For the past week the British press has been dominated by
stories about dishonest practices in the banking industry. Indeed, the press has managed to whip the
British public up into such a lather of anti-bank sentiment that merely to be
seen passing through the doors of a bank is to prompt sneers and angry glances
from passers-by, while bankers are now firmly established as Public Enemy Number
One. So it was an act of some bravery
from Donna Renney, CEO of the Cheltenham Music Festival in the west of England,
to stand up before Friday evening’s concert and lavish praise on a bank. True, HSBC itself has not been directly
implicated in the current scandal about illegal interest rate fixing, but the
praise lavished on them was generous by any standards. But it was thoroughly deserved, for not only
are HSBC the main sponsors of the Cheltenham Festival, one of the most respected
of all British summer music festivals, but it was through them that musical
history was made and a seismic change effected in the musical relationship
between the UK and Singapore.
For decades, British orchestras have seen Singapore as a
kind of staging post on the international touring circuit; a former colonial
possession deserving the occasional cultural shot in the arm in the shape of a
programme of popular classical standards.
With Friday’s concert by Singapore’s Orchestra of the Music Makers, that
relationship underwent a fundamental sea-change. Not only was a Singapore orchestra performing
in front of what Singapore’s High Commissioner to the UK, Mr T Jasudasen, rightly
described as “a notoriously discerning audience”, but they were treading extremely
dangerous ground by playing British music on British soil - Delius in front of
a large party of members of the Delius Trust, and Holst in the town in which he
was born and before an audience some of whom had known the composer in
person. “Gustav would have loved this”,
one very elderly gentleman sighed after hearing conductor Chan Tze Law inspire
his players to the very apogee of mock-Oriental impressionism in the colourful Beni Mora Suite. Full praise, here, to the wind players who
added so much oriental spice to this dream of a performance.
The Orchestra of the Music Makers had an uphill task to
perform. Playing before a packed – and
rapt – audience in Cheltenham Town Hall within 36 hours of stepping off the
plane at Heathrow, they also had to contend with the wettest July day England
has experienced for decades (a whole month’s supply of rain fell during the
day), an acoustic which was not much different from playing on a soggy football
field, a stage which was never designed
to accommodate one musician let alone a hundred of them, stage hands who had no
idea what was going on (at one point five of them clustered around the
conductor’s rostrum scratching their collective heads over which way up the
music had to be placed) and an audience still reeling from the shock of Andy
Murray’s Wimbledon semi-final victory. As
if that wasn’t enough, they also had to open their programme with Delius’s Paris, a work which, if it does have any
charms, keeps them hidden from all but the most passionate Delius fan.
Remarkably, the Orchestra of the Music Makers brought it off
with considerable precision and if their realisation of Delius’s evocation of
the city’s nightlife seemed a touch turgid, this did not upset the members of the Delius Society who sat
behind me and were overheard expressing considerable satisfaction amongst
themselves (“I say”, one was heard to mutter, “that wasn’t half bad” – a rare
compliment from an Englishman). Much
more rewarding for the rest of us was a richly detailed and eloquently poised
account of Debussy’s La Mer. The beauty of this performance lay in the
subtle reflections and translucent textures which Chan summoned from his players,
who gave no hint of tiredness or even youthful inexperience. This was a polished and rewarding performance
which fully deserved the warm, extended and, at times, vocal applause from an
audience to whom the work was clearly no stranger.
For many in the audience, however, the high point of the
concert was Melvyn Tan’s endearing approach to both the piano – perched perilously
close to the edge of the platform – and Ravel’s G Major Concerto. The weird stage layout which meant that the
orchestra could neither hear nor see each other caused obvious problems in the
first movement, but with Tan’s oddly idiosyncratic reading of the second
movement, injecting Ravel’s naïve, simplistic theme with palpitating rubatos
and finding in it some remarkably complex and finger-twisting rhythmic twists
and turns, the orchestra suddenly found its feet and went on to bring the Concerto
to a truly scintillating close. The
eruption of cheers – not a common thing at Cheltenham – was by no means just
for Tan, and when the panicky stage management pushed him back on while Chan
was still bringing individual soloists in the orchestra to their feet, nobody
knew (or cared) whether the latest upsurge of bravos were for pianist,
percussionist, oboe, bassoon, or, indeed, any single member of the orchestra;
all were equally deserving of this fulsome praise.
The English audience are not known for their generous
reception of strangers but clearly they took the Singapore musicians very much
to heart. In a country where youth
orchestras are dominated by female musicians, many in the audience expressed
astonishment that there were, as one put it, “so many lads” on stage, while
others could not believe that the players all looked “so very much at ease” in
the faded splendour of Cheltenham’s Town Hall (something which may well be down
to the fact that the Hall is of a similar vintage, design and character to
Singapore’s own Victoria Hall). But perhaps the common feeling was expressed
in the words of one local dignitary who observed; “They’re really good. I’m so glad I was able to hear them”.
This was a weekend of near-miracles in the UK - a bank being
praised, an Englishman in the Wimbledon finals, rainfall of tropical
proportions - but perhaps the greatest was an amateur Singapore orchestra melting
the hearts and minds of a die-hard English audience.
Bravissimo! I say, old chap! Looks like OMM has outdone themselves yet again, a phrase I'll never tire of saying. Well done, you've all done Singapore proud!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the 'live' report. I never fail to marvel at how you weave your deep knowledge, frank opinion, sense of history and humour into your writing. OMM is Singapore's own pride and joy. Congratulations to the them.
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