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.

HANS GRAF FAREWELL SERIES: MOZART AND SALIERI / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

HANS GRAF FAREWELL SERIES:

MOZART AND SALIERI

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Thursday (21 May 2026)

This review was first published in Bachtrack.com on 26 May 2026 with the title "Mozart and Salieri under the spotlight in Hans Graf’s Singapore farewell".

Let’s first get this out of the way. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was a musical genius while Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) a skilled journeyman. The premise of Hans Graf’s final concert in his six-year tenure (2020-2026) at the helm of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra was not just to compare achievements of both composers, but to ponder the gulf between hard work and divine inspiration, and how we live with both.

The evening opened with Salieri’s Piano Concerto in C major (1773), from a rising 23-year-old who still had 52 years to live. The opening Allegro maestoso was a martial ritornello that exuded the same vibe as Mozart’s K.503, also in the same key. Big chords paved the way for young pianist Adrian Tang’s clean and accomplished delivery, which lacked nothing in polish and purpose. 

The problem was how Salieri worked his musical ideas and themes. While Mozart delighted in variety and nuance, Salieri resorted to what virtuosi of the day did best, note-spinning and striving for effect. The development and cadenza had lots of that, and one soon tired of listening. The slow movement in A minor had an opening solo resembling the corresponding movement of Mozart’s K.488, but fell short of his combo of gravitas and elegance. The finale’s Rondo saw delicate and nimble fingerwork on display with passages of Sturm und Drang by way of contrast. While pleasant and euphonious to the ear, it proved ultimately unmemorable.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.14 in E flat major (K.449) was premiered when he was 28, right at the cusp of greatness. What a big difference it made with the workmanlike Salieri. Young soloist Toby Tan did the honours, giving a dream performance of fluency and care for detail. He truly got into the spirit of Mozart, imbuing the score with a singing quality and en point articulation. 

The slow movement was a lyrical gift that kept on giving, milked for all its worth, while the finale’s theme and variations sparkled, going full buffo in a comedic coda for a final flourish. Both pianists, students of Albert Tiu, joined hands for a delightful encore, the finale from the Sonata for four hands in D major by ... Mozart (K.381), thank goodness.

Photo: Chris P.Lim

Toby Tan and Adrian Tang
with their teacher Albert Tiu

Rimsky-Korsakov’s one-act opera Mozart and Salieri (1897), based on Pushkin’s little tragedy from 1830 and sung in Russian (with English surtitles), received its Singapore premiere. This piece of speculatory fiction had spawned an industry built on the scurrilous rumour that Salieri murdered Mozart. He did nothing of the sort, but judging by Russian bass Mikhail Svetlov’s self-pitying monologue as the industrious but pedantic Salieri, might as well have done so. By poisoning the god-given genius of an irreverent and flippant Mozart, played by the much younger-looking Russian tenor Boris Stepanov, he was preserving hoards who bore the badge of mediocrity.

This was not so much a lyrical opera in the traditional sense but a psychological melodrama that pitted earth-bound against celestial talent. Rimsky-Korsakov was also comparing himself with the cultural giants that were Pushkin and Mussorgsky. 

Photo: Chris P.Lim

A chamber-sized orchestra accompanied the action, and there were cameos by Matthias Oestringer as the blind street violinist and Adrian Tang in the pastiche piano part. Members of the Singapore Symphony Chorus (Eudenice Palaruan, choral director), placed high in the balcony sang the opening page from Mozart’s Requiem, as the musical rivals memorably walked into the pages of infamy. Graf’s final act as music director of the SSO could not have been more poignant.

Rating ****

Posterity has shown
who's got the last laugh.

The original review on Bachtrack.com:

Mozart and Salieri under the spotlight in Graf’s Singapore farewell | Bachtrack

EARTH AND THE PLANETS + ELGAR'S CELLO CONCERTO / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

EARTH AND THE PLANETS

+ ELGAR’S CELLO CONCERTO

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (23 January 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 27 January 2026 with the title "Earth gets its due amid Holst's Planets in Joyce Koh's work".

When English composer Gustav Holst composed his seven-movement symphonic suite The Planets in 1917, he did not include Pluto (yet to be discovered) or Earth among them. In this Singapore Symphony Orchestra concert led by music director Hans Graf, our home planet finally got its own movement in a newly commission work by Singaporean composer Joyce Koh.

Performed as an overture, Koh’s 12-minute Earth opened with chimes of tubular bells amid a primordial soup of sound which coalesced into an aurally rich canvas of lush sonorities. Eschewing her trademark atonalism, the musical idiom and evocative French titles was closer in spirit to French composer Olivier Messiaen’s spiritually and cosmologically-inclined scores.

Incorporating three treble voices from the Singapore Symphony Children’s Choir, representing youth and innocence, she also included fleeting quotes of Mars and Jupiter from Holst’s original work as points of reference. Hers was a journey of mankind to the edge of the solar system and beyond, in a contemplation of the unknown and unknowable. In a word, breathtaking.

Joyce Koh gets the applause.

Separating Gaia and the other celestial orbs was Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor (Op.85) with young Austrian cellist Julia Hagen as soloist. From the outset, she distinguished with an outsized personality and singing tone, aided by the orchestra’s discreet and unobtrusive accompaniment.

Holding the audience in a thrall, she navigated the elegiac score with focus and purpose, overcoming the scherzo’s prestidigitation with ease and bringing catharsis in a deeply-felt Adagio. Elgar was not just commemorating loss of life and innocence in the recently concluded Great War but also paying tribute to his devoted but ailing wife Alice.

The tempestuous finale was not so much a triumph of the spirit but a struggle to battle the tears, a journey of passion which Hagen got spot on before finishing with a flourish. Her encore of the Sarabande from J.S.Bach’s Suite No.1 in G major was just as gripping.

SSO has come a long way since its premiere of Holst’s The Planets in 1997 under Choo Hoey’s baton, which was an unmitigated disaster because the female chorus from some unnamed girls’ school failed to enter when cued. No worries on this occasion, as the 78 ladies from the Singapore Symphony Chorus and Youth Choir (Eudenice Palaruan, Director) provided the perfect close to Neptune, The Mystic, its final movement.

Wordless and unseen, their hauntingly beautiful voices seemed to emerge from the ether with an unmistakable sense of awe and mystery. One could hear a pin drop as these held sway before fading into the distant abyss. Before that, the orchestra gave the most imperious of performances, with Mars, The Bringer of War setting a tone of violence and vehemence.

It was not just the popular movements like Mercury and Jupiter which impressed, but also the less obvious ones like Venus, Saturn and Uranus, where care and attention to detail and instrumental prowess came to the fore. This most memorable of outings to outer space was deservedly greeted with the most thunderous of applause and cheers.

Choral director Eudenice Palaruan,
representing the singers, gets the accolades.

HANNU LINTU CONDUCTS NELSON MASS + MAHLER 4 / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

HANNU LINTU CONDUCTS

NELSON MASS + MAHLER 4

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (14 November 2025)

This review was first published in Bachtrack.com on 17 November 2025 with the title "Hannu Lintu shows Singapore great things to come with Mahler and Haydn".

In March this year, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) named Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu as its fourth music director, succeeding Hans Graf in the 2026/2027 season. This was Lintu’s first concert as music director designate, confirming all the good notices garnered as a guest conductor in 2017 and 2018, besides providing an indication of the things to come.

Opening the evening was Joseph Haydn’s Missa in angustiis (Hob.XXII/11, or Mass for Troubled Times) in D minor, better known as his Nelson Mass. Its relationship with Britain’s greatest naval commander is tenuous other than it was composed in 1798 when Europe was in Napoleonic turmoil. The gloom had however lifted somewhat at its Eisenstadt premiere, with the news of Admiral Horatio Nelson vanquishing the French in the Battle of the Nile. Two years later, Nelson and Lady Hamilton personally met with Haydn at Esterhazy, and might have heard the mass performed then.

In the true spirit of Sturm und Drang, Lintu and his charges made no concessions for polite classical tradition and went for broke. Kyrie was an embattled cry for mercy, with the Singapore Symphony Chorus and Youth Choir (choral director: Eudenice Palaruan) in full voice and soprano Hera Hyesun Park leading the plaints. Of the soloists, she had the choicest parts, for which she never held back. Bass-baritone Edward Grint in Qui tollis peccata mundi of Gloria lent a lyrical contrast. 

The quartet of soloists was completed by mezzosoprano Virgine Verrez and tenor Elgan Llŷr Thomas, who had less significant roles but contributed well to the ensemble. The near 140-strong chorus sang in all movements, making big impacts in the fugal section of Gloria and later at the close of Credo. Entries were precise and consonants well enunciated, while the calmer Sanctus and Benedictus provided much needed contrast. Agnus Dei, led by mezzosoprano, transitioned to a joyous choral Dona nobis pacem in D major which closed the mass in a celebratory high. Desperate times called for an appropriate response, and Haydn duly delivered.

It was astute for Lintu to showcase Gustav Mahler’s most retiring symphony, the Fourth, as his calling card. Away from the earth-shaking exploits of the first three symphonies, the Fourth oozed congeniality, almost angst free in countenence. Its gentle, bucolic opening movement radiated sunshine, the sheer lack of ostentation gave cause for Lintu’s ability to craft much nuance from the playing. Strings were smooth as silk, and later as the music darkened in intensity, the woodwinds and brass crept into action, culminating in the solo trumpet’s forewarning of the Fifth Symphony’s funeral march to come.

The second movement was distinguished by concertmaster Kevin Lin playing a second violin tuned to a tone higher, representing Brother Death fiddling with another typical touch of Mahlerian macabre. The slow movement (Ruhevoll) was a portrait of respite and restraint, building to a climax before ushering the finale’s Wunderhorn song Das himmlische Leben (The Heavenly Life). 

Soprano soprano Park returned but now childlike and guileless, extolling an idyllic afterlife of scenic beauty, happy feelings and gustatory delights which stopped short of vegetarianism. There was to be no noisy or triumphant close, but music director designate Lintu had made his mark in the most musical way possible. There is a popular phrase in Malay, Singapore’s national language, “Akan datang” which means “more to come”, so watch this space.

Star Rating: *****

You can read the original version 

of this review at:

Hannu Lintu shows Singapore great things to come with Mahler and Haydn | Bachtrack

MAHLER'S RESURRECTION / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

MAHLER'S RESURRECTION

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (24 May 2025) 

This review was first published in Bachtrack.com on 27 May 2025 with the title "A Mahler Resurrection in Singapore to remember".

Every performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony in Singapore is an occasion. This has never changed since its premiere here in June 1994, with Singapore Symphony Orchestra led by billionaire publishing magnate turned specialist Mahler conductor Gilbert Kaplan. Those were the claustrophobic days of packing over 250 performers onto the cramped stage of Victoria Concert Hall. Since 2003, Esplanade Concert Hall has played host to multiple Mahler Seconds, conducted by Lan Shui, Chan Tze Law and the late John Nelson. The last of these was in 2019, marking Shui’s farewell at the end of his 22-year tenure as SSO music director. 

The last Mahler Resurrection,
in January 2019, marking Lan Shui's farewell.

A pair of Resurrections closed 2024-25, penultimate season for present music director Hans Graf. Graf will be remembered for overseeing the difficult pandemic years and transforming the orchestra into a very convincing vehicle for the symphonies of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn. In epic canvasses such as this Mahler behemoth, he is a master of breadth and scale. At 82 minutes, it was neither the swiftest of readings, nor the most protracted. It was just nice. 

Nice does not begin to describe the meticulous thought and care for detail and effect invested. There was no showboating, like conducting without a score, and there was no doubt who was fully in control. The declamatory opening over string tremolos for the first movement’s funeral rites (an earlier single-movement with the same music was titled Todtenfeier) was stirring, even arresting but not overdone. The sense of tragedy was not projected in-your-face but gradually built up over the movement’s course. The vista of pastoral bliss and alpine meadows in quieter bits would be subverted by the inexorable march to come, and the pay-off was well worth the wait. 

The five-minute pause between the first two movements was not observed, just barely a minute to allow latecomers to settle in their seats before the Andante moderato’s graceful Ländler lilt. Here was the only respite in the symphony’s troubled trudge from death to life, with a delightful interplay of strings in counter-melodies. The final run of the main theme with plucked strings (held like lutes or guitars) seemed like a nod to another Viennese master’s Pizzicato Polka. 

No Mahler symphony would be complete without a movement examining the morbid or macabre, and the Scherzo quoting his Wunderhorn lied Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredikt (Saint Anthony of Padua’s Sermon to the Fishes) served as that ponder on the futility of life. The rhythm established by the timpanis, punctuated by rustling ruthe (bundle of rods tapping a bass drum’s frame), over which a slithering melody on the strings held sway. The shriek of anguish at its end (echoing the First Symphony’s “cry from the wounded heart”) foretold the tumult to come. 

The fourth movement’s orchestration of another Wunderhorn song Urlicht (Primal Light) ushered in the beautifully mellow voice of mezzo-soprano Tanja Ariane Baumgartner. Her utterance of Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott (I am from God and would return to God) provided the reassurance before the final movement’s life and death struggles. 

Breathtaking might just summarise the symphony’s last half-hour, its magnificent brass chorales, pitched battles with offstage brass and percussion, and choral contributions. Friedrich Klopstock’s Die Auferstehung (The Resurrection) was intoned with all singers seated, and soprano Maria Bengtsson’s pristine voice wafting ethereally above a group of sixteen sopranos was a moment to remember. 

Then the 186 singers of the Singapore Symphony Chorus, Singapore Symphony Youth Choir and Symphonia Choralis (Eudenice Palaruan, Wong Lai Foon and Chong Wai Lun, choral directors) got on their feet, bringing the symphony – and occasion – to a triumphant close.

Star rating: *****

Here is the review on Bachtrack.com:

A Mahler Resurrection to remember 

in Singapore

To relive the last bits of the concert:

The final moments of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony