NEW YEAR'S EVE COUNTDOWN CONCERT 2018 / The Philharmonic Orchestra / Review

NEW YEAR'S EVE 

COUNTDOWN CONCERT 2018

The Philharmonic Orchestra

SOTA Concert Hall (31 December 2017)

The New Year's Eve Countdown Concert by The Philharmonic Orchestra, now in its eighth edition, took on a different format this year. It became a more serious affair than before. There were fewer of the lollipops, much less talking and philosophising by emcee William Ledbetter, and since it marked the last concert of TPO's Beethoven Symphony Cycle (celebrating its 15^th anniversary in 2017), including a complete performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

The first half was conducted by Edward Tan, taking leave of his usual Concertmaster role and “promoted” to the podium. The first work was Weber's Der Freischütz Overture, not any easy debut task by any means, especially in the slow opening which dragged and saw some straying intonation from the French horns. However the fast section was taken at a very good pace, filled with verve and vitality which made up for the earlier diffidence.

The good start was followed, unusually, by Leroy Anderson's Fiddle Faddle, as if to show off prestidigitation from the strings. The section held it together impressively, and this short work was accompanied by projections of photographs from TPO's earlier Beethoven symphony concerts – held in four different venues – and the state of conductor Lim Yau's glorious un-coiffured mane. The photographer certain has something for his locks flying and flapping against the wind.

Bizet's Carmen Suite No.1 was next. The suite does not have perennial favourites such as the Habanera, Toreador's Song or Bohemian Dance. However its movements amply displayed the prowess of the orchestra's splendid wind section – solo flute (with harp) in the Intermezzo, solo bassoon in Les Dragons d'Alcala, oboe and clarinet in the Seguedilla and others. They are truly the pride of the orchestra, certainly well marshalled by the young guest conductor Tan.

There was a long intermission of 30 minutes, for champagne, snacks and toilet break, thus allowing enough time for the orchestra to rest, begin and end the Beethoven Fifth at the stroke of midnight. Without neither fanfare nor introduction, TPO Music Director Lim Yau leapt onto the stage to give the downbeat for the symphony's familiar four-note motto theme.

The 1^st movement was taken at a vigorous pace, nowhere near as hectic or relentless as the Singapore Symphony Orchestra's speed (led by Shui Lan at the beginning of the year), but comfortable enough for the TPO players to handle. It was just as exciting, its onward momentum given a check by the excellent solo oboe before closing on a high.

The 2^nd and 3^rd movements were well contrasted, even if one might have liked the slow movement to have luxuriated a little, but remember this symphony had to end by the dot of twelve. The goose-stepping of the Scherzo was very confidently timed, and the ensuing fugato was excellent, leading up to the triumphant finale for the entry of the trombones.

Again this music's feel-good factor, a counter to the opening movement's Fate knocking at the door, was truly well brought out by the entire orchestra, not just the busy brass. This may be seen as a summation of the symphony cycle's journey from impetuous youth to defiant ageing that was Beethoven's lot. The coda and final bars played as the projected countdown clock made its inexorable way from 20 down to the dawn of 2018.

As it turned out, the orchestra hit its final chord some seconds short of the actual stroke of midnight, but no way was Lim Yau going to slow down and impede the ongoing movement just to make it on time. Thanks for not being a metronome.

The balloons had yet to fall, so it was Edward Tan's turn to cue the audience's synchronised clapping for Johann Strauss the Elder's Radetzky March. The cascade did come down to greet the new year. What will 2018 hold for the world? Amid some shuddering thoughts (the threat of nuclear war and yet more terrorist attacks, not to mention global warning), there is hope yet.  

   

NEW YEAR'S EVE COUNTDOWN CONCERT 2017 / The Philharmonic Orchestra / Review

NEW YEAR'S EVE 

COUNTDOWN CONCERT 2017

The Philharmonic Orchestra

School of the Arts Concert Hall

Saturday (31 December 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 January 2017 with the title "Countdown concert a boisterous start to the new year".

Now into its 6th edition, The Philharmonic Orchestra's annual New Year's Eve Countdown Concert has become a cherished local institution. A full-house greeted the year's final musical event, and a formula that has served well was relived. Host-of-the-evening William Ledbetter, sporting a gold top-hat, was his usual bubbly self and TPO Music Director Lim Yau conducted Hector Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture as a spirited opener.

Bernice Lee's oboe solo provided a lovely prelude to the festivities that followed with a full-throated showing from the brass, led by a irrepressible trio of trombones. This was a good start, and the orchestra was just as impressive under the baton of prize-winning guest conductor Lien Boon Hua, recently appointed Assistant Conductor of the Polish National Radio Orchestra.

His first task was to navigate the ensemble through two Strauss favourites, Josef Strauss' Music Of The Spheres, a waltz as lilting and graceful as any of his famous elder brother Johann's, and the incessant chatter of Johann's Tritsch-Tratsch Polka. The latter was accompanied by projected slides of the orchestra's favourite moments of the year, with an inevitable salute to Joseph Schooling, Singapore's first ever Olympic gold medallist.

The dance rhythm was lovingly captured, and this continued into Bedrich Smetana's Die Moldau. A pair of flutes, skilfully helmed by Shirley Tong and Andy Koh, teased their way through the symphonic poem's evocative opening, leading into the broad melody which was gratefully lapped up by the orchestra.

Robust yet sensitive, the Bohemian spirit that pulsed through the splendid showing was repeated after the intemission's nuts and champagne, in two Slavonic Dances by Antonin Dvorak. Taken from the Op.72 set, the first dance's rousing fervour was contrasted with the quiet melancholy of the second dance.

Ledbetter reprised his annual circus ringleader act by getting the audience to follow his cowboy actions in Richard Hayman's Pops Hoedown. This year it was a rather tame sit-down affair, for fear of patrons seated in the Circle seats who had downed a little too much spirit. However, it was the busy percussion section that sounded the most tipsy.

As with previous concerts, there was a work of sobriety that gave time for reflection on the illustrious lives that departed in 2016. Former President S.R.Nathan, Thailand's King Rama IX, conductors Sir Neville Marriner and Pierre Boulez, pop culture icons George Michael and Carrie Fisher were among the names remembered as the orchestra played Jean Sibelius' Valse Triste.

For the final countdown, Respighi's ominous Pines Of The Appian Way was replaced this year by Georges Bizet's more cheerful Farandole from L'Arlesienne, now conducted by Lim Yau. Its driving beat, which got faster and more intense by the minute, steamrolled the seconds into 2017, and a much-loved cascade of gold and silver balloons.

There was enough time for one encore, the ubiquitous Radetzky March by Johann Strauss the Elder and its rounds of synchronised clapping. An auspicious new year for more good music beckons.         

FUN WITH MUSIC! / The Philharmonic Winds / Review

FUN WITH MUSIC!

The Philharmonic Winds

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (3 April 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 April 2016 with the title "Blown away by fun tunes".

Every arts group knows it is vital to build audiences and future supporters for its cause, which is why light music is often programmed with that aim in mind. Although this concert by The Philharmonic Winds was not billed as a young people's concert, it was attended by many families and children who knew that the titular “Fun” was not to be resisted.

Conducted by its founding artist director Robert Casteels, the 80-minute long afternoon concert opened with Eric Coates' London Bridge March, a rousing curtain-raiser that also introduced that master of Masters of Ceremonies, William Ledbetter, who played the role of circus ringmaster and agent provocateur as only he knows how. Following which, Michael Markowski's arrangement of Turkey In The Straw was so luxuriantly and jazzily orchestrated in the form of variations that the original melody was almost completed masked.

The first soloist to appear was 12-year-old Chen Xinyu, whose breathtaking pipa solo in the Chinese classic Ambush From All Sides (arranged by Ong Jiin Joo for wind orchestra) was literally a showstopper. There was a section when conductor Casteels stepped off the podium and the orchestra silenced as she evoked the raucous sounds of furious battle, later joined by shouts from the players. 

Not to be outdone was clarinettist Ralph Emmanuel Lim in Adolf Schreiner's Immer Kleiner (Always Smaller), who had his instrument dissembled joint by joint until he was left with its mouthpiece. As the pitch got progressively higher, so did his playing get faster, capping off this virtuoso vehicle with a shrieking squeak.

Three percussionists. Dennis Sim, Yeow Ching Shiong and Sng Yiang Shan, then took centrestage in a hilariously choreographed version of Leroy Anderson's Sandpaper Ballet, where three pairs of sandpaper blocks jostled and scraped for their place in the spotlight. Judging from the delighted audience response, they were obviously rubbed the right way.

Sand artist Lawrence Koh gave a masterclass in his rare skill of projected animation, with a sequence of African motifs set to Robert Smith's Africa: Ceremony, Song And Ritual. Visions of tribal art, savannah flora and fauna miraculously surfaced to the strains of indigenous song and drumming.

The final soloist was Singapore Symphony Orchestra tuba player Hidehiro Fujita who proved that his ungainly instrument, the largest in the brass family, was anything but clumsy. The story of Three Billy Goats Gruff was narrated by Ledbetter to outlandish effects in Fredrik Hogberg's Trolltuba, a nifty act that was only exceeded by lots of horseplay and lung power in Vittorio Monti's Csardas, a work usually associated with the gypsy violin.

Shouts for an encore were rewarded with an elaborately dressed version of Do-Re-Mi from the musical The Sound Of Music, which prompted a clap-along and an avalanche of balloons that used to be de rigeuer at SSO's Christmas Concerts. It is another eight months till the Yuletide season, but The Philharmonic Winds was not going to deprive anybody of their quota of fun. 

NEW YEAR'S EVE COUNTDOWN GALA CONCERT 2016 / The Philharmonic Orchestra / Review

NEW YEAR'S EVE

COUNTDOWN GALA CONCERT 2016

The Philharmonic Orchestra

School of the Arts Concert Hall

Thursday (31 December 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 January 2016 with the title "Rousing start to the new year".

If there is a local musical tradition worth preserving, that might be The Philharmonic Orchestra's annual New Year's Eve Concert, now in its fifth edition. Although that may seem a short span of time compared with the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day Concert, it has nevertheless started a trend of sorts.

TPO Music Director Lim Yau has been the mainstay of this series, but this year he shared the conducting responsibilities with young composer-conductor Terrence Wong Fei Yang. Lim led the opener, Otto Nicolai's Overture to The Merry Wives Of Windsor, which began with refined string sound in its introduction before erupting to ebullient life in its allegro section of Mendelssohnian lightness.

Wong then took over the baton for Johann Strauss Junior's popular Pizzicato Polka, which was accompanied by a short film of orchestra members recounting their favourite moments of the year 2015. His steady guiding hand also brought charm to the familiar Waltz from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, which was followed by two movements from Grieg's Peer Gynt.

Flautist Paul Huang's solo was fluid and mellifluous in the atmospheric Morning Mood, while the orchestra churned out an exciting crescendo for Hall Of The Mountain King, which had bassoonist Goh Mok Cheong in suitably belligerent mood.

With less music performed this year, master-of-ceremonies William Ledbetter was compelled to stir up the proceedings, pad up the time with anecdotes and poetry reading, besides priming the  usually sedate Singaporean audience to bellow out a robust “Happy New Year!” at the stroke of midnight. Unfortunately when the time came, he had all but forgotten that cue.

The orchestra performed a couple of rarities, including The Jolly Village Smiths with its striking anvils by Julius Fucik, the Czech composer better known for his Entry Of The Gladiators. The other was David Lovrien's Minor Alterations, a witty medley with Christmas songs like Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, Good King Wenceslas and Rudolf The Red-Nosed Reindeer performed in minor keys. It closed with a hilarious mash-up of Tchaikovsky's Trepak from Nutcracker with Deck The Halls.

As with last year's concert, there were several minutes of sobriety and reflection in memory of personalities who made their departure in 2015, including Kurt Masur, David Willcocks, BB King, Jonah Lomu and Lee Kuan Yew. The aptly moving accompanying music was Estonian composer Arvo Pärt's Cantus In Memoriam Of Benjamin Britten, which consisted of a series of descending scales built on a cantus firmus in A minor.

The countdown to 2016 was ushered in by Respighi's Pines Of The Appian Way, representing the unrelenting march of time and Roman legions, conducted by Lim Yau. Having missed the chance for a communal wishing of new year greetings, the audience nevertheless had a cheerful clap-along to Johann Strauss Senior's Radetzky March. An eventful year of great music beckons.

BARTOK TONIGHT! / The Philharmonic Orchestra / Review

BARTOK TONIGHT!

The Philharmonic Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (3 April 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 April 2015 with the title "Painless Bartok".

We are now living in the second decade of the 21^st century yet there are pockets of audiences that still display an aversion to 20^th century music. One music teacher once told this reviewer she was leaving a concert early, hoping to avoid sitting through a work by the great 20^th century Hungarian composer Bela Bartok (1881-1945). This concert by The Philharmonic Orchestra (TPO) conducted by Lim Yau would have been the perfect remedy of that typical case of Bartok-phobia.

TPO in its Composers Tonight! series has successfully wedded concert music with a highly engaging musical education approach, helmed by the witty actor-director William Ledbetter in collaboration with Lim Yau. His deliveries of pre-performance preambles have been unstuffy, refreshingly free of technical jargon while being factually sound and accurate. With Bartok, he dwelled on the composer's passion for collecting and preserving folk music, which in turn influenced the use of vernacular melodies, harmonies and rhythms in his music.  

The audience was provided with a short “sampler” in Bartok's Romanian Dances, the most painless possible introduction to his supposedly difficult style. Short but quaintly rhythmic, these miniatures brought out some excellent solo playing from the clarinet, piccolo and concertmaster Chan Yoong Han's violin. This was merely the prelude to Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, his most popular large scale work which showcased groups of solo instruments in virtuosic roles while being intregral parts of the orchestra.

Snippets from each of the five movements were aired alongside Ledbetter's humorous descriptions, even if spoilers related to Bartok's uproarious in-joke of the fourth movement (best appreciated by American audiences in 1944 who were then in the thrall of Shostakovich's patriotic Seventh Symphony) were divulged.

Then without much ceremony, the work began.

A more experienced orchestra might have crafted a more mysterious subterranean opening, but the opening movement's themes influenced by Hungarian folk music with its use of fourths were well delineated. The chorus of brass fanfares at its climax also provided the movement's high point. Clearly this was to be a field day for both woodwinds and brass, whose prowess continued into the second movement's Game of Couples.

Here, duets of bassoons, oboes, clarinets, flutes and trumpets playing in various fixed intervals were highlighted to best effect, alongside a sole drummer in the middle beating out rhythmic asides. The middle movement, an Elegy, was eerily evocative with the piccolo piping out its version of midnight wind, twittering insects and the call of the wild.

The fourth movement's Interrupted Intermezzo with its trite village humour and parody of Shostakovich (who himself lampooned Franz Lehar and the Nazis) was not milked for its shock value, but the intended effect would have been mostly lost on modern audiences anyway.

All the stops were pulled for the finale's perpetuum mobile, which found the strings on imperious form. Again, the driving rhythms of folk music held sway as the music barrelled its way to a brilliant finish. The various groups of soloists and chatty host were congratulated by the maestro, and judging by the applause, all who attended must had felt the concert and Ledbetter's “music lesson” could not have been better led. 

NEW YEAR'S EVE COUNTDOWN CONCERT / The Philharmonic Orchestra / Review

NEW YEAR’S EVE COUNTDOWN CONCERT

The Philharmonic Orchestra

School of The Arts Concert Hall

Wednesday (31 December 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 January 2015 with the title "Good music and champagne to ring in best wishes".

The Philharmonic Orchestra’s New Year’s Eve Countdown Concert conducted by Lim Yau has become an iconic fixture of the annual calendar, judging by the rising attendances over the years. After all, who could resist a healthy serving of good music with champagne, soft drinks and assorted nuts on the house to usher in the new year.

The opening works by Johann Strauss the Younger, Die Fledermaus Overture and Emperor Waltz, did not quite do the trick. Perhaps it was a combination of inertia and nerves which made these feel like champagne that had lost its bubbles.  It thus took the best efforts of top-hatted emcee William Ledbetter and sometime circus ringmaster by his teasing and bantering to drum up festive spark in an otherwise sober and sedate audience.

By the time of Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance No.8 in G minor (Op.46 No.8), both spirit and flesh were up and going. This was followed by Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol, which played like a miniature concerto for orchestra with its virtuosic solo parts. Standing out were Jasper Goh’s flute, concertmaster Siew Yili’s violin and a quartet of French horns, and the sequence of rollicking dances truly invigorated the overall mood.

The jazzy arrangement by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite proved the right tonic after a well-watered intermission. The orchestra was transformed into a big band ensemble complete with drum-set, saxophones and a zealous brass section ready to go. Syncopations and blues notes ruled, turning the character dances into swaggering and almost tipsy dervishes.

The audience got to its feet in Richard Hayman’s Pops Hoedown, with Western and cowboy dance steps taught by chief instigator Ledbetter, who was more than happy to lead in the “yee-ha”s and later tossing his hat into the crowd.

The Main Theme from John Williams’s Schindler’s List with violinist Siew as soloist provided a sombre reminder of the losses of the past year, including the passengers of the ill-fated Air Asia jetliner, and artists like Iskandar Ismail, Lorin Maazel, Claudio Abbado, Robin Williams and Shirley Temple, their everlasting images projected on an overhead screen.

Soon the countdown to 2015 was underway, accompanied portentously by the strains of Respighi’s Pines Of The Appian Way, as ominous and inexorable the march of time can be. Balloons fell and ribbons flew as the audience urged the orchestra for a one final encore. As with Vienna’s New Year’s Day Concert, Johann Strauss the Elder’s Radetzky March provided the beat for an audience clap-along, ringing in best wishes for the coming year.   

Photograph-taking was permitted by the orchestra throughout the entire duration of the concert. What wonderful sports!

FUN WITH MUSIC! / The Philharmonic Winds / Review

FUN WITH MUSIC!

The Philharmonic Winds

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (6 April 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 April 2014 with the title "Having great fun with music in party-like atmosphere".

It is in the interest of arts groups in Singapore today to do regular outreach programmes in order to build an audience for tomorrow. Fun With Music! was such a concert by The Philharmonic Winds, one which combined the attractions of a children’s party, television variety show, and the Hoffnung Festival of music. Although listed to be 70 minutes in length, this one overshot its mark by almost an hour.

It began with a classic: Malcolm Arnold’s A Grand Grand Overture, its four celebrity soloists being three vacuum cleaners and a floor polisher. Comedic timing was required of Angeline Wee, Lim Lip Hua and Yap Yoke Lim on the hoovers and Dennis Sim on the waxer, especially on when to press the on and off buttons, as directed by conductor Leonard Tan.

The ensuing racket was enough to send the ironic master of ceremonies William Ledbetter to pull out his hair, until the realisation that he was as bald as a cueball. On a more serious note, this concert served to introduce young audiences to the different instruments of a wind orchestra – namely the woodwinds, brass, percussion and one solitary double bass.

That was done eloquently in David Maslanka’s Alex and the Phantom Band, which was narrated by Kamini Ramachandran, about a boy who entered an imaginary world of band instruments during a time warp at thirteen o’clock. More relaxed and less stuffy that Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, the ensemble conjured up a fairy-tale atmosphere with sensitive and well-characterised playing.

Other guests in this concert included 11-year-old Corey Koh, who sang Rolf Lovland’s You Lift Me Up and a Chinese song in a pleasant and unbroken treble voice. More impactful was sand artist Lawrence Koh’s contribution in Eric Whitacre’s Cloudburst, whose creative visuals crafted by his hands on a projected plate of shifting sand was evocatively accompanied by the Ministry of Bellz’s handbell choir and voices of the wind players themselves.

Piccolo soloist Andy Koh and tuba player Wong Yin Xuan contrasted the highest and lowest pitched instruments of the band in Arthur Pryor’s popular march The Whistler And His Dog. Three further Americans showcased were Leroy Anderson (the entire clarinet section in full glory for Clarinet Candy), Charles Ives (a deliberately cacophonous London Bridge Is Fallen Down led by a 10-year-old from the audience) and P.D.Q.Bach’s (Simply Grand Minuet from Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds). All these were calculated to bring down the house.

Eric Coates’s The Three Bears narrated by Ledbetter about the Goldilocks escapade seemed almost too much of a good thing, and even when the concert ran way overtime, the audience demanded an encore. Ledbetter than picked up a trumpet and tooted away with the orchestra in the immortal DoReMi from Richard Rodgers’s The Sound Of Music. If The Philharmonic Winds’ next concert is another sell-out, its effort would have been well rewarded.