ANCIENT MOON, PRESENT LIGHT / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

 

ANCIENT MOON, PRESENT LIGHT

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (4 October 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 October 2025 with the title "Mid-autumn celebration with family friendly show".

The Singapore Chinese Orchestra led by associate conductor Moses Gay celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival with an hour-long family concert filled mostly with short pieces, well-suited for children and those with limited attention spans. As to be expected, works which extolled the moon and with lunar-related titles were trotted out for an airing.

Photo: James Ng

Very brief was the Axi Moon Dance, arranged by Peng Xiuwen, based on courtship rituals of the Yi people. Its infectious rhythm and ear-worm of a tune spun over multiple short variations made for an invigorating start. Just as popular was Ren Guang’s Rousing Clouds Chasing the Moon, arranged by Law Wai Lun, with its unforgettable melody couched in a rustic setting.

A little more serious was SCO composer-in-residence Wang Chenwei’s Aspirations, a 2008 work commissioned by the Ministry of Education and written for young musicians to perform in an orchestral camp.

Its main melody had that exuberant National Day Parade vibe, and midway through the work, an obligatory fugato involving sheng, dizi, plucked strings, with bowed strings and yangqins later joining the fray. As music teachers always say, EGBDF, or “every good boy deserves fugues”.

Also imbued with the feel good factor was Vincent Liang’s May Life Be Eternal, as arranged by Sim Boon Yew. This was a happy recollection of festive family reunions, its feelings of warmth rolled out in a leisurely ambling pace.

Photo: James Ng

The concert’s only concertante work was Zhang Zhao’s Moon Song, the first movement from The Song of the Sun and Moon. Jonathan Ngeow, attired like some member of a boy band, was the zhongruan soloist.

Photo: James Ng

Impressionist hues filled its hushed and atmospheric opening pages, with Ngeow’s plucked strings singing a serenade. Building to an impassioned climax before receding into silence, the waxing and waning of the moon has seldom been better portrayed.

The evening’s longest work at some 20 minutes was Kuan Nai-Chung’s Instrumental Guide to the Chinese Orchestra, modelled after Benjamin Britten’s A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. The theme was the Jiangsu folksong Jasmine Flower, subjected to an extraordinarily well-written set of variations with solos for every instrument in the orchestra.

Radio disc jockey and host for the evening Karin Lim narrated in Mandarin, but there were English transliterations helpfully projected on a giant screen behind the orchestra. The variations began with the winds – distinguished with an implausibly long-held note by suona principal Jin Shiyi achieved by circular breathing – before moving to plucked strings, percussion, bowed strings and finally a grand tutti to close.

The very enjoyable concert had to come to an end, and the built-in encore was Huang Yijun’s Hua Hao Yue Yuan (Blossoms Under The Full Moon) as arranged by Peng Xiuwen. This rambunctious conclusion certainly had one in the right mood for mooncakes and tea.

Photo: James Ng

FORGING AHEAD / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

FORGING AHEAD

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Saturday (21 October 2023)

Singapore Conference Hall

This review was published in The Straits Times on 23 October 2023 with the title "SCO paints evocative scenes in spectacular with huqin player George Gao."

 

Want to experience the far-ranging capabilities of Chinese orchestral instruments en masse? One could do worse than attending this sonic spectacular by Singapore Chinese Orchestra led by Associate Conductor Moses Gay. Chinese orchestral music is largely programmatic in nature, narrating stories or painting sceneries, and the concert had much of both.

 

Beginning with Xie Peng’s Surging Forward, its quiet atmospheric opening was redolent of a corresponding passage in Debussy’s La Mer. The impressionism evoked and furthered by Xu Zhong’s cello solo was short-lived, leading headlong into a cavalry charge in full battle mode. Brilliantly scored with exuberant percussion in terminal velocity, this made for a very effective overture.    

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

 

Canadian-Chinese huqin virtuoso George Gao was guest soloist in two of his original works. Playing on a shaoqin, a modified erhu he invented and named after himself (Gao Shaoqing in Chinese), he amply illustrated the myriad possibilities that could be yielded from the seemingly humble instrument.

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

 

Gao’s Capriccio No.2, or Mongolian Fantasy, was a more traditional ethnic-flavoured concertante work. Employing similar virtuoso techniques and passages (including a florid cadenza), it had much in common with fiddle works from eastern Europe. Considering the full extent of the Yuan dynasty’s geographical reach, this seemed par for the course.  

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

 

The world premiere on Chinese instruments of his Capriccio No.6, or Shaoyin, delivered several surprises. Its modern idiom, evident from its mystical opening, and improvisatory nature set it apart from earlier Capriccios. A prayerful melody soon quickened in pace, culminating in its third section entitled Music, where Lalo Shifrin’s Mission Impossible theme was cheekily quoted and dizi player Lee Jun Cheng ushered upfront for a heady improvisation.

 

Then came the turn of conductor Gay, himself an erhu exponent, who played on Gao’s shaoqin and sealed his spot of improv with stunning spontaneity. The final section, Love, turned from sentimentality to perpetual motion for a final burst of prestidigitation. The usually reticent Conference Hall faithful roared its unequivocal approval, and Gao obliged with the main theme from Butterfly Lovers as a well-deserved encore.

 

Closing the concert was Wang Danhong’s Four Seasons in Lingering Garden, a 35-minute four-movement symphony inspired by Suzhou’s famous Liu Yuan classical garden. Not for the first time, Debussy’s La Mer was referenced, this time as a reflection on some body of water. In this very well orchestrated work, pride of place was afforded to dizi solos, with Lim Sin Yeo, Yin Zhiyang and Zeng Zhi doing the honours. The mellifluous and poetic quality of the flute permeated all the movements, a tribute to the ubiquity of bamboo in Jiangnan landscapes.

 

A recorded operatic female voice came on unexpectedly in the third movement Sweet Scented Osmanthus, intoning a poem in classical Chinese. This led without a break into the finale, Snowy Ke Pavilion, with dizi having a final say in a blissful close resembling Respighi in his quieter moments. With scarcely a break, the encore of popular Yunnan folk dance A Xi Tiao Yue (Axi Dancing In The Moonlight) completed the evening on a rousing high.

LEGACY / Singapore National Youth Chinese Orchestra & Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

LEGACY

Singapore National 

Youth Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (29 July 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 31 July 2023 with the title "Singapore National Youth Chinese Orchestra celebrates 20th anniversary with confidence".

This year marks the 20^th year that the Singapore National Youth Chinese Orchestra (SNYCO) has been managed under the auspices of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO), and what better way than to distinguish the occasion by having a joint concert celebrating both ensembles? Conducted by Moses Gay and Quek Ling Kiong, SNYCO Associate Conductor and Music Director respectively, the 100-minute long concert showcased five works without an intermission.

 

Wang Danhong’s Ba Yin (Eight Tones) was a evocation of folk festive and ceremonial music from Guangxi province. Opening with plangent solo suona and later prominent dizi solos, the multi-episode work revealed a mastery of orchestral colour, going through a march-like procession, an interlude of lush string passages before climaxing with a rousing close. Conductor Gay brought out the full plethora of sounds from his young charges.  

 

Both concertante works in this concert featured SNYCO players accompanied by the SCO, and what proud moments this must have been for them. In Lu Yun’s The Lord of Western Qin, which lauds Tang dynasty Emperor Xuanzhong’s famed legacy of promoting arts, co-concertmaster Koh Yu Jie’s erhu ran the gamut of emotions from ruminative to outright ecstacy. While the work luxuriated with big and broad melodies, the erhu’s mellifluous voice confidently singing above rhythmic percussion beats was perhaps the most memorable episode.   

 

In Wang Danhong’s Ru Si (As Thus), Sim Kee’s guzheng was similarly animated. The concerto opened with a brilliant cadenza, before orchestral forces were unleashed. Virtuosic as the work sounded, it was the deft scoring that enabled the solo instrument’s rippling and shimmering harp-like effects to shine through the tutti throng. The relentless drive to its conclusion was in a word, breathtaking.  

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

 

Both orchestras then reconvened on a very crowded stage, where the all-black attire of SCO players merged almost imperceptibly with the grey overcoats of their younger counterparts. The last two  works were led by conductor Quek, beginning with Chen Si’ang’s five-movement suite Sheng Sheng Bu Xi (Endless). The first four movements were capsule portraits of endangered species, including the river dolphin, crested ibis, panda and Tibetan antelope, sounding like music of a nature documentary. The fifth was of Humankind, the endangering species, which rose to a big crescendo as a plea for conservation and saving the planet.

 

Peng Xiuwen’s Terracotta Warriors Fantasia was unusually nuanced for a contemporary Chinese orchestral work, not some quasi-heroic paean but about the actual lives of soldiers who served under China’s first emperor Qin Shihuang (Shih Huangdi), later immortalised in graven form in a  Xi’an mausoleum. While the music dwelled on subjects of honour, duty and sacrifice of working men, its spare central movement, with its flowing melody punctuated by the desolate sound of wooden clappers, was a representation of homesickness and nostalgia.

 

The combined orchestra, comprising students and their teachers, gave both works the vitality and attention to detail each deserved. All evidence points to the future of Chinese instrumental music being more than assured.  

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

SCO 25: DAZZLING RHAPSODIES / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

SCO 25: DAZZLING RHAPSODIES

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday 9 October 2021

 

The second of Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s 25^th anniversary concerts was devoted to works composed more recently, specifically during what we know as the Yeh Tsung era. It was the Shanghai-born American-trained conductor (Music Director since 2002) who defined and revolutionised what may be called Chinese orchestral music with Singaporean characteristics. Nanyang music was essentially his brainchild and is what identifies the SCO from other ensembles of Chinese instruments around the world.

 

The Singapore International Competition for Chinese Orchestral Competition (SICCOC), organised by SCO in 2006, 2011 and 2016, helped establish the landscape for Nanyang music to flourish. Two locally-based composers “discovered” at the first concours have now become recognised names in the Chinese instrumental scene. The first was current SCO composer-in-residence Wang Chen Wei, whose Lion City Rhapsody was given its World Premiere, conducted by Quek Ling Kiong.  

 

This short bustling overture with its kinetic Nanyin theme Trotting Horse employed characteristic instruments and timbres associated with the five Chinese dialect groups in Singapore, namely Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka and Hainanese. These groups of instruments operated like the concertino section of a baroque concerto grosso, distinguished by their piquant and higher-pitched sounds, lending the work a particularly distinctive flavour. Add Teochew percussion and voice-overs in the five dialects (with well wishes to the SCO), this made for a memorable opener.

 

There was also a nod to sentimental Mandopop with Phang Kok Jun’s Medley of Singapore Chinese Pop, conducted by Moses Gay, which included songs popularised by Kit Chan, Stephanie Sun, Eric Moo, JJ Lin and Crowd Lu. I concede not knowing a single of these hits, but enjoyed the solos on guan (Jin Shiyi), erhu (Zhao Jianhua), sheng (Guo Changsuo) and dizi (Yin Zhiyang), backed by Shen Guoqin’s enthusiastic drum beat.

 

Yeh Tsung conducted the rest of the concert, including two concertante works. The first was Tang Jianping’s Spring and Autumn, a single movement concerto for pipa featuring principal Yu Jia in all her vermillion sequined splendour. This is a stunning work in a modern idiom which recalled the chunqiu shidai (Spring and Autumn era, circa eighth to fifth century b.c.), a tumultuous period of Chinese history. There are virtuoso cadenzas aplenty, after which a procession of Central Asian flavour took place, leading to a feverish climax where Yu’s pipa stood out above the din. Completing the spectacle was a wild chase, which was breathtaking to say the least.

 

The other concerto was Liu Xijin’s The Legend of the Merlion, already an established classic. Commissioned by the SCO in 1999, and taken on tour several times, this gaohu concerto is unusual for its slow-fast-slow three-movement form. Forget the programmatic story of a tourist-board created chimera (PR-generated fiction at its most contrived), it still has good thematic material that was well brought out by SCO concertmaster Li Baoshun.

 

The first movement (Seek Blessings) was meditative and reflective, contrasted by a scherzo-like middle movement (Raging Sea) which closed with the reassuring chimes of tubular bells. The lyrical finale’s (Nanyang’s Affection) broad melody was given an added touch of poignancy with gaohu heard alongside Xu Zhong’s cello - a veritable love duet – before its sublime close. Rare is a Chinese concerto that does not end with a big bang.

 

Concluding the celebratory concert was Eric Watson’s Tapestries – Time Dances, the winning work of the afore-mentioned composition competition in 2006. Since that triumph, the highly accomplished and eclectic British composer has been the SCO’s composer-in-residence in 2016 to 2018. While Tapestries may not exactly be Nanyang music, it nonetheless possessed Pan-Asian influences including hints of Indonesian gamelan, Southeast Asian dance rhythms and Indian drumming. However it is the Western model of symphonic poems which it most strongly resembles.

 

The long-held pedal point in D at the rapt beginning is reminiscent of the opening dawn scene from Mahler’s First Symphony, while the pastoral air of Vaughan Williams hangs over the work’s latter half. The point of it all was not trying to imitate Chinese idioms, but the skilful use of Chinese instruments to serve musical ends. The performance itself was energetic and finely detailed, bringing the concert to a suitably spirited close.  

 

I have little doubt that this is the whole ethos of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, to stimulate and make good music that the general public can identify with and also enjoy. Not for nothing has the SCO been hailed as “The People’s Orchestra”.   

 

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.