RHAPSODIES OF SPRING 2018: HOME FOR THE NEW YEAR / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

RHAPSODIES OF SPRING 2018:

HOME FOR THE NEW YEAR

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (27 January 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 January 2017 with the title "Canine camp for the new year".

The first music to be heard at the newly renovated Singapore Conference Hall auditorium was Li Huan Zhi's Spring Festival Overture, providing a most rousing start to the Singapore Chinese Orchestra's annual Chinese New Year concert. Soon after conductor Yeh Tsung gave the down beat, one marvelled at the venue's new found acoustics. Once considered over-dry, under- reverberant and requiring audio enhancement, those criticisms will soon be things of the past.

There is now a naturalness to the symphonic sound, such that instrumental details are better defined, rather than being submerged beneath unnatural echoes and artificial augmentations. However hearing better sound does not necessarily translate into hearing better music, as this populist programme proved.

Chinese violinist Lu Siqing was guest soloist, opening with Eric Watson's idiomatic arrangement of Vivaldi's Spring from The Four Seasons. This was the same piece played by Joshua Bell in his famous SCO collaboration in 2016, and it sounded just as good this time, thanks to Lu's innate musicality, virtuosity and sympathetic orchestral accompaniment.

He was also soloist in two short concertante works carrying the imprimatur of Chen Gang, the better-known half in the composing duo of the Liang Zhu Concerto. Basking in his sumptuous sound and Phoon Yew Tien's lush orchestrations would be sufficent reward. But whoever dreamt of such titles like Golden Platform Of The Steel-Smelting Furnace or Taking The Tiger Mountain By Strategy? It seemed more like a marriage between Socialist Realism and the Butterfly Lovers.    

Suona principal Jin Shi Yi is the master
of the single long-held note.

The best music came from Kuan Nai Chung and Law Wai Lun. Kuan's Instrumental Guide To The Chinese Orchestra was the excellent Chinese solution to Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra. Its main theme, Molihua, was subject to variations from all the traditional Chinese instruments and aided by a witty and often mischievous narration by local television personality and comedian Mark Lee.

Law's highly evocative score accompanied the short 2011 film The Reunion Dinner by award-winning director Anthony Chen of Ilo Ilo fame. Nostalgia reigned supreme in this piece which espoused filial piety, family values, and the good old days of not worrying about speaking in Hokkien.

As the Chinese zodiac counted down to the “Year of the Dog”, there had to be canine-related pieces. Eric Watson's medley of Gershwin's Promenade (also known as Walking The Dog) and the Patti Page classic How Much Is That Doggy In The Window? with winds simulating yelps from mutts was camp beyond words.

Increasingly resembling a television variety show, the concert came close to descending into farce with the Chinese New Year songs and vocal/rap numbers penned by the likes of Jack Neo, Kenn C and Mark Lee himself. Lee was at best a crooner while his otherwise able co-host Chen Biyu tended to scream out the high registers. The lyrics extolled wealth and prosperity, Sinophone audiences are parsimonious in sing-alongs, but do have a happy new year anyway.  

STRINGS FANTASY / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

STRINGS FANTASY

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Friday (25 November 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 November 2016 with the title "Strings and more".

The concert's English title, Strings Fantasy, only told part of the story. If only its poetic Chinese title Qin Qin Yue Lu, which so cleverly incorporated surnames of the string soloists Qin Li-wei and Lu Siqing, were not so easily lost to translation. Also unspecified in the title was the concert's first half wholly devoted to the music of Zhao Ji Ping. This prominent Chinese composer is best known for writing scores for movies by Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, such as Yellow Earth and Raise The Red Lantern respectively.  

Opening with Zhao's Guo Feng, which roughly translates to “National Airs”, the orchestra conducted by Yeh Tsung showcased solos from pipa, sheng and erhu, besides parading the rarely-heard bianzhong (bronze bells). The music began with a string chorale, working its way to a heroic allegro before finishing off with a long crescendo.

Subtler was Melody Of The Secluded Orchid, a pastoral setting to a Confucian poem sung by soprano Zhang Ning Xia with obbligato parts for violin and guqin. This unusual combination worked well because Lu Siqing's incisive violin and Zhong Zhi Yue's striking but mellow guqin never sought to hog Zhang's limelight.    

Composer Zhao Ji Ping
receives the accolades alongside
cellist Qin Li-wei and conductor Yeh Tsung.

The evening's best work was Zhuang Zhou's Dream, a single-movement cello concerto premiered by Yo-Yo Ma and the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra. Its achingly beautiful and elegiac strains found an equal in Qin Li-wei's cello, epitome of a long-breathed singing tone. Although punctuated by faster dance-like segments and an outburst of percussion, it was the lyrical representation of ancient philosopher's ruminations that held sway.

Lu returned in the second half for two virtuosic showpieces. Gypsy fiddling seemed like the common denominator in Chen Gang's The Sun Shines Over Tashkurgan, with its distinctive Central Asian (or Xinjiang) flavour, and Pablo Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy. Lu, armed with a healthy vibrato, was in his element for the latter's Habanera and Seguidilla, before romping home with the Danse Bohemienne. As an encore, he offered a Paganini theme and variations sonata movement.

The concert closed with Law Wai Lun's The Celestial Web, a cantata on the universality of Man, Nature and the cosmos, with words by local artist Tan Swie Hian. Slightly shorter than the Ode To Joy movement of Beethoven's Choral Symphony, it nonetheless expressed similar lofty ideals. Its quivering introduction in D minor seemed like a tribute before lifting off to a different plane.

Instead of solo voices, the texts were recited by Kang Ying Yu and Kong Xiang Chi, very confident drama students from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. The Vocal Associates Festival Chorus (Chorus Mistress: Khor Ai Ming), looking more cosmopolitan than previously, sang the balance of the Chinese words with suitable gusto.

The orchestral accompaniment was excellent, with solo dizi providing florid ornamentation and dramatic bianzhong giving the proceedings an epic and timeless feel. This was an evening with far more than just fantastic strings, but one would not have guessed it without actually being there. 

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, August 2015)

J.S.BACH Concertos for 2 Harpsichords

MASAAKI & MASATO SUZUKI

Bach Collegium Japan

BIS 2051 / *****

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) left the world with just three concertos for two keyboards (all dating from 1736), which seems like a real pity. These are some of his most enjoyable concertos, not just because of its melodic content or digital virtuosity but also its immaculate play of counterpoint. No autograph scores exist, but two of these - both in the key of C minor - will be familiar to listeners in other guises. The best known is BWV.1062, which has the same music as the famous Double Violin Concerto in D minor (BWV.1043). The work sounds slightly different now, with the busyness of both harpsichords replacing the more pared-down violin textures.

The other, BWV.1060, is more regularly heard as the Concerto for Violin and Oboe, distinguished by one of Bach's most beautiful slow movements. The Concerto in C major (BWV.1061) is his most cheerful and extroverted keyboard concerto by far. The father and son combo of Masaaki and Masato Suzuki on two harpsichords are ideally matched, and the balance struck with the accompanying string players is close to perfection. The bonus is Masato's transcription for 2 keyboards of Bach's Orchestral Suite No.1, conceived idiomatically as if the master wrote it himself. A delightful disc all round.     

BOOK IT:

MASAAKI & MASATO SUZUKI

with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

27 & 28 August 2015 at 7.30 pm

Tickets available at SISTIC

THE BUTTERFLY LOVERS

LU SIQING, Violin

Taipei Chinese Orchestra 

Chung Yiu-Kwong (Conductor)

BIS  2104 / ****1/2

Given China's inexorable rise as economic power and cultural giant, Chen Gang and He Zhanhao's Butterfly Lovers Concerto sitting pretty alongside with violin repertoire favourites has become inevitable. Gil Shaham had previously coupled Butterfly Lovers with Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto (with the SSO), but this new recording is wholly accompanied by Chinese instruments. Chinese violinist Lu Siqing cements his place as one of the work's most persuasive advocates with this moving account which also boasts of the best sound on CD.

The traditional instruments of the Taipei Chinese Orchestra, in the arrangement by its conductor Chung Yiu-Kwong, also lend a touch of the authentic. Does the evocative introduction not sound better with dizi than the modern flute? At its climaxes, the piercing sound of suonas add to the pathos of the music. Its fillers include Chen's Sunshine On Taxkorgan, Ma Sicong's Nostalgia (from Inner Mongolian Suite), Kreisler's Tambourin Chinois (now sounding even better with Chinese percussion), Tchaikovsky's Melodie (from Souvenir D'un Lieu Cher), Sarasate's Gypsy Airs and Wieniawski's Legende. The last receives an idiomatic arrangement by award-winning young Singaporean composer Wang Chenwei. That's globalisation for you.