YAN HUICHANG & SCO / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

 

YAN HUICHANG & SCO 

Singapore Chinese Orchestra 

Singapore Conference Hall 

Saturday (23 November 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 November 2024 with the title "Yan Huichang dazzles in guest conductor stint with SCO".

Every concert needs to be special. That seems to be the credo of Cultural Medallion recipient Yan Huichang, who is the Artistic Director and Principal Conductor for Life of the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra. The festive spirit of his HKCO concerts at Esplanade’s Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts in recent years was replicated as the Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s guest conductor this evening. 

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Opening with Da De Sheng (Triumph), as arranged by Zhang Shiye, antiphonal drumming and a chorus of suonas provided a raucous atmosphere, and one wondered whether the sheer excess of decibels generated could be topped. In a word, yes. 

Yan’s considerable prowess as a composer were demonstrated in two original works. Charms of Hainan, inspired by a 1981 visit to China’s southernmost island, had nothing to do with beach resorts, naval bases or culinary delights, but ethnic folk music of its indigenous Hlai hilltribes. 

The slow opening movement, Stroll, was impressionist in colour and evocatively so. Cottage, a romance between courting couples, paired the distinctive timbres of Zhang Shuo’s sax-like guanzi with Zhang Li’s lute-like xiaoruan in a beautiful duet like no other. This tender serenade could have gone on forever and nobody would have objected. The closing Gathering, recounting bull-fighting scenes, had more festive dancing than blood-letting. 

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Yan’s second work, Rhapsody of String Puppets, was more personal as it celebrated the art of Heyang string puppetry from his home province of Shaanxi. This also showcased the multi-faceted talents of 23-year-old Wang Kun whose mastery of gubanhuai (an ancient drumset), pixianhu (a huqin unique to Shaanxi, played with an outsized bow) and vocalisation may be modestly described as a veritable one-man-band. 

A fiddler’s dexterity, jazz-drummer’s rhythmicity and story-teller’s theatricality make for a rare combination. All of these came to a vivid confluence in the central movement entitled Dazzle: Presto of Guxian. Yan hailed Wang as one of two such virtuosi in the Chinese musical world, and the audience was witnessing the better one this evening. 

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

The other significant concertante work was Kuan Nai-Chung’s four-movement Peacock, featuring SCO’s sheng principal Guo Changsuo on a 36-reed sheng. Colourful in extremis might just sum up its contents, which opened with a leisurely song, later quickening in pace for a lilting Dance of Peacock Maidens. 

Then came the big surprise with Peacock in the Cage, taking a serious turn in a form of a Baroque passacaglia followed by a rather idiomatic transcription of the E minor Fugue from Book One of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. One has not truly lived without witnessing Bachian counterpoint on a sheng accompanied by huqins. 

The closing work was the battle classic Shi Mian Mai Fu (Ambush From All Sides) arranged by Liu Wenjin and Zhao Yongshan, where one could hear the frenzy of warfare, charging steeds and the clash of metal with sparks flying. Loud and prolonged applause yielded a high octane encore, Sai Ma (Horse Racing), complete with the obligatory whinnying and neighing.

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

AN EVENING WITH HONG KONG CHINESE ORCHESTRA / Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts / Review

AN EVENING WITH

HONG KONG CHINESE ORCHESTRA

Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (28 January 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 January 2023 with the title "Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra draws standing ovation."

 

It has been over four years since the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra last performed in Singapore. Led by Cultural Medallion recipient Yan Huichang, its Artistic Director since 1997 and Principal Conductor for Life, the orchestra’s return was close to a sellout house in this year Esplanade’s Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts. Its two-hour long concert revealed a versatility and virtuosity that has become synonymous with this ensemble.   

 

The sound of percussion opened Ng King-Pan’s The Chorale Of Spring, more a celebratory rather than ceremonial showpiece, which shared the rhythmic vitality and bounding energy as Stravinsky’s iconic ballet The Rite Of Spring. When the dagu, the most mammoth of all drums, is involved, something truly big is going down. This was followed by two movements from Peng Xiuwen’s Twelve Months Suite, contrasting a chamber-like intimacy and sentimentality with the exuberance of lively festivities.

Photo: Jack Yam / Esplanade

 

Photo: Jack Yam / Esplanade

Especially impressive was the inclusion of two vastly different concertante works. Well-known composer Zhao Jiping’s Pipa Concerto No.2 saw the orchestra’s pipa principal Zhang Ying as spectacular soloist. The single movement work in multiple linked parts opened with lushness and poetic beauty as the solo instrument found its way from lyricism to playfulness, and then prestidigitation associated with crisis and turmoil. There was a big tune at its climax with the orchestra’s famed ecologically-friendly gehus leading the way before receding to calm and quietude.  

 

Taiwanese composer Wang I-Yu’s Reeds had the orchestra’s soprano sheng player Chen Yi-Wei pitted against British organist Jonathan Scott on Esplanade’s Klais organ, an innovative work that sought a commonality between the millennia-old Chinese instrument with a modern Western electronic one.

 

It was not a mismatch given the astute scoring in the concert’s most modern sounding work. Beside the sheng's plangent oration and the organ's toccata-like maneuvers, there was a curious interlude which involved the drones and plucked twangs from Jew's harps scattered among the players. The work closed with all orchestral reeds joining in for one raucous high. 

 

Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun is a master of orchestral colour and sound effects as evident in the four movements of his Northwest Suite No.1. The rasping of cymbals rubbed against one another and the possibilities of the human voice opened this atmospheric work that celebrated the “yellow earth” landscape and peoples from Shaanxi, also conductor Yan’s home province.

 

Stark contrasts coloured the score, from breathtaking fanfares of a suona chorus, hyperactive percussion, a nocturne-like slow movement filled with underlying tension, to the constant perpetual motion of its fraught finale. With this, the orchestra trenchantly portrayed the toils and triumphs of human endeavour in a harsh environment.   

 

Several encores, including a medley of Chinese New Year favourites – with the god of fortune making a grand entrance - and one incorporating the popular Happy Birthday, had the audience, clapping, singing and finally rising to its feet. An evening with Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra was indeed an evening well spent. 

Photo: Jack Yam / Esplanade

Photo: Jack Yam / Esplanade

AN EVENING WITH HONG KONG CHINESE ORCHESTRA / MoonFest 2014 / Review

AN EVENING WITH 

HONG KONG CHINESE ORCHESTRA

MoonFest 2014

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (6 September 2014) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 September 2014 with the title "Orchestra's impactful outing".

There are only a few full-sized professional Chinese orchestras in existence, and each has its own distinctive features. The Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, making its first appearance here in 17 years, can truly be considered distinctive. Led by its Singaporean Principal Conductor and Cultural Medallion recipient (2001) Yan Huichang, the orchestra made a big impact at this year’s Mid Autumn festivities at the Esplanade.

One would be struck by its mostly youthful-looking players, attired in sleek dark grey one-piece gowns, and array of eco-friendly huqins, cellos and basses. Made from biodegradable materials, these instruments eschewed the traditional python-skin trimmings yet did not compromise on timbre and sound quality.

Their velvety, homogeneous sound was heard to stirring effect in the ancient tune As The Moon Rises arranged by Peng Xiuwen, and the mysterious and hushed textures in The Grazing Scene from Law Wing-Fai’s Tang Capriccio. Suppleness and subtlety was in plenteous supply, but the range of nuances expressed in this wonderfully varied programme also impressed.

Percussion and a chorus of suonas (the closest thing to brass) certainly made their presence felt in The Grand Victory from Shanxi, which opened the concert. The latter, trumpeting impossibly long-held notes at its ending, was greeted with much glee. There was also much prowess in individual solos, like Singaporean Choo Boon-Chong’s evocatively tipsy bangdi flourish in Law’s Drunken Monk’s Note, inspired by Tang dynasty calligraphy. 

Liu Tianhua’s A Beautiful Night and the Cantonese number In Celebration of the Good Times provided a host of contrasts, nocturnal serenity followed by celebratory revelry. In Zhao Jiping’s Follow the Pagoda Tree to Trace the Roots of Our Ancestors, elegiac huqins (one cannot get enough of these) alternated with a swifter and more percussive beat that underlined the work’s date with nostalgia.   

The concertante works were heartily received, none more than sanxian soloist Zhao Taisheng’s tour de force of spoken and sung narration in Sui Lijun’s Song of the Black Earth. Like the proverbial wandering minstrel, he truly captured the lore of the land with his plaints, capped by a frenzied improvised cadenza on the sanxian that reminded one of Elvis on his guitar in his prime.      

Conductor Yan then trained the audience in the art of the hand drum for the closing work, Cheng Dazhao’s Yellow River Capriccio. The work went through its obligatory tumultuous episodes that are sine qua non for “China’s Sorrow”, featured some fine folk singing from orchestral members Mao Qinghua and Ren Zhaoliang, before the mass participatory drumming that raised a terrific din to close.

Conductor Yan mused on his happiness on returning to Singapore, before launching into three familiar encores, Colourful Clouds Chasing The Moon, Horse Racing and the theme from the martial arts serial Legend of the Condor Heroes. On this showing, the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra’s much-vaunted reputation is well-deserved.

Photographs by Jack Yam, with the courtesy of Esplanade Theatres by the Bay.