FLYING HIGH - BEYOND OUR ISLANDS' SHORES / Philharmonic Wind Orchestra / Review

 

FLYING HIGH – 

BEYOND OUR ISLANDS’ SHORES 

Philharmonic Wind Orchestra 

Esplanade Concert Hall 

Sunday (23 June 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 June 2024 with the title "Philharmonic Wind Orchestra plays wide repertoire with aplomb".

The Philharmonic Wind Orchestra (PWO), formerly known as The Philharmonic Winds, will travel next month to South Korea for the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE) conference. Its pre-tour concert led by music director Leonard Tan was a showcase what an excellent local ensemble can achieve in a variety of repertoire. 

The concert opened with American composer John Mackey’s Asphalt Cocktail, an exhilarating showpiece that was literally a short ride in a fast machine. Its big brassy sonorities, accompanied by a relentless percussion beat and effects, suggested this was not a subway train but a runaway taxicab carrying the warning, “fasten your seatbelts!” 

More serious was American Kent Kennan’s Sonata for trumpet and wind ensemble in three movements with PWO alumnus Chong Loo Kit in the demanding solo role. Described as neoclassical, the music recalled ceremonial brass of olden times, but viewed through a tonal modern idiom of German modernist Paul Hindemith. Its acerbic quality however yielded unusual lyricism in the central movement’s aria-like melody, lovingly voiced, before closing with dance movements and busy counterpoint for its lively finale. 

The legendary 86-year-old British wind orchestra maestro Timothy Reynish, PWO’s principal guest conductor, made a cameo appearance directing Spanish composer Luis Serrano Alarcon’s attractive Spanish Dances. This local premiere delighted in complex rhythms which the orchestra mastered with aplomb, including a Moorish-flavoured central movement with offstage piccolo and drum-beat, and a finale lit up by solo trumpet and the ring of castanets and tambourine. 

Photo: Pianomaniac

Photo: Pianomaniac

The concert’s second half comprised wholly works by Singaporean composers, beginning with Leong Yoon Pin’s only wind band piece, Day-break And Sunrise (1992). Typical of the late doyen of local composers, his melodic intent is not revealed immediately. Instead, motivic shards and fragments emerge like nascent beams through the morning mist. Full illumination was achieved, albeit briefly as the music soon swiftly dissipated into fine ether. 

Conductor Leonard Tan holds aloft
Leong Yoon Pin's orchestral score.

Photo: Pianomaniac

Baltimore-based young composer Lee Jia Yi’s newly commissioned betwixt and between received its world premiere. Written in four short connected movements, the music shifted imperceptibly between Noise, seemingly random squeaks, slashes, swooshes and slides, and Harmony, represented by more stable long-held notes, which wavered into quarter-tones and overtones. Bewildering as this might sound, there was a strangely calming quality when the ears began to adapt to each of the different alternating sonic milieus. 

Photo: Pianomaniac

French horn player Alan Kartik
demonstrates playing the conch.
Photo: Pianomaniac

The 21st century Singaporean work that has received the most performances has to be Young Artist Award recipient Wang Chenwei’s symphonic poem The Sisters’ Islands (2006). Eighty as of this evening, to be exact. Originally scored for Chinese orchestra, the world premiere of its wind orchestra version was no less vivid. Using the Indo-Malay pelog scale, Wang crafted motifs representing the eponymous sisters, the sea and its legends in this programmatic work. 

The use of qudi and rebana lent
The Sisters' Islands an exotic Nanyang flavour.
Photo: Pianomaniac

Its lush scoring was well-realised on wind and brass, with the blare of the conch shell and ocarina’s diminutive voice being pivotal extras. Closing with a grand apotheosis of sisterly love, one can foresee the world band conference in Korea getting an unadulterated taste of true Singaporeana.

Photo: Pianomaniac

Photo: Pianomaniac

Photo: Pianomaniac

All photographs by Kwang 

unless otherwise stated.

A WIND CONCERT NOT TO MISS: PHILHARMONIC WIND ORCHESTRA'S FLYING HIGH

If you love wind band music, here is a concert not to miss. The Philharmonic Wind Orchestra, Singapore's most acclaimed community wind ensemble embarks on its tour to South Korea, performing at the prestigious WASBE (World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles) conference in Gwangju-Gyeonggi. This is its pre-tour concert conducted by its music director Leonard Tan and legendary wind band conductor Timothy Reynish.

Programme includes:

JOHN MACKEY Asphalt Cocktail

LEONG YOON PIN Daybreak & Sunrise

WANG CHENWEI The Sisters' Island

   World premiere of wind orchestra version

LEE JIAYI World Premiere 

Sunday, 23 June 2024

Esplanade Concert Hall, 7.30 pm

Tickets available here:

Flying High - Beyond Our Islands’ Shores (bookmyshow.com)

THE PHILHARMONIC WINDS AND TIMOTHY REYNISH IN CONCERT / The Philharmonic Winds / Review

THE PHILHARMONIC WINDS

AND TIMOTHY REYNISH IN CONCERT

The Philharmonic Winds

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (17 June 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 June 2018 with the title "Musical birthday party for an octogenarian"

For two evenings last week, the 77-year-old pianist Martha Argerich lit up the stage of Esplanade Concert Hall. On Sunday evening, it was the turn of octogenarian British conductor Timothy Reynish to dominate the proceedings, leading The Philharmonic Winds in an invigorating concert which celebrated his 80^th birthday. 

Some of the works were commissioned by or dedicated to the wind orchestra's Principal Guest Conductor, and included two local premieres. The concert opened with Kenneth Hesketh's Masque, a light-hearted scherzo-like movement showcasing pinpoint articulation from the woodwinds and a big melody from the sonorous brass.

Its pomp and pageantry continued into Guy Woolfenden's Illyrian Dances, a neo-baroque suite of dance movements distinguished by flights of fancy. Sounding like film music of popular appeal, it was well played, such as in the finale's tricky jig-rhythms which closed with good humour.

A sterner test was provided by Derek Bourgeois' Symphony for William, the first of two extended works. Written in memory of Reynish's third son William, who was only 34 when he perished in a mountaineering accident, its three movements encapsulated the young man's free spirit.

The opening Will-o-the-Wisp displayed an elfin lightness and mordant wit not unlike scores by Prokofiev or Walton. A warm French horn solo provided a bittersweet tinge to the slow movement Dianthus Barbatus (Sweet William), answered by an oboe's plaint in calm moments of reflection and contemplation. The finale, Will Power, bristled with anger and discord before racing off in a wild chase which brought to mind Khachaturian's Sabre Dance, but it closed on a quiet note.

The other big work was Yasuhide Ito's As Time Is Passing On, a symphonic poem which featured the 65-strong Philharmonic Winds Festival Chorus (Zechariah Goh, choirmaster). Mortality and impermanence were delved in its four linked sections, opening with a sombre Lamento before erupting into a lively Marcia, striding with Elgarian swagger.

Japanese composer Yasuhide Ito
receives the applause for his works.

The voices entered in Dies Irae, all dissonance and apocalyptic visions, and followed up mostly a cappella in the final part singing in Japanese. The accompaniment was light, with isolated percussion, pared-down woodwinds and harp. Closing in Latin with Requiem Aeternam, this brought to mind Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem, originally dedicated to the Empire of Japan but rejected because of its religious content. Ito was just returning the favour here.   

Receiving its world premiere was Ito's Time-Into-Music, written for Reynish's seven score and ten. A chirpy woodwind chorale gave way to a busy fugue, quoting from Verdi's opera Falstaff (composed when the Italian was 80), before returning to the earlier celebration. Another birthday greeting was Spaniard Luis Alarcon's Tim, A British Pasodoble, a bull-fighting dance dressed in English garb with a cheeky quote from Elgar's Pomp & Circumstance March No.1.

The concert concluded with Adam Gorb's Bohemian Revelry, four movements of Slavonic-styled  dances taking Smetana and Dvorak as inspiration. Rustic, comedic and colourful, it was an excellent way to end a musical birthday party.  

MARCO POLO: THE TRILOGY / The Philharmonic Winds / Review

MARCO POLO: THE TRILOGY

The Philharmonic Winds

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (21 June 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 23 June 2015 with the title "Philharmonic tells Marco Polo story vividly in music".

For The Philharmonic Winds' 15^th anniversary gala concert, Singapore's busiest wind orchestra made its mark with the World Premiere of Spanish composer-conductor Luis Serrano Alarcon's Marco Polo: The Trilogy. This is a symphonic masterpiece of programme music in three parts, which like the Venetian explorer-adventurer that inspired it, bridged the divide between the West and the East.

Given the massive task at hand, each part was conducted by a different conductor, personalities who have been closely associated with the orchestra over the years. Its Music Director Leonard Tan directed the opening third The Silk Road, which was also the most exotic. The narrative opened loudly and dissonantly in Genoa of 1298, where Polo was imprisoned and had related his travels to amanuensis Rusticello.

Alarcon does not tarry, and the journey through Asia Minor and Central Asia introduced instruments like the flute-like shvi, oboe-like duduk, and Irfan Rais in the tar, a Middle-Eastern strummed lute. A fast sinuous Armenian dance and a merchant's plaint soon gave way to the drugged spell of the “hashashins”, the world's first assassins (who were high on hashish), with harmonics created by the circular stroking of Tibetan prayer bowls.

A stampede of Mongolian cavalry by percussion in crescendo heralded a greeting by the gourd-like blown hulusi as Polo arrived at the Yellow River, and ushered into ancient Cambaluc (Beijing today) amidst the sound of fireworks. He and his party were supposedly the first Westerners to enter China, and The Cathay Years, the central part of the trilogy conducted by Principal Guest Conductor Timothy Reynish, was arguably the most colourful.

Here, six members of Ding Yi Music Company took centrestage, with exquisite solos from Lim Kwuan Boon's erhu and Tan Qing Lun's dizis, backed by sheng and three suonas. The Vocal Associates Festival Chorus provided a further dimension of sound with its wordless voices. The court of Kublai Khan, all pomp and ceremony, was ample reason for a giddying surfeit of chinoiserie that would have pleased the likes of Puccini and Busoni.

The tingling bells of Mien (Myanmar today) and evocation of New Year festivities with the orchestra in splashy full throttle provided a rowdy end for the concert's first half. Each part of the trilogy played for half an hour, and the finale The Book Of India, conducted by Alarcon himself, proved to be the most spiritual third of the show.

Han Lei's long and elaborate guanzi solo bade Polo farewell, and after a torrential monsoon which caused Polo who was escorting Princess Cocochin to seek refuge in Sumatra, he arrived in Ceylon, an ancient seat of Buddhism. Flute and oboe solos, followed by chanting from male voices of the Chorus at the Second Circle filled the air as he scaled the sacred Adam's Peak. The Indian segment comprised a raga wonderfully performed by Krsna Tan (sitar), Govin Tan (tabla) and Irfan Rais (tampura), which was almost improvisatory in its utter spontaniety, with its themes echoed by the orchestra.

All too soon, Polo was back in Venice with the bells of San Marco pealing and a return to his cell in Genoa, coming a full circle after over ninety minutes of music. His message, “I did not tell half of what I saw” summed up his escapades as the epic closed on a reassuring F major chord.

Similarly this short review scarcely does justice to the unstinting efforts of the players of The Philharmonic Winds who gave a most vividly portrayal of story-telling in music, lacking neither in passion nor detail in making the massive work both coherent and relevant. This was one wind concert that will stick in the mind for a long time to come.        

All three conductors receive their accolades.

The composer addresses the audience
and thanks all the performers.

RETURN WITH HONOUR / The Philharmonic Winds / Review

RETURN WITH HONOUR

The Philharmonic Winds

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (30 June 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 July 2013 with the title "Wind ensemble's breezy victory".

If your musical child does not play the piano, string instrument or sing, count yourself lucky if he or she joins a wind band. Judging by the number of recent concerts by wind ensembles here, there seems to be a renaissance of wind music underway. Seldom has this reviewer seen so many bright and happy young people at a concert in the Esplanade, one given by the excellent Philharmonic Winds and its junior wing, the Philharmonic Youth Winds.

The youngsters brought the evening to a rousing start, conducted by former Singapore Symphony orchestral manager Adrian Chiang. Gustav Holst’s First Suite for military band may be several leagues from his starry Planets, but it is entertaining nonetheless. The opening Passacaglia’s short variations gave the players a good warm up, before flexing further lung power for the faster Intermezzo and the pomp and pageantry of the folk-influenced March.

In Keiichi Kurokawa’s virtuosic arrangement of Alexander Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor, the forces became stretched. Clarinets struggled to keep up in the swirling Maidens’ Dance, but there was genuine heft and resonance for the loud and celebratory bits. Special mention must go to the solo oboe and cor anglais, sounding ever poignant in the melody that will be remembered as Strangers In Paradise from Kismet.

Eminent British wind maestro Timothy Reynish took over the baton for Guy Woolfenden’s Gallimaufry, a Shakespearean tableaux in six continuous movements on the friendship of Falstaff and young King Henry IV. His ownership of the engaging suite is absolute; Reynish had commissioned and premiered the work 30 years ago, and the players were up to the task.

The senior Winds, a smaller but mature ensemble, owned the second half. Spaniard Luis Serrano Alarcon’s La Lira de Pozuelo, a pasodoble or quick two-step dance usually associated with bullfights, had both the spirit and polish. More serious was Martinez Gallego’s El Agua Prodigiosa (The Miraculous Water), programme music on the adventures of Johan and Peewit, two legendary do-gooders from the Middle Ages. There were dissonances aplenty, but the ensemble coped well in what sounded like swashbuckling action film music.

The most ambitious score was Ambush (Return With Honour) by Chen Qian, who is the composer-in-residence of the military band of the People’s Liberation Army. A modern setting of the ancient famous Qin dynasty battle classic Ambush From Ten Sides, Chen avoided tired Chinese clichés but employed the traditional dizi and guanzi to good effect.

Chanting, both in tune and in unison, from band members provided a spiritual element in the quiet and evocative lead-up before the final onslaught and General Xiang Yu’s demise by his own hand. “Death before defeat” was his legacy of martyrdom, but for the players who braved the storms and gave their all covered themselves mostly with glory. Conquering the work was a victory in itself.     

MARCO POLO: THE CATHAY YEARS / The Philharmonic Winds / Review

MARCO POLO: THE CATHAY YEARS
The Philharmonic Winds 

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (26 June 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 June 2011 with the title "Oriental touch for Spanish trilogy".

The title of this concert refers to the second part of an on-going wind orchestra trilogy by Spanish composer Luis Serrano Alarcon (below). Commissioned by The Philharmonic Winds, the 20-minute work received its World Premiere conducted by America-based Singaporean conductor Leonard Tan. Written in the form of a four-movement symphony, it was more like a huge concerto grosso graced by a sextet of Chinese instruments from the Ding Yi Music Company as soloists.

The Oriental feel in the music was immediately palpable, skilfully enacted by a master colourist and orchestrator. This was achieved without quoting actual Chinese melodies, but by the deft use of the pentatonic scale and modes, much like the atmospheric scenes created in Turandot by Puccini. The exoticism, ceremonial rites and visions of the Far East came through so winningly that one almost forgot that Marco Polo and the composer were in fact Mediterranean in origin.

Make belief is as much part of the equation, as the sheer quality of the delivery, confident and always responsive, belied the fact that most of the young players were non-professional. Such was the thread running through the whole concert, which will be repeated in the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE) conference in Taiwan next month.

Equally trenchant was the razor-sharp accompaniment provided by a chamber sized ensemble for Japanese trombonist Ko-ichiro Yamamoto in John Mackey’s Harvest. The three-movement concerto brought out an arsenal of trombone tricks in a quasi-jazzy idiom that shifted ever so naturally from quiet whisper to irrepressible Dionysian revelry.

Three other works in the showcase were performed recently by the ensemble, but it was good to make their re-acquaintance, in particular Singaporean Wong Kah Chun’s Krakatoa, a tone poem of seismic proportions that moved from gamelan sounds to an outright riot of volcanic energy. Here is a striking young talent who will go far. Percy Grainger’s Marching Song of Democracy opened the concert on a burnished high.

The Philharmonic Winds also proved its mettle in music of a more austere nature, and that does not come more spikily than Adam Gorb’s Farewell, which pitted two ensembles of opposing instrumental colours before closing in a clarinet and oboe duel-duet. Led with authority by renowned wind band maestro Timothy Reynish (left), who premiered the work in 2008, it was ample proof that wind performance had come of age in Singapore.

The Return of Reynish / The Philharmonic Winds / Review

THE RETURN OF REYNISH / The Philharmonic Winds
Esplanade Concert Hall / Saturday (30 April 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 May 2011 with the title "Bright brass and a bawling baby".

The measure of how a local performing group has matured and come of age may be gauged by the sophistication of its programming and the guest artists it performs with. The Philharmonic Winds, now in its eleventh year, has long gone beyond the stage of mundane marching band repertoire to embrace the most catholic of works. This concert was proof of that.

Led by the universally respected British wind band maestro Timothy Reynish (left), Singapore’s premier wind ensemble opened with Percy Grainger’s Marching Song Of Democracy. There were no actual voices, but the bright burnished tone of the brass provided that feel of Elgarian noblesse, with all those warm fuzzy virtues of equality and freedom alluded to in its title.

The next work was also the strangest, the unclassifiable 1980 Cello Concerto by eccentric Viennese pianist Friedrich Gulda (left), well-known for jazz forays and sometimes performing stark naked. Its five movements flitted awkwardly between hard rock, disco, classical, avant-garde, Alpine folksong and circus music, as if announcing, “To be taken with a huge pinch of salt”.

The presence of drum-set and guitar on stage said it all, but it was hotshot cellist Qin Li-Wei’s no nonsense approach to its schizophrenic mood swings and musical leaping through hoops that impressed most. The central cadenza was worthy of Shostakovich, providing several truly serious minutes until the bawling of a baby (how was that smuggled through Esplanade security?) provided an ironic twist to the proceedings.

True sobriety came in Adam Gorb’s Farewell (composer left), a work so severe that its themes and ideas had to be explained by the grandfatherly Reynish in a pre-performance preamble. The work essentially pitted two opposing ensembles, one playing aggressive and darker-hewn themes against another of a lighter and more congenial mien.

After a series of soliloquys, the coming together of both ensembles provided the 20-minute-long work’s most euphonious moments, before closing quietly with superb solos from clarinettist Desmond Chow and oboist Tay Kai Tze in close counterpoint.

The gloomy symbolism then gave way to Kenneth Hesketh’s Danceries (Set II, composer left), a suite of antique English dances from Playford’s Dancing Master dressed up in modern garb. While the 17th century melodies were mostly retained, the new sonorities benefited from the orchestra’s ever-responsive ensemble that lacked nothing in character or cohesion. How band music has progressed from its humble origins,