HANNU LINTU INAUGURAL SERIES: GIL SHAHAM & MAHLER 5 / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

HANNU LINTU INAUGURAL SERIES:

GIL SHAHAM & MAHLER 5

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Friday (17 July 2026)

Esplanade Concert Hall

This review was first published in Bachtrack.com on 20 July 2026 with the title "Hannu Lintu makes his mark in inaugural concert with the Singapore Symphony".

Until today, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra has had just three music directors in its 47-year history – Choo Hoey, Lan Shui and Hans Graf. Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu was introduced this evening as its the fourth music director. A towering physical presence with a hint of a wizened smile, he made his presence felt immediately.

Lintu’s inaugural concert programme consisted wholly of 20th and 21st century works, opening with the world premiere of Après l'Odyssée by Singaporean composer Tan Chan Boon (born 1965). The École Normale-schooled Tan is Singapore’s most prolific symphonist, and this nearly 20-minute-long commission is the first movement of his yet to be performed Seventh Symphony. 

His models are anachronistically Romantic, with Anton Bruckner and Richard Strauss coming to mind, not least the pastoral opening string melody backed by cascading woodwind chords. The movement’s title After The Odyssey was premised on the feeling of relief and uneasy calm after his Sixth Symphony (L’Odyssey, recounting the Covid-19 pandemic). Its breezy beginning was qualified by a fugal treatment of its second subject. Tension ensued with the introduction of brass and percussion, gradually building to a fulsome climax before receding in a quiet close that portends hope for the future. A performance of the symphony in full is keenly anticipated.

American violinist Gil Shaham made a welcome return to Singapore with the Asian premiere of Nomad Concerto by American composer Mason Bates (born 1977). Conceived in four movements, this deliberately exotic yet gratifyingly tonal work imagines an assemblage had Ravel been requested to expand his rhapsodic Tzigane and throw in some New World jazz for good measure. 

Photo: LG Lim

Shaham’s virtuosity defined its first two movements, Song of the balloon man and Magician at the bazaar, casting a spell as an itinerant entertainer journeying through Eastern Europe to the Middle East. The mystically desolate slow movement Desert vision: oasis quoted a Jewish song before the rocking syncopations of Le jazz manouche, à la Django Reinhardt as Bates’ own programme notes reminds, brought down the house. The ensuing cheers ensured that the Magician movement, with its John Williams’ Harry Potter moments, was encored.

The only familiar music on show was Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, in a gripping performance that was long on drama but short on bombast. Jon Paul Dante’s excellent trumpet solo set the tone for a deliberately paced funeral march, yet there was never a moment where the narrative lagged. In the tumultuous struggle of the second movement, the marking mit größter Vehemenz (with greatest vehemence) was taken most literally, yet the earlier march’s driving impetus remained fresh in the subconscious. The central Scherzo’s French horn solo resounded like an exultant call from the abyss, heralding a celebration of some perverse joy, such was Mahler’s idea of irony.

There were no doubts in the Adagietto’s love message, delivered plain and without neuroses by gilded strings and harpist Gulnara Mashurova. In the attacca finale, an initial French horn fluff did little to dispirit the clever counterpoint Mahler wove into his satirical Wunderhorn song Lob des hohen Verstandes (In Praise of High Intellect), wittily closing the symphony on a blazing high. 

The orchestra responded with the acute awareness of a band guided by a fresh and uncompromising new leader who knows exactly what he wants and how to get it. Hannu Lintu has just ushered in an exciting and enticingly interesting new future for the Singapore Symphony in seasons to come.

Photo: LG Lim

Star Rating: *****

The original review may be found here:

Hannu Lintu makes his mark in inaugural Singapore Symphony concert | Bachtrack

GERMAN CLASSICS / ASIAN CONCERT TOUR 2023 / Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra / Academy of Taiwan Strings / Review

GERMAN CLASSICS

Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra

School of the Arts Concert Hall

Saturday (26 August 2023)

 

ASIA CONCERT TOUR 2023

Academy of Taiwan Strings

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (27 August 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 August 2023 with the title "Invigorating showcases by Braddell orchestra and Academy of Taiwan Strings".

 

 

After the tragic passing of music director Adrian Tan in 2021, Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra, Singapore’s oldest community orchestra, has found a worthy successor in conductor Leonard Tan. Leonard, who is no relation of Adrian, has an excellent track record of having helmed The Philharmonic Winds, Singapore’s leading wind ensemble, for some 15 years. He also continued in Adrian’s friendly manner of demystifying the classics by addressing the audience with simple, well-chosen words.

 

More important was the music-making, and straight off, Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture was possessed with tension and energy befitting its drama and tragedy. The opening chords were punched out with incisiveness and clarity, and soon the musical narrative sizzled.

 

Far more substantial was Brahms’ Second Symphony in a performance which highlighted the music’s expansiveness and sunlit vistas. The string playing stood out and if a symphony had a smile, this was it. From the lilting lullaby-like theme from the opening movement, the scherzo’s chattiness to the finale’s trail-blazing close, the results were invigorating.

  

In Dvorak’s masterly Cello Concerto in B minor, the orchestra partnered talented young cellist Theophilus Tan, Goh Soon Tioe Centenary Award recipient and founding member of the Concordia Quartet. His solo playing was one of much sensitivity, which occasionally got submerged by dense orchestral textures and over-enthusiastic projecting. It was passion which ultimately shone through, in the slow movement’s love song and finale’s irrepressible march.

 

Singapore was the first leg of the Academy of Taiwan Strings’ Asian tour, which also includes concerts in Kuala Lumpur, Taipei and Kaohsiung. Why it is considered an elite ensemble was immediately apparent by the sheer volume and richness of sonority generated in Elgar’s showpiece Introduction and Allegro, suggesting a group far larger than its 21 members.    

 

The major work in the 2-hour long concert was the World Premiere of Singaporean composer Tan Chan Boon’s newly commissioned Symphony For Strings. Tan is not one for half-measures, and his 38-minute long work relived the Mahlerian dictum that, “A symphony is like a world. It must have everything.” And the kitchen sink one might add, as its three movements got progressively longer.

 

The first two movements explored ethereal and otherworldly sound textures, including harmonics, slides, pizzicatos and other exotic devices. From the morass of the amorphous issued forth hints of melody, like a newly revitalised world emerging out of Covid-induced chaos. The final slow movement had Brucknerian ambitions, a hymn-like tune without worries or neuroses, later turning into some elegy for lost souls. Its life-affirming close saw a collective stomping of feet from all performers, a trickle turning into a torrential rainstorm.   

 

Applause from the small audience was fulsome but genuine, also accorded to the absorbing reading of Brahms’ Second String Quintet (Op.111) in its string orchestra version. Its charm and luscious melodies were gratefully lapped up by the players, leaving one wondering why it is not more often heard.   

 

Taiwan-based Japanese film composer Koji Sakurai’s Last Forever inspired by Eileen Chang’s novella Red Rose, White Rose was quasi-baroque in style. Reminiscent of a cross between Albinoni’s Adagio and Scarlatti’s “Aria” Sonata in D minor, this elegiac number tugged on the heart-strings like no other. Joined by eight string players from Singapore’s own chamber outfit re:Sound, the concert closed with two tangos by Astor Piazzolla, sultry and brooding Oblivion with violinist Cheng Tze Hsun as soloist and the ever-lively Libertango.

 

Encores were demanded even after the ensemble had left the stage, and who could resist enjoying that most quintessential of Taiwanese melodies, Teng Yu-Hsien’s Wang Chun Feng or Pining For The Spring Breeze?

VARIATIONS: RE:SOUND WITH PAVLO BEZNOSIUK / Review

VARIATIONS:

RE:SOUND WITH PAVLO BEZNOSIUK

Victoria Concert Hall

Thursday (6 October 2022)

 

The chamber orchestra re:Sound has been known for innovative programming, but little did one expect this peach of a concert, built around the theme of variations. Included was one world premiere, two Singapore premieres and a rarely performed (in Singapore) string masterpiece led by British violinist-conductor Pavlo Beznosiuk.    

 

The world premiere was Singapore composer Tan Chan Boon’s arrangement of the second movement from Brahms’ String Sextet No.1 (Op.18). String lovers know this as a tightly-knit set of variations on a sombre theme, and so do pianists who play Brahms’ own piano transrciption. Tan’s treatment was more like Rudolf Barshai’s highly idiomatic work on selected Shostakovich String Quartets (called Chamber Symphonies) rather than Schoenberg’s over-the-top conflation of Brahms’ First Piano Quartet. The music and architecture of the work was retained but the sound palette expanded, the six parts of the original sometimes stretched out to nine. A lovely rich sonority was achieved, and Tan was also afforded the liberty of a coda of his own after the final variation.   

 

Also in the same key was C.P.E.Bach’s Piano Concerto in D minor (Wq.23), receiving its local premiere with pianist Koh Jia Hwei, now better known as an organist, as soloist. Composed in 1748, the original probably involved a harpsichord or fortepiano, which explained why Koh began the work as part of the ensemble (or continuo) before coming into her own as a soloist. The sturm und drang of the opening movement was exciting in itself, the result of the baroque transitioning into classical sensibilities.

 

The confident if not blindingly brilliant Koh made true music of the sedate slow movement before going for broke for the finale, another stormed tossed affair, which had a short cadenza to close. The strings led by Beznosiuk kept up the cut and thrust all through its twenty or so minutes. It is a wonder why this is nowhere as well-known as Papa Bach’s or Papa Haydn’s keyboard concertos. One is better off having made its acquaintance.

 

The second half began with Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s minimalist Epitaph for piano and strings (1999), written in memory of his wife who died three years before. An unusually hypnotic work, it comprised a procession of piano octaves and chords (with Koh Jia Hwei again) answered by muted strings, and one is kept guessing what the next chord would be through its 9 minutes. By some quirk of listening, one is regularly reminded of the funeral march from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. This very timely and haunting performance might very well also be in memory of innocent victims lost in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

 

The concert closed with one of the great 20^th century works for strings, Benjamin Britten’s splendid Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge. First Pavlo Beznosiuk demonstrated on the violin Bridge’s somewhat retiring theme (the second of Three Idylls for strings), explaining these were not strict variations in the traditional sense, but rather freely crafted short movements based on certain motifs derived from the said theme. The fantastical variations that followed were such that the original theme would be so well hidden as to be unrecognisable.

 

An extremely tricky work, the ensemble did very well to cope with the myriad changes of dynamics and textures all through movements which included amongst other things a March, Aria Italiana, Bourree Classique, Wiener Walzer, Funeral March and an outrageously skittish Fugue to close. The camp wit and sometimes frivolous asides know little bounds, especially in the Aria, with strings strummed like guitar while accompanying melodramatic violins. This masterpiece was written in 1937 for the virtuoso Boyd Neel String Orchestra performing at the Salzburg Festival. After witnessing this fine and truly infectious performance, one fancies re:Sound to be Singapore’s Boyd Neel as well. As an encore, the still-energised ensemble reprised the off-kilter and half-drunk Wiener Walzer, sounding even more delicious this time around. 

All photographs courtesy 

of re:Sound / Yong Junyi.

INSTRUMENTAL CONCERT 2018 / Association of Composers (Singapore) / Review

INSTRUMENTAL CONCERT 2018

Association of Composers (Singapore)

Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre 
Recital Hall

Saturday (8 September 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 September 2018 with the title "12 composers, a myriad of styles".

Exactly how many composers are there in Singapore? The true figure will perhaps never be known. This chamber concert by the Association of Composers (Singapore) featured 12 of them, with none of the usual suspects patronised by the national orchestras. All belong to the Chinese-speaking community and many hail from the pioneer generation of citizens.

All the composers were seated in the
front row of the recital hall.

The works heard may be grouped as pieces for piano solo, erhu or violin accompanied by piano, and string quartet. These displayed a broad spectrum of influences, inspirations and styles, and one may surmise that there is no singular Singaporean way of composition. At least, not yet.

The concert opened and closed with works for erhu and piano, performed by Ng Rui Jun and Irene Law respectively. The huqin’s voice ensured a Chinese feel about them, while the accompanying piano sounded somewhat incongruent with Western harmonies and timbres. A guzheng or yangqin might have made more sense.

Lee Ngoh Wah’s My True Love was a short lyrical romance while Lee Chee Kung’s Erhu Capriccio was the most authentically Chinese-sounding work of the evening. Quek Yong Siu’s Garden Under The Morning Sun was an extended fantasy with the mimicry of birdsong, providing the original meaning to tweeting or twittering. The 3^rd movement of Toh Heng Guan’s First Erhu Concerto luxuriated in unusual harmonies and a virtuosic cadenza.

For violin and piano, violinist Siew Yi Li performed his brother Xiao Chun Yuan’s Homeland, which alternated between major and minor keys while engendering a sense of patriotism and nostalgia. Chiew Keng Hoon’s Little Creature delighted in dissonances and jagged rhythms, simulating some flitting stinging insect, while his Fantasy was a true study in the atonal idiom of  the Second Viennese School.

Lian Sek Lin’s Moonlight Song had the hint of bel canto but with offbeat harmonies to unsettle and create tension. Lin Ah Leck’s A Wandering Life was a rhapsodic fantasy in the Chinese idiom culminating in a striding march. Tan Chan Boon’s Ostinatissimo was surprisingly gentle as he employed a slow chordal bass over which the violin fashioned a masterly passacaglia.

Pianist Nicholas Loh, who accompanied Siew, went solo in Xiao’s Tensions, built on an obstinate idee fixe, and hammered out Lian’s Hibiscus Variations, based ironically on a march theme, played fortissimo throughout with a Satiesque sense of irony.

The violin and piano duo of Mac Chang and Elaine Xu contributed Lee Yuk Chuan’s Remembrance and Rondo, contrasting sentimental lyricism with vigorous dance rhythms. Both works conjured the aroma of Central Asia, and the violinist was commended for spicing up the Rondo with Paganinian touches.

The cellist's score of
Frederick Ng's Dance In Harmony.

Two works played by the Melody String Quartet completed the programme. Lee Khiok Hua’s Autumn Scene was a Chinese-styled dance with alternating fast and slow sections, while Frederick Ng Eng Thong’s Dance In Harmony a heady mix of Malay motifs, minimalism, syncopation and counterpoint. Reliving a rowdy Chingay procession, this was arguably the most interesting work, a veritable rojak one might consider quintessentially Singaporean. 

All the composers
and some of the performers.

Composer Tan Chan Boon with his students,
the next generation of Singaporean composers?

GIL SHAHAM. BRAHMS SYMPHONIES / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

GIL SHAHAM. BRAHMS SYMPHONIES

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (7 July 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 July 2017 with the title "A night of lovely fantasies".

The Singapore Symphony Orchestra's new season opened with the music of a Singaporean composer. Soir, Reves, Fantaisie (Evening, Dreams, Fantasy) is the slow central movement of Tan Chan Boon's Second Symphony. Beginning with a French horn solo from Marc-Antoine Robillard and accompanied by gentle pizzicato strings, it conjured vistas of a bucolic Alpine scene. This and a second theme from the strings formed the meat of the movement, which unfolded with a quiet majesty and aural lusciousness before closing in total tranquillity.

Composer Tan Chan Boon
with SSO Music Director Shui Lan.

Tan is a 21^st century composer with a 19^th century soul. Mining a rich vein ploughed by the Wagner-Bruckner-Richard Strauss axis, he has already completed five symphonies. On the form of this sensitive reading, surely the SSO and Music Director Lan Shui has it in them to explore more of Tan's rewarding music.

American violinist Gil Shaham, a regular visitor to these parts, was the commanding soloist in Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto. The enfant terrible of Russian music, Prokofiev was to painfully pique ears with his brand of lashing dissonance, one which Shaham delivered in shovels. Crafting a vitriolic tone that was wholly appropriate for the work's grotesqueries, this performance came into its own in the lacerating Scherzo.

Shaham's use of sul ponticello (bowing near the violin's bridge) to create a wiry metallic timbre made the hair stand, soothed only by the finale's fairy-tale soundscape which was beautifully rendered with a balance close to perfect. Like Tan's work before, there was a pleasing symmetry to its fantasy-filled dream-like ending.

As an encore with orchestra, the brief and barbed Scherzo was reprised to no less stunning effect. On his own, Shaham offered the Gavotte from J.S.Bach's Partita No.3, which elicited even more cheers from the audience.

The concert closed with the First Symphony of Johannes Brahms. Like Beethoven before him, there can simply be no exhaustion from listening to Brahms' symphonies. Conducting completely from memory, conductor Shui took a more measured approach compared with his more mercurial stance on Beethoven's symphonies.

The sombre opening, full of foreboding and portending tragedy, was taken at a broad tempo. But this was not one of indolence or lack of volition, but one that gradually built up to a crushing climactic high. Like a skilled storyteller, the clarity and final aim of narration was never in doubt. The atmosphere was more relaxed in the slow movement, where Concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich's lovely violin solo capped a fine showing near its close.

Woodwinds had their turn to shine in the light and spirited 3^rd movement, paving the way for the dark clouds ushered in by the finale. How sternness and brooding in a minor key is transformed into major key sunshine, culminating in the finale's Beethovenian hymn-like melody was the miracle of this masterpiece. The opportunity offered to the orchestra was joyfully reciprocated as Shui led his charges to a glorious end, which was greeted by the applause it richly deserved. 

Conductor Shui Lan and violinist Gil Shaham
at the post-concert Symphony Chat.