TO MUM WITH LOVE 2022 / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

TO MUM WITH LOVE 2022

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (7 May 2022)

 

One of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s favourite annual fixtures is its patented Mother’s Day Concert. For two years this popular and well-attended event had been cancelled or deferred because of the Covid pandemic. Thus it returned this year with some style even though it was a rather muted affair. The general sobriety brought on by a masked audience and social distancing measures did remove some of the gloss from the event. Everybody is now two years older, and perhaps more cautious in exhibiting happiness and joy, knowing that something bad might just happen around the corner.

 

Nonetheless, this concert led by SCO Resident Conductor Quek Ling Kiong had many bright moments including its opening number Wang Chun Feng (Longing For The Spring). In this arrangement by sheng-meister Wu Tong and Li Xun, the popular 1930s Taiwanese melody by Teng Yu-Hsien (famously covered in the Minnan-Hokkien dialect by Teresa Teng) had an unusual bedfellow in J.S.Bach’s equally ubiquitous Prelude in G from Cello Suite No.1. Doing the honours were SCO’s own Taiwanese lasses, Yang Sin-Yu on sheng and Huang Ting-Yu on cello, who were simply a spectacular sight. When one thought that this immortal melody could not be further milked, this arrangement did just that and more.

 

Next was Little Note (Xiao Zhi Tiao), a 2009 short film by Royston Tan with music by Jim Lim, rearranged by Sim Boon Yew. Set sometime in the 1980s in rural Malaysia, the loving relationship between a single mother and her pensive son is represented by an exchange of short messages (written on paper, not Whatsapp) over the course of growing up. “No fear” and “No regrets” were among these, and the music included that children’s classic Shi Sang Zhi You Ma Ma Hao (Mothers Are The Best In The World), besides a lesson on the strength and resilience of lotus leaves. One would be excused for being teary-eyed after watching this touching work.  

 

For good measure, Xian Gei Ta (For Her), a medley arranged by Tan Kah Yong relived some memories for Sinophones with songs like Mother’s Words, Mother I Love You and Listen To Mother’s Words, all of which proved unfamiliar to this listener.

 

Special guest of the evening was popular jazz singer and Sing! China finalist Joanna Dong looking her most motherly to date. Nonetheless, she was still an engaging host, enthralling the audience with various bon mots. Lo Ta-Yu’s Love Tunes 1990, orchestrated by Phang Kok Jun and involving a jazz band withup pianist Chok Kerong, was a good showcase of Joanna’s satin-smooth vocals and her stock-in-trade trumpeting.   

 

Stealing the show was Wo Yao Ni Di Ai (I Want Your Love), the Chinese version of Jon Hendricks’ hit I Want You To Be My Baby, orchestrated by Ong Jiin Joo. What has this suggestive and lust-inducing number have to do with Mother’s Day? Joanna explained that the line “Listen to your Mama and you never will regret it” certainly merited its inclusion. Its sauciness was played up to the hilt, which made the final work A Grateful Heart by Chen Chih-Yuan, orchestrated Phang Kok Jun, a slow ballad seem somewhat downcast. There were no encores, but few in the audience would deny that this was an hour with mother (and/or wife) pretty well spent.

 

A GIFT TO MUM / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

A GIFT TO MUM

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (7 May 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 May 2016 with the title "A charming and nostalgic Mother's Day concert".

The Singapore Chinese Orchestra's annual Mother's Day Concert this year was not so much about motherhood than about the memories of childhood. Directed by Resident Conductor Quek Ling Kiong, the concert opened with Lullabies, a medley of familiar cradle songs orchestrated by Sim Boon Yew.

Schubert's Schlafe, Schlafe (Sleep, Sleep) and Brahms' Wiegenlied from the West were balanced by songs from Dongbei and Kyoto, the last featuring the Japanese shakuhachi, and this was incongruously followed by Five Little Monkeys On The Bed, which sounded all too flippant. More appropriate was Lo Leung Fei's Memories Of Youth which featured nostalgic child-like melodies, accompanied by a projected montage of baby photographs of SCO musicians and their families, which was a nice touch.

Two concertante works completed the first half, beginning with Gu Guan Ren's arrangement of Charms Of Jiangnan, with soloists Yin Zhi Yang (on qudi), Ling Hock Siang (erhu) and Xu Hui (guzheng). This was much like a Chinese concerto grosso, with each instrument having separate flourishes and joining the general ensemble for a grand finish.

The outright virtuoso concerto of the evening was Phoon Yew Tien's Rhapsody On Dinuhua for yangqin, based on a popular Cantonese operatic melody. Qu Jian Qing, its dedicatee, gave a spectacular performance, easily transcending the orchestral textures in her stirring runs, and also casting a ruminative spell in the work's slower and more reflective moments. This work deserves a place among the Yellow River and Butterfly Lovers of the Chinese canon.

The concert's second half had the feel of a pop concert, with dimmed lighting and flashing spotlights. Law Wai Lun's medley of six Luo Tayou popular songs constituted Love Song (2016), which employed a different solo instrument for each melody. Conductor Quek was also on hand to quiz members of the audience as to which instrument played a starring role.

The stage was now set for Singapore-born singer-songwriter Hanjin Tan, a pop icon presently based in Hong Kong, to charm the hearts of mothers. Boyish in appearance, laconic in humour (occasionally referring to himself in a third person), and possessing a Barry Manilow kind of crooning voice, he was a natural slayer of aunties.

His Mandopop ballads, Marry Me, Wo Men Dou You Cuo (Nobody's Perfect) and Yi Bu Yi Bu Ai (Love Step By Step) had a contemporary feel which would easily appeal to listeners younger than the concert's pioneer generation audience. That he could get a usually-reticent crowd to clap, respond and shout “encore” (with a little coercion) - no easy task - was a testament to his entertaining abilities.

Fearing for their safety, he spared the audience the need to stand for his final song, Zhan Qi Lai (Stand Up), which closed the programme on a high. Quek and the orchestra were not done yet, and a clap-along to the popular melody Tian Xia De Ma Ma Dou Yi Yang (Mothers Are All The Same) was indeed the perfect encore.

 HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

A LOVE TRIBUTE TO MUM / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

A LOVE TRIBUTE TO MUM

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (9 May 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 May 2015 with the title "Nostalgic musical trip for mums".

The Singapore Chinese Orchestra has laid claim to Mother's Day, the second Sunday of May, as a legitimate occasion to celebrate with a concert. Like the Singapore Symphony Orchestra's popular Christmas and Valentine's Day Concerts, these are well-subscribed and allow the players to collectively let down their hair in selections of popular classics and pop standards. Conducted by the effervescent SCO Resident Conductor Quek Ling Kiong who doubled as emcee in Mandarin and a smattering of English and Hokkien, this latest Mother's Day Concert was a sentimental hit for its mostly middle-aged audience who enjoy a leisurely variety show.

The first half was devoted to purely instrumental music, beginning with a medley of “motherly” songs entitled Dedicated To Her, arranged by Tan Kah Yong. Despite the lyrics in large typeface being projected on a screen and enthusiastic coaxing from the conductor, the audience remained resistantly taciturn, waving their arms to the music instead. Better received were the two concertante works for dizi and huqin.

SCO dizi player Tan Chye Tiong mastered four different instruments from the Chinese flute family in Liu Yuan's Capriccio of Liu San Jie, a rhapsody on popular tunes from the 1960s cult movie on Third Sister Liu of  ethnic Zhuang folklore. His virtuosity in both lyrical and lively dance passages was matched by that of Xu Wen Jing who performed on two gaohus in a truncated version of the evergreen Butterfly Lovers Concerto. The portamenti achieved on the huqin comes closer to the spirit of Chinese opera than the western violin for which the work was originally written.

Both soloists were in excellent form, backed to the hilt by the sensitive orchestral accompaniment, but had to cede centrestage to local xinyao singer Hong Shao Xuan who dominated the entire second half of the concert, which comprised mostly vocal music. He  bantered with conductor Quek and the audience and went on to croon lovesongs like a Chinese Perry Como.

The medley of Chameleon and The Brothers, and Joseph Koo's Lou Tai Hui (Meeting At The Pavilion) were sung in Cantonese, and to further display his versatility in dialects and foreign languages, rendered Mum Please Take Care in Japanese and Luo Da You's Xin Gan Bao Bei (Sweet Heart) in Hokkien.

Famous singer-songwriter Liu Jia Chang, whose songs have been immortalised by Teresa Teng and Feng Fei Fei, had six of his songs arranged by Law Wai Lun and Lincoln Lo in The Past Can Only Be Remembered, a colourful suite conceived like a young person's primer to Chinese orchestration. The narration was a voice-over provided by conductor Quek, and a high point was reached in the third song Where Is My Home with Han Lei's plaintive guan serenely accompanied by lush strings.

By this time, the mother's day theme had more or less morphed into a more general and universal form of love. Hong then dedicated his performances of Ye Lai Xiang (Evening Primrose) and Chao Yuen Zi Ye (Grassland Fantasy) to the ladies and gentleman of the audience respectively, and finished off with Cultural Medallion recipient Liang Wern Fook's xinyao hit When I Think Of You. Its rousing chorus was accompanied by an audience clap-along, and a cheerful encore brought the two-and-a-half-hour evening's fare to a happy close.

Photographs by the kind permission of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra.