SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: RIMSKY-KORSAKOV'S SCHEHERAZADE

 

That's Alexander Souptel's autograph
on the cover of my CD sleeve.

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Scheherazade

GLINKA Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Lan Shui

Sometime in 2001, this self-produced SSO recording came out of nowhere. Neither recorded by Donald Wong nor BIS, but by Paul Zinman for Sound Byte Productions, it sounded very good. Was this the SSO, which had not made a recording since that unauthorised Richard Strauss Alpine Symphony of 1993? Since when has the SSO recorded mainstream repertoire? And since when has the orchestra sounded this polished in ruinously familiar music?

A new broom sweeps clean, so they say. Lan Shui, who succeeded Choo Hoey in 1997 as music director, had main sweeping changes in personnel. He retired several older and past sell-by-date musicians, and recruited new and younger professionals, mostly from USA (where he had conducted in Boston, Baltimore, New York and Detroit) and the SSO was beginning to sound fresh and revitalised.

Russia-born concertmaster Alexander Souptel, who arrived in 1993 during the Choo Hoey tenure, was retained and was the superb solo violinist for this Scheherazade. Sasha (as he is affectionately known) had played for decades in professional orchestras in the bygone Soviet Union, including being Gennady Rozhdestvensky’s concertmaster in the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra in all those Melodiya recordings. The effortless manner in which he handled the storytelling that begins The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship and the final Festival at Baghdad sounds totally natural. The harpist is unfortunately uncredited.

The orchestra performs this familiar favourite with gusto and verve, and the performance survives repeated listening, which was saying a lot. SSO was really this good, and the strings shine particularly well in the filler, Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture. This became the orchestra’s calling card, and little wonder that SSO used this showpiece to open its BBC Proms debut in 2014. By this time, Souptel had retired and the concertmaster position handed to his younger compatriot, the Russian-American Igor Yuzefovich.

SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: COMING OF AGE / SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA 21ST ANNIVERSARY

COMING OF AGE

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

21st Anniversary

The Singapore Symphony Orchestra marked its 21st birthday in 2000 with this compilation album of recordings made between 1979 and 1999. It includes important landmarks from the orchestra’s history from its inaugural concerts in January 1979, live performances and recordings made during this period. It would go on to make much better recordings, but this album, despite the variable quality of sound, provided an important snapshot of SSO’s progress over the years. The way we were, so to speak.

In the beginning...

The journey takes place at its very beginning, with a live reading of the popular Dance of the Yau People by Mao Yuan and Liu Tien-Shan, from the inaugural concerts at Singapore Conference Hall led by founding music director Choo Hoey, complete with audience applause. Following that is the brief but brutal second movement from Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, issued on a once-off Philips recording to mark SSO’s 10th anniversary in 1989. SSO’s prowess in 20th century music, Choo’s speciality, was evident for all to hear.

The only concertante track was the Rondo from Mozart’s Concerto for Three Pianos in F major (K.242) with the celebrated duo of Dennis Lee and Toh Chee Hung and SSO Chairman Tan Boon Teik, who was then the nation’s attorney-general (a sort of Singapore answer to West Germany’s Helmut Schmidt). That was part of a fund-raising LP recording made in 1983. Music by Singaporean composers was represented by Leong Yoon Pin’s Dayong Sampan, taken from the 1993 documentation recording rather than the 10th anniversary Philips album from 1989.

Lim Yau (extreme right) was
SSO Associate Conductor and SSC Chorusmaster
when he got the Cultural Medallion in 1990.

The dramatis personae who defined the SSO’s early years have been included, including long-time associate conductor Lim Yau and his Singapore Symphony Chorus, performing the Ode To Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth, the Choral Symphony. The 10-minute segment starts from bar 195, after the first orchestral fugue, all through to its glorious end. Lim’s successor for three years (1998-2000), the American Bart Folse is represented with Isoldes Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, the recording from a Familiar Favourites concert “Opera Without Words”. SSO’s principal guest conductor the Finn Okko Kamu, appointed in 1994, does the honours in three Brahms Hungarian Dances, Nos.1, 5 and 17.

Bart Folse assumed Lim Yau's positions
from 1998 to 2000.

Okko Kamu was SSO Principal
Guest Conductor for over 20 years.

Lan Shui was SSO music director
from 1997 to 2019.

In 1997, Lan Shui succeeded Choo Hoey, becoming SSO’s second music director. One of his earliest recording projects on the Swedish BIS label was the complete symphonies and piano concertos of Russia-born composer Alexander Tcherepnin. The 2nd movement from the Third Symphony “Chinese” has been included here. The hour-long disc closes with three dances from Tchaikovsky’s ballets Swan Lake (Waltz) and Sleeping Beauty (Panorama and Waltz), a clear demonstration that the orchestra was truly adept in dance music.

At the turn of the century, SSO at 21 had come of age, and that was just the beginning of a long journey to musical excellence and worldwide recognition.

The cardboard case which the 
jewel case and CD were enclosed.

Post-script: This commemoration album was not for public sale, but presented to sponsors and guests at SSO's fundraising dinner in 2000. As editor of BraviSSimO! (The SSO Friends newsletter) and all-round kaypoh at large, I was asked to script the programme notes as well as the Chairmen's congratulatory messages.

SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: LEONG YOON PIN SYMPHONIC WORKS OF SINGAPORE

 

LEONG YOON PIN

Symphonic Works of Singapore

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Lim Yau & Choo Hoey (Conductors)

Designated a “documentation project of the National Arts Council (NAC)”, this 1993 album might just be the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s most important recording of music by a Singaporean composer. Why do so few Singaporean works get recorded by the SSO is not a mystery, as the orchestra and the powers that be never really put their faith in local composers then. Very few local works appeared in concert programmes, and one began to wonder if Singaporean composers even existed. This recording made by Naxos Singapore was only distributed locally, and why it never made into the label’s mainstream recordings for worldwide circulation was also a real pity.

Leong Yoon Pin (1931-2011) was the doyen of Singapore’s composers. As a music lecturer at the Teachers Training College, he received a scholarship by the French government to study composition with Nadia Boulanger in 1966-67. His works combines modern idioms, contrapuntal vigour with Asian aesthetics, writing Nanyang music even before the term was conceived.

The classic example was the overture Dayong Sampan (1980), a symphonic fantasy on the popular Malay song, known as Tian Mi Mi in Chinese. This performance led by Choo Hoey shaves a few seconds off the 1989 recording made on the Philips label. The other works on this album were conducted by SSO Associate Conductor Lim Yau. Another work occasionally heard in concert is Giocoso – Largamente, from Symphony No.2 (1979), possibly Leong’s most often programmed symphonic movement. There is a festive and celebratory air in this music, making it one of his most accessible works. Till this day, neither the symphony nor its predecessor have been recorded by the SSO in their entirety.

The final four works are rarely ever (or never) heard in concert, so rare that they could not even accessed on YouTube. All possess an austerity associated with Leong’s serious work, even if the subject is local in nature. Largo – Vivace for strings (1982) is the sort of work which the Basel Chamber Orchestra (or re:Sound for that matter) would revel in.

Episodes In Journey To The West (1983) is not meant to be programmatic but reflects on the exploits of Sun Wukong, the monkey god, and relations with his pilgrim companions as they seek the holy scriptures from India. The music is structured on a tone row, and there are three connected sections marked Andante moderato, Allegro and Adagio, closing in reverential calm and solemnity as nirvana is finally realised.

The tone poem Temasekian (1990), at 18 minutes, is the longest work on the disc. The music dwells on Singapore’s forefathers and includes elements of Chinese, Indian and Malay music, all the tropes of classic Nanyang music. Far from being populist, the themes are terse and abstract, although dances, ceremonies and festivals may be discerned through the drumming and percussive rhythms. Closing the album is Metamorphosis (1993), composed for the Singapore Youth Orchestra’s concert tour to Japan. Following the Lisztian model, thematic transformation of simple presenting motifs take place, but so discreet that one without a score in hand barely notices. The music alternates between spareness and opulence in textures, stasis and kinesis, which is characteristic in Leong’s output.

Choo Hoey gets first billing although
he conducted only one work, while
Lim Yau conducted five!

Aside from the first two which are more accessible, much of Leong’s orchestral output is more respected that actually loved. Nonetheless, this album is an important document in the history of orchestral music in Singapore. The SSO under Lim Yau (mostly) performs the works with exemplary discipline and precision, which the exacting music demands. What we need now are recordings of his two symphonies and orchestral choral works to complete the picture.

SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: SINGAPORE SYMPHONY CHORUS - THE FIRST TWELVE YEARS

 

THE FIRST TWELVE YEARS

Singapore Symphony Chorus

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Lim Yau (Conductor)

So far we have been listening to the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s oldest recordings, issued during the mid- to late 1980s. One aspect of SSO history which should not be ignored is its performances of symphonic choral repertoire. The Singapore Symphony Chorus (SSC) was established in 1980 to serve that purpose, inaugurating with Brahms’ A German Requiem (sung in English) in the same year. By 1992, the SSC had contributed to Singapore premieres of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius (1983), Tippett’s A Child of Our Time (1978), Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass (1989) and Rachmaninov’s The Bells (1992).

This CD album was issued in 1993 to commemorate the SSC’s first dozen years, conducted by its chorus director Lim Yau (also SSO Associate Conductor) since 1981. Excerpts from live concerts at Victoria Concert Hall from 1989 to 1992 were selected from engineered recordings by Donald Wong of Ultralinear International, who was later responsible for the “clandestine” recording of SSO’s Richard Strauss Alpine Symphony in 1993. This recording was however authorised and sanctioned by SSO and Lim Yau, and released for public sale. It even enjoyed a brief run at the top of the classical charts in Singapore’s record shops including Tower Records and Music Power House.

What were its contents? There is a complete performance of Poulenc’s Gloria, recorded in 1989 with late British soprano Susan Chilcott. This reading sparkled with life and verve, with both chorus and orchestra enjoying its unique blend of liturgy and humour. From 1990 came the orchestra’s only recording of a Beethoven symphony, namely his Ninth, or Choral Symphony. 

Since this is a choral CD, only the An die Freude (Ode to Joy) final movement, was included but with its first 202 bars omitted. Thus the music begins just before bass-baritone John Tranter’s declaration of O Freunde, nicht diese Tone. The vocal quartet was completed by tenor Neil Mackie, soprano Dorothy Ross and mezzo-soprano Yang Jie. The chorus is in very good form and the fugal entries well-handled, as would be expected from the disciplinarian Lim Yau, then Singapore’s only orchestral conductor with extensive choral experience

Lim Yau and the SSC in 1992.

Shorter choral excerpts make up the rest of the disc. From Mozart’s “Great” Mass in C minor (K.427), Jesu Christe and Cum sancto spirito from its Gloria (recorded 1991) brought back fond memories. Lim Yau once recounted to me that he needed to recruit more singers from church choirs to join the SSC, which was one reason why Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah was programmed in 1990. A result was the fine chorus, Yet the Lord see not.

A very satisfied Lim Yau after the performance
of Rachmaninov's The Bells in May 1992,
with Mrs Valentina Loginova,
Russian language coach.

To close the hour-long disc were the Sanctus and Agnus Dei from Beethoven’s Mass in C major (Op.86) from March 1992. I joined the SSC as a tenor shortly after that concert, thus missing out from being included in SSO’s only wholly choral disc! Nevertheless, this snapshot of SSC and SSC history from the late 1980s to early 1990s is a historically important one.

SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: RICHARD STRAUSS AN ALPINE SYMPHONY (1993)

 

Despite not having authorised it,
Choo Hoey still signed my copy anyway. Mensch.

RICHARD STRAUSS An Alpine Symphony

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Choo Hoey (Conductor)

DW Labs DW-1003

Singapore Symphony Orchestra under music director Choo Hoey gave the Singapore premiere of Richard Strauss’ Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony) in late 1993. It was by most accounts a successful concert, which had Liszt’s First Piano Concerto (with Jean-Philippe Collard as soloist) as coupling. Then sometime in 1994, this CD recording appeared on the DW Labs label and sold in local record shops.

The countenance of this album is somewhat mysterious. DW Labs is ostensibly the label of prominent local audiophile-entrepreneur Donald Wong of Ultralinear International Pte Ltd, a distributor of high-end audio equipment located at Adelphi Shopping Centre. Apparently, he had recording equipment in Victoria Concert Hall where this recording was made.

By this time, SSO had discontinued its relationship with Hong Kong’s Marco Polo Records which had produced all of its early recordings. Its last commercial recording had been the Shostakovich Tenth Symphony, a once-off with the Philips label in 1989. Thus, this album of very ambitious orchestral repertoire (the orchestra had recently also premiered Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Mahler’s Ninth Symphony) was a welcome sign that SSO was making recordings again. Or so I thought.

Imagine the shock when I approached Choo Hoey to autograph his latest CD, to find out that he had never sanctioned or permitted its release! Even he wondered how this recording was made under the orchestra’s collective noses. Listening to it after all these years, I can understand his chagrin. This was a live recording with neither recourse for retakes nor editing of any sort, at least not under his supervision.

A publicity poster,
presumably by the record label,
since SSO's logo is not on it.

“A high definition phase-coherent digital recording” was a selling point, clearly aimed at the audiophile. This recording has a very wide dynamic range, requiring one to dial up the volume several notches in order to catch the orchestra’s evocation of night and sunrise, and when Helios is up and the mountaineers begin their climb, the sound is almost deafening. 

The orchestra’s limitations, in instrumental solos and ensemble work, are also exposed for all to hear. Although the players put in a good shift, especially the overworked brass, the overall outcome was not the most flattering. The transitions between quieter episodes leading to full-blown climaxes (and there are several) were particularly vulnerable, not helped by the relative lack of reverberation. Some of the fluffs are also hard to ignore. Best not to be heard through headphones.

Nevertheless, this was still an interesting record and benchmark of what standards the SSO had achieved within its short fourteen years. Ironically, this was to be Choo Hoey’s last recording with the SSO, with his impending retirement only two years in the future. His position would go to Lan Shui in 1997, with his BIS label contract that would later redefine SSO’s recorded legacy.

SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY NO.10 on Philips Classics

 

SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No.10

LEONG YOON PIN Dayong Sampan

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Choo Hoey (Conductor)

Philips 426 228-2

This CD recording saw the Singapore Symphony Orchestra come of age. Issued in 1989 to mark the orchestra’s 10th anniversary, it was a once-off on the Dutch Philips label, a gift from the regional director of Philips Electronics, which had a factory operating in Toa Payoh. The disc was produced for local distribution by the Polygram group, but still carried the hallmarks and technology of Philips, the label of Bernard Haitink, Colin Davis et al.

By this time, the SSO under music director Choo Hoey had already developed a good reputation in 20th music. In 1980, SSO performed its first Shostakovich symphony (No.1), just five years after the composer’s death. In 1983, the Tenth Symphony received its Singapore premiere, and this was a work the orchestra returned to with much regularity, together with other contemporary staples like Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1919) and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.

Composed in 1953, after the death of Soviet dictator Stalin, Shostakovich was free to express his true feelings about the regime, encapsulated in its four unusual movements. Widely considered his greatest symphony, SSO very much regarded it as such. The long slow first movement unfolded with purpose and received a true Mahlerian catharsis it deserved. The short Scherzo was a portrait of pure Stalinist malevolence, and Choo Hoey drove his charges to a feverish frenzy. This movement was so well performed that it was shortlisted for SSO’s 21st anniversary highlights disc.

Elmira & DSCH

The final two movements were possessed with Shostakovich’s ironic sense of humour, an interplay between a mystery French horn theme (now identified as the Elmira Nazirova motif) and his own DSCH motto. Were the two secretly in love? According to Nazirova many years later, it was all in Mitya’s head. The finale is possessed with a mordant wit that makes light of all the horror that came before. It was Shostakovich’s unique way of saying, “the tyrant is dead, and the independent spirit is now freed”. SSO’s performance showed it clearly identified with Shostakovich’s idiom.

The venerated Leong Yoon Pin,
Singapore's only Nadia Boulanger student.

Leong Yoon Pin’s Dayong Sampan (1980) was the rather apt coupling. For more than thirty years, this was Singapore’s best-loved and most-performed symphonic poem, only displaced by Wang Chenwei’s The Sisters’ Islands - another maritime-themed work - during the 21st century. The Malay melody (known to the Chinese as Tian Mi Mi) emerges from an introduction of dense orchestration and counterpoint to become its main subject. The work is a sober take on the Chinese diaspora who ventured across the South China Sea to seek new lives in Malaya, a quintessential piece of Nanyang music even before the term came into being.

Wan Soon Kam's water colour painting

The orchestra plays both works with passion and conviction. SSO has Dayong Sampan pretty much to itself, and even if the Shostakovich is not quite in the same exalted level as classic Kondrashin or Mravinsky, there is still much to be proud of. There are biographical and programme notes (by Bernard Tan) in English, German and French. The cover design of Victoria Concert Hall is from a water colour painting by Wan Soon Kam. A piece of musical nostalgia well-worth owning.

This recording was one of two CDs issued by SSO in the year 1989. The other was its only Beethoven recording, of his Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos (with John Bingham) on the Meridien label. That was reviewed here: pianomania: CD Reviews (The Straits Times, March 2014)

SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: BALAKIREV ORCHESTRAL WORKS on Marco Polo

BALAKIREV Chopin Suite / Overtures

Singapore Symphony Orchestra 

Choo Hoey (Conductor)

Marco Polo 8.220324

This is the young Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s second recording of Russian music, recorded in June 1985, following the good notices garnered by its earlier Ippolitov-Ivanov album (pianomania: CD Reviews (The Straits Times, August 2015)). By this time, Choo Hoey’s young orchestra had shown much enthusiasm and flair in Russian music, its ranks populated by a sizeable body of Eastern European and mainland Chinese musicians.

Mily Balakirev (1837-1910) was the founder and autocratic leader of the Russian nationalist composers called “The Mighty Handful” (Moguchaya Kuchka) or simply “The Russian Five”. They espoused the use of Russian folk music in their works with Mikhail Glinka as their pioneering demigod. They rejected Western compositional models, as practised by establishment composers such as Anton Rubinstein, and to a certain extent, Piotr Tchaikovsky.

Of the overtures on this disc, In Bohemia (sometimes called In Czechia, published 1906) is perhaps the least obscure. Based on an earlier Overture on Czech Themes (1867), it is a fantasy on three Czech folk melodies. This is a rather enjoyable piece, very typically Russian in style and orchestration (think Borodin or Rimsky-Korsakov rather than Dvorak or Smetana), not unlike Rachmaninov’s similarly-inspired Capriccio Bohemien of 1892-94. Also Russian in feel is the Overture to King Lear (1859), the only completed part of a proposed set of incidental music written for the Shakespearean play. High drama and tragedy are well captured in this substantial work, which SSO performs with much verve and fervour.

The opening of Overture on a Spanish March Theme (1886) with a piccolo solo has an Oriental flavour, based on a Moorish theme, but is soon dominated by a march (La Marcha Real, adopted in 1761 but dating from the 16th century) which football fans will recognise as the wordless Spanish national anthem still heard today in World Cup matches. Composed for a play that commemorated the expulsion of Muslims from Spain, the march riding on a wave of jingoism gets more than pride of place in this fantasy.

Balakirev was a great fan of Fryderyk Chopin’s music. His Chopin Suite comprises orchestrations of four Chopin piano pieces but in different keys from the original pieces. These include Preambule (Etude) in D minor, based on the E flat minor Etude (Op.10 No.6), Mazurka in B flat major (based on Op.41 No.3 in A flat major), Intermezzo (Nocturne) based on Op.15 No.3 in the same key of G minor, and Finale in D minor, based on Scherzo No.3 in C sharp minor (Op.39). These will be familiar to pianists, who will be slightly disorientated by their orchestrations. These served as the inspiration for Balakirev student Alexander Glazunov’s Chopiniana, which later formed the foundation for the Mikhail Fokine ballet Les Sylphides.

For some reason, this recording has not been reissued on the budget-priced Naxos label. SSO’s recording is still more than serviceable, and an enjoyable means to discover some curious byways of the Russian orchestral repertoire.

SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: VERDI SINFONIAS & PRELUDES on HONG KONG RECORDS / MARCO POLO

Honestly, this is a terrible likeness
of what the young Verdi looked like.
(See the photograph below)

VERDI

Sinfonias and Preludes
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Choo Hoey (Conductor)
Hong Kong Records
Marco Polo 6.220184

Recorded in August 1983, this album of overtures and preludes from early operas by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) was SSO’s second recording of Western classical repertoire after its take on Respighi’s Concerto Gregoriano. There is nothing remotely familiar here for most listeners – no La Traviata, I Vespri Siciliani, Nabucco or La Forza del Destino. Thus this is mostly an album of discovery as were those SSO concerts conducted by Choo Hoey in 1983 which opened with overtures to Joan of Arc and The Battle of Legnano.

Make no mistake, this is still very good music by a future great composer. The Overture to Il Finto Stanislao (The False Stanislaus, 1840), also known as Un Giorno di Regno (A Day for the King) opens the collection, in a comedic tone befitting the opera buffo. The resemblance to Rossini’s overtures is striking here. By contrast, the Overture to Giovanna d’Arco (Joan of Arc, 1845) is serious and dramatic, while showcasing some fine woodwind solo-playing. The Prelude to I Masnadieri (The Robbers, 1847) is dominated by a cello solo, by then-principal Chiu Chun Chiu.

The stories of these obscure operas are more often than not convoluted and forgettable, but the music is much more easily enjoyed. The Overture to Alzira (1845) with its drum roll and French horn solo, the trumpet solo in the Overture to Aroldo (1857) displayed the of prowess of SSO’s principal musicians even in those early years. 

Perhaps most memorable of these is the Overture to Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio (Count of Saint Boniface, 1839), Verdi’s first opera, where the influence of bel canto was strong. Also enjoy the brass ensemble in the opening of the Overture to La Battaglia di Legnano (The Battle of Legnano, 1849), which true to its title, is filled with much martial music. The SSO performs these works well, and given the rarity of such repertoire, this album is worth listening to.

This album exists only on vinyl LP, and to my knowledge, has never been released on CD. Now a collector’s item, I have to thank Ng Siew Eng to gifting this album to me after a spot of spring-cleaning.