BEETHOVEN'S ODE TO JOY / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

BEETHOVEN’S ODE TO JOY 

Singapore Symphony Orchestra 

Esplanade Concert Hall 

Thursday (25 July 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 27 July 2024 with the title "Standing ovation for SSO's take on Brahms and Beethoven".

Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s first gala concert for the 2024/25 season, led by music director Hans Graf, was headlined by two major repertoire works. The opening act was Johannes Brahms’ Double Concerto in A minor (Op.102) with violinist Chloe Chua and SSO principal cellist Ng Pei-Sian as soloists. 

Despite their age gap (Chua is 17 and Ng in his late 30s), the duo worked well together, reliving the parts played by original virtuosos Joseph Joachim and Robert Hausmann at its 1887 premiere. After an orchestral outburst, Ng’s demanding solo cadenza was rapt and ear-catching with Chua later joining in as an equal partner. Nowhere was she overawed and they were hand-and-glove throughout, with the orchestra’s discreet partnership allowing their voices to shine. 

The central slow movement had them in a silky smooth unison, with an evenness providing some of the work’s most sublime moments. The Hungarian-flavoured finale was a jocular jaunt, playful in exchanges yet cohesive to the closing chords. The vociferous response was rewarded with a substantial encore: the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia, another classic of sharing intimate moments together. 

Watch the Brahms Double Concerto (1st movement) here:

The other blockbuster was Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in D minor (Op.125), his beloved Choral Symphony. There has been no better time amid tumultuous world affairs to relive this unifying work, the supreme espousal of Friedrich Schiller’s gospel of the universal brotherhood of man. 

Running for 67 minutes, Graf’s vision was a generally swift one. Following the opening drone, orchestral entries were brisk and crisp, yet with no hint of being hectic or strait-jacketed. The music was allowed to breathe naturally with a well-judged broadening of tempos when it mattered. 

Even when the Molto vivace second movement upped the ante, pulses quickened but never raced beyond safety limits, much having to do with Christian Schioler’s steady but emphatic timpani beats dictating the proceedings. The lovely Adagio slow movement provided much respite but was not allowed to languish or wallow. 

Then came the much-awaited finale. Its earth-shattering introduction relived moments from earlier movements, a summation of all that had come before. The first vocal was from baritone Liam James Karai, his commanding voice answered emphatically by 110 singers from the Singapore Symphony Choruses and Singapore Bible College Community Choir (Eudenice Palaruan, Choral Director & Wong Lai Foon, Choirmaster). 

There have been bigger choirs to grace the Ninth, notably Esplanade’s opening concert in 2002. However this group lacked nothing in pluck and confidence, delivering the famed Ode To Joy (Freude, Schoner Gotterfunken) chorus and tricky fugues with suitable eclat and ecstasy. 

The quartet of well-matched soloists was completed by soprano Johanna Falkinger, mezzo-soprano Anita Montserrat and tenor Seungwoo Yang, the last of whom conquered the Turkish march segment (accompanied by triangle, cymbals and bass drum) with much swagger. 

The symphony’s frenzied conclusion received a deserved standing ovation. Its message of world peace, delivered in harmonious Singapore, might however be a case of preaching to the choir.

Watch part of the finale

of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony here:

SMETANA AND DVORAK / VCH Presents Chamber / Review

 

SMETANA AND DVORAK 

VCHpresents Chamber 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Friday (17 May 2024) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 May 2024 with the title "Warm evening of Bohemian rarities at SSO's chamber concert."

Was it good planning or mere coincidence that this year has been a boon for lovers of Bohemian music? Concertgoers might remember superb performances of Antonin Dvorak’s chamber works: Japan’s Aoi Trio in his Third Piano Trio (Op.65) and More Than Music & Friends in the Second Piano Quintet (Op.81). 

Sunday will see the Singapore debut of the Prague-based Pavel Haas Quartet in music by Josef Suk, Bedrich Smetana and Leos Janacek, but this evening’s offering by members of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra should be remembered equally fondly. 

Smetana (1824-1884) is known as the “Father of Czech musical nationalism”, with tone poem Die Moldau (or Vltava) from the orchestral cycle Ma Vlast (My Country) being his best-loved work. Attended by a well-filled house, the 200th anniversary of Smetana’s birth was commemorated with the rare performance of his Piano Trio in G minor (Op.15). 

Composed after the tragic death of his daughter from scarlet fever, the music exuded sadness, opening with violinist Ye Lin’s impassioned solo. Throbbing chords from pianist Albert Tiu added to the pathos while cellist Christopher Mui’s lyrical lines provided a more calming influence. 

The threesome worked very well together, even if the work often highlighted the violin. Ye’s robust tone and flawless intonation seemed symbolic of Smetana’s representation of feminine pride and dignity, which was lent a poignancy through his daughter’s loss. 

The Scherzo was more light-hearted, with a folk dance-like quality, later transforming into something more stately without making a grand statement. The Presto finale fired on all cylinders, with pianist Tiu’s prestidigitations dictating the pace. Cellist Mui’s big melody almost stole the show, before the main theme ground into a slow funeral march. 

OK, who just farted?

Everything's alright,
it was just the VCH ghost!

The brilliant close to the trio got the plaudits its deserved from an unusually mature and sophisticated audience, on a rare evening which had neither fidgety children, errant handphones nor inappropriate clapping between movements. 

The rarities continued into the second half with the Second String Quintet in G major (Op.77) by Dvorak (1841-1904), performed by violinists Chan Yoong-Han and Sayuri Kuru, violist Gu Bing Jie, cellist Ng Pei-Sian and bassist Yang Zheng Yi. The unusual scoring with string quartet backed by double-bass translated into music of genuine congeniality, not unlike that experienced in Franz Schubert’s Trout Quintet. 

Thus its four movements radiated warmth and mellowness which never overstayed their welcome. The opening movement bristled with vigour, contrasted by a Scherzo which was not so much a joke, but a play on listeners’ expectations. Tempo and rhythmic shifts, skilfully handled by the players, had one wondering whether this was a dance, or something more serious. 

The slow movement oozed Slavic intensity. Violinist Chan and cellist Ng strove to maintain its melodic lines and did so gloriously. The finale’s driving rhythms, with ensemble at full throttle, ensured this Bohemian rhapsody closed with highest possible of spirits.

HEARTSONGS / More Than Music / Review

 

HEARTSONGS 

More Than Music 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Monday (15 April 2024) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 April 2024 with the title "Chamber group More Than Music hits you in the heart".

More Than Music, the chamber group founded by violinist Loh Jun Hong and pianist Abigail Sin, has now become more than a duo. Augmented by heavy-hitters of the local classical music scene, their partnership was joined at its latest concert by violinist Chan Yoong Han, cellist Ng Pei-Sian, both principals in the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and violist Martin Peh of the Concordia Quartet. 

Opening the concert with movements from serenades by two 20th century Hungarian composers was a novel idea. The first movement from Zoltan Kodaly’s Serenade for two violins and viola (Op.12) was founded upon folk music, with vigorous rhythms and lilting melodies. It was fascinating to see the viola, for a change, having the big tune and accompanied by violins. 

The first three movements from Erno Dohnanyi’s Serenade for string trio (Op.10, for violin, viola and cello) – march, romance and scherzo – were more conventional, closer in idiom to that of older composers Brahms and Dvorak. From the threesome of Chan, Peh and Ng, one got absolute cohesion and pinpoint ensemble, which sizzled in the rapid-fire closing movement. 

Pianist Sin was heard for the first time, in partnership with Ng in Claude Debussy’s Cello Sonata. The three-movement late masterpiece was performed in its entirety, sounding worlds away from his trademark impressionist style. The Frenchman had opted here for leaner and clearer textures, where melodies came to the fore in preference to nebulous harmonies and thick counterpoint. 

Ng’s cello singing lyrical lines, with Sin’s transparent keyboard work in support, was the triumph of this often-elusive work. While the central movement’s Serenade delighted in comedic pizzicatos and quirky guitar-like effects, the earlier fluency was restored in the finale as the duo romped home to an emphatic close. 

Violinist Loh and pianist Sin were finally united in American pianist-composer John Novacek’s Intoxication from Four Rags, a sped-up and off-kilter ragtime variation of Turkey in the Straw, closing the first half on an animated high. 

The main work of a programme centering on music’s heart ware was Antonin Dvorak Piano Quintet No.2 in A major (Op.81), long regarded as one of the classical repertoire’s three greatest piano quintets (Schumann and Brahms being the other two). It takes a heart of stone not to respond to its wealth of melodic invention, folksy rhythms and all-round congeniality. 

That was exactly what all five musicians delivered on the evening, a reading of tautness and cohesion, yet one that radiated a shared warmth borne by near-telepathic communication. The first movement’s introduction from piano and cello feigned a bask in indolence, but that was ultimately dispelled with the entry of the other strings. 

Thus began an exhilarating ride into the heart of Bohemia’s fields and forests. Even if its second movement was a deeply felt Dumka, a Slavic lament that reached deep into one’s soul, it was the infectious high spirits exhibited in the Scherzo and Finale that won the day. Cue loud and long applause, and one knows exactly why chamber music is so loved and cherished.

TRAVERSING / QU CHUNQUAN & SCO / Ding Yi Music Company / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

TRAVERSING 

Ding Yi Music Company 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Friday (15 March 2024) 

QU CHUNQUAN & SCO 

Singapore Chinese Orchestra 

Singapore Conference Hall 

Saturday (16 March 2024) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 18 March 2024 with the title "Retired SCO conductors Yeh Tsung and Qu Chunquan take centre stage". 

For senior conductors, there is life after the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. Yeh Tsung, who retired from the helm of SCO in end-2022 and became its Conductor Emeritus, was back on the podium to lead Ding Yi Music Company’s opening concert of its 2024-25 season. The very eclectic programme was an excellent showcase of contemporary music for Chinese instruments that fused Chinese and Western sensibilities. 

Photo: Andrew Bi Photography

Pride of place were two concertos for cello that featured Singapore Symphony Orchestra principal Ng Pei-Sian as soloist. Chen Yi’s very substantial Sound of the Five was a prime example of this perfect synthesis. Its four movements exploited myriad sonorities that result by pitting the cello’s lower-pitched and deeply-breathed voice with the higher-pitched and variable sliding tones of Chinese instruments. 

Echoes of the Set Bells had pitched percussion – xylophone and vibraphone – simulate the tintinnabulation over the cello’s song, which came to the fore with heartrending lyricism in Romance of Hsiao and Chin. The pinpoint precision struck between cello and orchestra in the final Flower Drums in Dance with an incessant beat brought the work to a breathtaking close. 

Photo: Andrew Bi Photography

The irrepressible Yeh also directed in Mo Fan’s Oasis, a fantasy for Ng Hsien Han’s virtuosic dizi draped in indelible Central Asian colours, and Koh Cheng Jin’s Nanyang-styled symphonic poem Legend of Badang, delighting in the rhythms of the Indo-Malayan archipelago. 

Photo: Andrew Bi Photography

Yeh shared the concert with Ding Yi Resident Conductor Dedric Wong De Li, a former protege of his. Wong led in Jonathan Shin’s excellent single-movement cello concerto Good Hunting (Ng Pei-Sian as soloist again) and Chen Xinruo’s Sejuteng, a speculative modern interpretation of Tang dynasty music. 

Qu Chunquan was a conductor associated with Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s early years during the 1980s to 90s, when it was the People’s Association Chinese Orchestra. His return to lead the orchestra was commendable but a programme entirely devoted to his compositions was questionable. 

His music has a populist feel but are blighted by banalities. Shanghai Capriccio so blatantly ripped off Gershwin’s An American in Paris that it might as well have been titled George Gershwin in Shanghai. Arguably worse was the supposedly patriotic work called Reverie at the Statue of Sir Stamford Raffles, which appropriated tropes from Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien. The rousing apotheosis, which had NDP song Singapura, Sunny Island blaring out, might have also suggested he mistook the word reverie for revelry. 

From the SCO, one got nothing less than totally committed performances. As for Music and Dance of the Silk Road, a Central Asian-flavoured fantasy, and the martial arts-inspired Shaolin Wand, Qu showed he was capable of colourful and evocative orchestrations. 

The concert’s high points were provided by SCO’s own players as soloists in concertante works. Sheng player Yang Hsin-Yu gave a breathtaking account of The Myth of Paiwan, three movements which drew inspiration from Taiwan’s indigenous people. Even if the central movement resembled a Neapolitan dance and the finale an outtake from Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian’s copybook, the lively readings carried the work. 

SCO zhonghu principal Lin Gao was a dazzling presence in Variations on a Theme of Rely, showcasing a deep and throaty string sonority. The individual variations with Yu Jia’s pipa and Fontane Liang’s harp in accompaniment were very well crafted. 

Without any prompting, two light encores – a Socialist Realist-style march and a tango a la Gerardo Matos Rodriguez’s La Cumparsita – were offered by Qu and the band at the concert’s end, with the enthused audience lapping it all up.

HEROIC TALES OF RICHARD STRAUSS / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

HEROIC TALES OF RICHARD STRAUSS

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Thursday (5 October 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 October 2023 with the title "SSO's take on Strauss' Don Quixote warmly received".

 

After the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s magnificent reading of Richard Strauss’s tone poem Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) in July, it seemed appropriate to follow up with an entire evening dedicated to more of the German late Romantic composer’s music. Just 16 years separated the three works on show, but it was fair representation of Strauss’ enormous compositional range.

 

Led by music director Hans Graf, the concert opened with the Serenade in E flat major (Op.7, 1881) for thirteen wind instruments. Two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, four French horns and one contrabassoon accounted for this brief and mellow Andante. If the orchestra is famed for its strings, the winds also deserve plaudits in this lyrical showing which displayed both innate virtuosity and immaculate deportment.

 

Hans Graf spoke to the audience
about Richard Strauss' many heroes
and their deaths as portrayed in music.

Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks (1895) was a tone poem about the eternal jokester of German folklore, who goes to town on a serial trail of mischief. Its “once upon a time” opening and introduction of the ribald French horn, helmed with confidence by principal Austin Larson, immediately set the tone. Dressed in indelible orchestral colour, its vivid characterisation all the way to Till’s execution, with ominous drumrolls and brilliant clarinet solo, made it a performance to remember.

 

The big piece on show was Don Quixote (1897), almost three times as long as Till. Prone to rambling, Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes’ far more complex anti-hero had a more diffuse characterisation. Not strictly a cello concerto, it nonetheless revelled in a major cello obbligato part helmed with much sympathy by SSO principal Ng Pei-Sian. Introduced with him was principal violist Zhang Manchin who performed within the rank and file besides playing the squire Sancho Panza.

 

As with Till, Graf and the orchestra’s attention to detail was exemplary, this despite the profusion of ideas and events, and appropriately for the subject, frequent flights of fancy. After a lengthy introduction, Ng’s entry was nuanced rather than outrightly heroic, the cantankerous subject having to traverse ten “fantastic variations on a theme of knightly character”.

 

His tone was warm and commanding, well complemented by Zhang’s viola, which was sufficiently garrulous. The duo’s chemistry in closely intertwined adventures made the work’s longeurs all the more worthwhile. Adding a further layer, the vision of Dulcinee (the Don’s delusion of the idealised woman) found fruition in concertmaster Markus Tomasi’s violin.

Photo: Chris P. Lim

 

The battle with the sheep (Variation II) exploited woodwind and brass dissonances to startling effect, while the imagined flight in the air (Variation VII) employing a wind machine while firmly pegged on a pedal point in D was pure fantasy. Best of all was the Epilogue, with the cello’s pure voice unencumbered by further distractions, as the Don breathed his last, expiring with a glissando to the nether reaches.

 

There have not been many Don Quixotes performed in Singapore over the years, but this one garnered the most cheers.                                          

The review of the same concert on Bachtrack.com:

Singapore Symphony principals helm a memorable Strauss Don Quixote | Bachtrack