DEBUSSY AND DVORAK / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

DEBUSSY AND DVORAK

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (5 May 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 May 2017 with the title "Divine Debussy & Dvorak".

The Singapore Symphony Orchestra is presently recording the major orchestral works of Claude Debussy. La Mer, Images, the ballets Jeux and The Toy Box, and several concertante works are already “in the can”. This evening's concert conducted by Music Director Shui Lan offered some of the Frenchman's youthful and rarely performed works.

Marche Ecossaise (Scottish March, 1891) received its Singapore premiere this evening. Better known in its version for piano four hands, its sumptuous orchestration highlighted the orchestra's solo woodwinds to good effect. Rachel Walker (oboe), Elaine Yeo (cor anglais) and Jin Ta (flute) distinguished themselves in this slight but pleasant rhapsody on a Scottish modal theme.

Printemps (1887) was considered Debussy's first “impressionist” work, and its 1913 orchestration by Henri Busser nevertheless adopted the master's imprimatur. Another rustic modal theme was developed through its two movements, from a hushed and hazy beginning, blossoming like a nascent spring into a dance and through to its rousing close. The orchestra's insightful performance should win it many new friends.

Better known and staple of the harp repertoire is Danse sacrée et danse profane (Sacred Dance and Profane Dance), which saw SSO Principal harpist Gulnara Mashurova backed by only strings. One of Debussy most ethereal works, the harp's celestial strains stood out above the sensitive accompaniment, first sounding chaste and formal before breaking out to a freer but no less elegant waltz rhythm. Mashurova's nocturne-like solo encore was just as sublime.

The evening's main draw was Antonin Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B minor with China-born cellist Wang Jian as soloist. Now in his mid-forties, Wang first found fame as the irresistible 10-year-old boy who performed in the end-credits of Isaac Stern's iconic docu-movie From Mao To Mozart. It was also with the Dvorak that he made his SSO debut in 1993.

Enduring through the intervening decades was his deeply felt and instinctual response to what is arguably the greatest cello concerto ever composed. This and his gorgeously-hewn tone, fully voiced, plain-speaking yet so filled with vitality, made for another memorable performance.

What has been shed was that exuberance of youth. In its place was an unspoken yet palpable sadness, possibly borne of world-weariness that permeated its three movements. This is work of maturity which received its due, through the 1^st movement's upheavals, the slow movement's plaintive song and the finale's resolute denouement.

The orchestral partnership was not as sharp as in the SSO's live recording with Qin Li-Wei on Decca Records, and there were occasional intonation issues with the French horns. Nevertheless it was still a gripping reading, culminating in the glorious shared passage with Wang and concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich's violin towards the end.

For encores, Wang starred in Dvorak's Song To The Moon (from the opera Rusalka) accompanied by full orchestra, before closing with a Chinese melody on his own. The latter's title Liang Xiao (Beautiful Evening) was a perfect summation of the two-and-a-half hours that had so eventfully passed.     

SSO Concert: The Rite of Spring / Review

THE RITE OF SPRING
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Friday (3 December 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 December 2010.

Nearly a century after the riotous reception at its first performance, Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite Of Spring retains its freshness and ability to shock. Never has a work so indelibly captured the ethos of the 20th century. One year after its 1913 premiere, the world was plunged into the carnage of the Great War, from which mankind has yet to recover.

The iconic opening bassoon solo, evocatively shaped by Zhang Jin Min, introduced listeners to a brave new world, where chaos and uncertainty reigned unchallenged. The ensuing passages of seemingly random woodwind and brass sequences were guaranteed to bewilder and disorientate. Even the entry of the strings provided scant comfort, instead lacerating scrapes and grinding thumps of a persistent migraine in the Adolescents’ Dance.

From this to the fatal whirling of the Sacrificial Dance, SSO Principal Conductor Okko Kamu kept a tight rein, but one which allowed for quieter sections where an uneasy calm lulled the senses before the final all-out assault. Not every entry was immaculate; the concertmaster’s solo passage in harmonics at the beginning of the second half went awry, for instance. However this performance as a whole amply illustrated the orchestra’s enormous progress since its first account of the work way back in 1992.

The concert began with Prokofiev’s First Symphony, nicknamed the “Classical”, taken at a very brisk clip. Even at this speed, no details were lost, and its Haydnesque wit and charm much enhanced. Grace and gentility in the slow movement, followed by an exaggerated ungainliness in the third movement’s Gavotte made for neat contrasts, while the finale’s perpetual motion swept the board clean.

Yet another highlight of a superb concert was the guest solo by Chinese cellist Wang Jian in Saint-Saens’ warhorse First Cello Concerto in A minor. A regular visitor here since the early 1990s, he never disappoints. While one has already begun to regard his virtuosity of execution as a given, it is the sheer wealth and largesse of his tone that continues to stagger.

The way he shapes the cantabile passages, traipse through the elegant little waltz in the concerto’s slower central section, and coax a beautiful sound from his 1622 Amati cello remains a marvel. His two encores of unaccompanied Bach were the icing on the cake. May he return again very soon.

SSO Concert: The Stuff of Legends / Review

THE STUFF OF LEGENDS
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Lan Shui, Conductor
Esplanade Concert Hall
Friday (8 May 2009)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 May 2009.

It seems like posterity and the passage of time has dictated that local composer Leong Yoon Pin’s Dayong Sampan Overture becomes the iconic Singaporean classical work of our age. It is also the only local work (barring Ho Chee Kong’s Symphony commissioned by Keppel Corporation) to feature in the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s 30th anniversary season.

Its popularity lies in the quotation of the Malay song Dayong Sampan, a melody that has traveled long and far, finding its way into the households and hearts of many mainland Chinese. Leong’s genius (left) was to skillfully weave it into a collage of counterpoint in this likeable symphonic poem. The SSO recorded it in 1989, and one can only venture that the present cohort takes it several notches further. In concert, the work sounds slicker, coming off with more lustre.

The other Asian piece on the card was China-born Chen Qigang’s Wu Xing (The Five Elements). Its five 2-minute movements represent water, wood, fire, earth and metal in that order. While it is impossible to reduce these universal icons into programme music, each movement suggests a separate state of being in its pointillist orchestration.

The sound alternates between warmth and iciness, familiarity and obscurity, and a whole gamut of responses in between. This is music that is initially elusive, but judging by the warm response that greeted this almost persuasive performance, will repay further listening.

The celebrated Chinese cellist Wang Jian (left) took centrestage in Shostakovich’s ironic and witty Cello Concerto No.1. Putting it plainly, he owns the piece. Seldom has technical mastery been so keenly allied with an intuitive sense into its deep and dark secrets. The slow movement, in particular, moved with such poignancy and pathos as to expose the composer’s true intentions. Despite the outward jocularity, also displayed in abundance by the excellent French hornist Jamie Hersch, this work lays bare the tragedy that was Soviet Russia.

Altogether lighter was Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini, although its subject of ill-fated lovers being tormented in Dante’s inferno was not for the faint-hearted. The Russian’s melodramatic music, aided by Ma Yue’s frothy clarinet solo made for a sumptuous treat. As one might expect from Music Director Shui who loves to extract every drop of juice from hyper-emotional climaxes, it was hair-raising stuff to close the evening. When tragedies can bring on the smiles, the power of music is triumphant.