and lancinating solo led the way in the Scherzo, which highlighted the bassoon for comic relief and also quoted the composer's own initials DSCH (D-E flat-C-B natural) as a personal stamp.

The 3^rd movement's moving Passacaglia and the final Klezmer-charged Burlesque was not just about Kavakos' astounding and free-wheeling virtuosity, but also how well Shui and his orchestra responded to its enormous challenges in partnership. Shouts of bravo were silenced by Kavakos' antithetical encore, a lightly ornamented reading of the Sarabande from J.S.Bach's Partita No.2.

Tchaikovsky's First Symphony in G minor, or “Winter Daydreams”, closed the evening on yet another high. Although one of his less popular symphonies, it is still filled with his trademarks – sumptuous melodies, bracing climaxes and an underlying neurosis. All of these surfaced in the 1^st movement, which was a constant battle between tension and relaxation.

An aural lusciousness shone through in the slow movement, with muted strings matched by exquisite solos from oboe, flute and bassoon. Bringing to mind some of Tchaikovsky's best ballet music, this and the 3^rd movement's Scherzo also featured the best playing. The finale's success was all about building up to a terrific climax, and this was delivered with absolute panache.