SCO 25: OUR SHARED MEMORIES / THE SCO YESTERYEAR / Review

SCO 25: OUR SHARED MEMORIES

THE SCO YESTERYEAR

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (2 October 2021)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 October 2021 with the title "Singapore Chinese Orchestra's walk down memory lane".

It is hard to believe that the Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO) is now twenty-five years old. Its history however goes further back to 1974 when the People’s Association Chinese Orchestra (PACO) was established as the first professional ensemble of traditional Chinese instruments outside China. Several musicians from that original outfit still perform in the SCO.

 

This 90-minute concert was a fond reminiscence of SCO’s forebears and a tribute to pioneers who showed the way. The first part entitled The Melodies We Used To Play showcased chamber music performed without conductor. The Beautiful Zhuang Brocade arranged by Wu Houyuan, premiered by PACO forty years ago at this same venue, was a soothing serenade with a lively dance-like end to close.

 

Equally animated was Pan Yunchong & Zhu Xiaogu’s The Bustling Docks, a 1970s paean to  progress in Communist China, which could easily have symbolised Singapore’s rise as a shipping hub during the same period. Renowned Chinese percussionist Li Minxiong’s Striving For A Bumper Harvest mined the same vein with young percussionist Benjamin Boo impressively leading the ensemble from his set of drums. As a point of interest, Boo was following in the footsteps of his percussion teacher Quek Ling Kiong (himself a student of Li), who gave its first Singapore performances decades ago.  

 

The second part, Those Classic Concertos We Grew Up With, featured two substantial concertante works. Liu Bin’s Haw Par Villa Myths, conducted by Associate Conductor Moses Gay, saw PACO veteran Lim Sin Yeo mastering four different wind instruments. These included the paixiao (panpipes), dadi (long flute), taoxun (ocarina) and xiaodi (piccolo) in a colourful four-movement suite that curiously united Chinese mysticism with modernist styles recalling sci-fi movie scores of Bernard Herrmann.

 

Liu Wenjin’s The Great Wall Capriccio was arguably the evening’s most familiar music. This four-movement erhu concerto, worthy counterpart of the Yellow River and Butterfly Lovers concertos, was premiered by the late erhu virtuoso Min Huifen in 1981. Her student SCO erhu principal Zhao Jianhua relived the demanding solo part with SCO Resident Conductor Quek Ling Kiong at the helm.

 

As expected, epic landscapes, heroism, sacrifice and commemoration were all encompassed, with its most poignant moments in the slow third movement Memorial For The Patriots. Here, Xu Zhong’s cello solo and Zhao crafted an elegy that left an indelible impression.   

 

SCO Music Director Yeh Tsung conducted the final work, three movements from late-lamented SCO musician and composer Yeo Puay Hian’s Torrent (1992). Inspired by tales of rivers and the sea, the work paid tribute to hard work, sweat and toil, aptly accompanied by black-and-white photographs of pioneering SCO members in their youth. Its final movement, Pass On The Light, also featured pre-recorded voices of  the Vocal Associates Chamber Choir, with the message that if we do not remember the past, we might as well forget about the future.

 

CAPRICCIO / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

CAPRICCIO

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

SCO Concert Hall

Friday (27 July 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 July 2012 with the title "Night of classical rapture".

The concept of the Chinese orchestra owes greatly to the model set by Western symphony orchestras from the 19^th century. The notion of four orchestral sections and occidental compositional forms has transformed the genre of Chinese instrumental music from its humbler folk origins to the more complex music that is heard in concert halls today.

This concert, conducted by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s first Music Director Hu Bing Xu, was a timely reminder of that fact. It even conformed to the age-old forma of overture, concerto, symphony and encore that has delighted concert-goers over the ages. Beginning with Feng Xiao Quan’s Soaring Chinese Music, its slow introduction followed by an invigorating Allegro served its function like a Rossinian overture.

This was contrasted by Fang Xiao Ming’s Cantonese serenade Morning Blossoms and Evening Moon, highlighting the gaohu’s lingering legato, which was the palate cleanser before the two concertos. The first concertante work was Cheng Da Zhao’s Four Movements of Shanbei, which showcased the breathtaking virtuosity of Singaporean dizi exponent Lim Sin Yeo (below).

The sinuous flute melody of Xin Tian You, a Shanxi highland air full of longing and yearning, unfolded with Coplandesque breadth, leading to the animated Village Opera, where the dizi imitated the vocal inflexions of its comedic stage protagonists. Its slow movement The Past was a Bartokian Adagio, haunting and atmospheric, with the dance-like finale building up to a Lisztian climax. The glorious reprise of Xin Tian You to round up was a reliving of the cyclical form.  

The second concerto was Wang Yue Ming’s Fantasia of the Western Regions with excellent alto erhu solist Zhu Lin (above) centrestage. It dwelled on Central Asian melodies, the sort Borodin, Balakirev and Ippolitov-Ivanov were so fond of, except that this folk-inspired rhapsody was conceived in Beijing rather than Moscow.

To close the concert were two movements from Zhao Ji Ping’s Ode of Peace, a symphony in memory of the victims of the 1937 Nanjing massacre. No prizes for guessing which Russian composer inspired the funereal passacaglia-like Sorrows of the River and the equally brooding but defiant finale. Shostakovich, no less.

As if that was not enough, the orchestra performed in between the concertos Sim Boon Yew’s arrangement of the Malay joget favourite Suriram, an entertaining ten minutes in the theme and variations form. The sole encore did not need any disguising, just Mascagni’s sublime Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana with huqins doing the honours.