In that weird, mixed-up, disjointed way in which
Singapore manages its classical music events, there was another concert in
Victoria Concert Hall last night (Friday) billed as “Stabat Mater”. It followed hot on the heels of last Friday’s,
and for those people who knew of the second concert, it seemed as if it was
simply a re-run of the first; a couple of regular concert-goers told me they
had “already been” when I asked them if they were going last night. Unless you were observant and knowledgeable,
there seemed no clear distinction between the two.
Of course, hardly anyone knew about the second. Dismally publicized, the organisers sent a
round-robin email a matter of days before the concert, by which time most people
would have already organised their weekend schedules. Luckily, I had spotted a notice about this
concert when I had attended last Friday’s, and manfully negotiated the almost
impossible task of procuring a ticket from Singapore’s appallingly monopolistic
and hideously obstructive ticketing agency.
I was certainly not the only person in the
audience. In fact it was very heavily
attended. But the majority of the
audience was students from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts whose orchestra and
choir were performing and who had, I assume, been given the tip-off about the
concert long before it had been grudgingly brought to the notice of the general
public. That most of the audience
comprised students was obvious by the fact that those of us who were not, felt
we were intruding on some kind of internal party in which what went on onstage
was peripheral to the comprehensive texting, selfies and chatter of the
audience. I sat by one particularly
obnoxious example of studenthood – a diminutive girl wearing a white baseball
cap pulled down over her eyes, a scarf pulled up over her nose, who spent the
entire concert texting, giggling and turning around to whoever it was she was texting
to make gestures.
Badly behaved audience apart (I assume Nanyang – in common
with almost every other tertiary musical institution - never teaches its students
how to listen to music; train them to be manufacturers but not consumers is the
policy when it comes to music colleges) this was an outstanding concert.
Conductor - and Dean of the School of Music - Lim Yau
assembled a huge student orchestra on stage.
It was so huge that it had, apparently, been obliged to cut down in size
and some musical re-arranging made by in-house composers. They launched into a magnificent account of
the Overture to William Tell. Gorgeous cello tone, beautifully poised
basses, some delicious woodwind solos and a totally riveting final romp which
showed a perfect mixture of discipline and raw excitement. The comment in the programme notes that
Rossini had been “inspired by Beethoven’s Pastoral
Symphony” in writing his Overture came as news to me, and I fear it is a
claim which does not hold water; but it was very interesting idea which encouraged
me, at least, to look afresh at this very familiar music.
Bartók’s rarely-heard Rhapsody No.1 for violin and
orchestra showcased a superb young student violinist from Thailand, Nattawat
Luantampol, who not only played the piece brilliantly, but seemed utterly at
ease on stage, delivering a compelling and musically alert interpretation. Tan Jie Qing added a strange
Chinese/Hungarian colour with her excellent command of the Pedal Yangqin, taking
the place of Bartók’s preferred Cimbalom, and the orchestral support was nothing
short of magnificent.
Before both halves of the concert, the oboe gave the
orchestra a wide variety of A’s to choose from in tuning up, but somehow they
all chose the same one, and there was impressive intonation conformity across
the entire orchestra. In fact, excellent
internal tuning was one of the many impressive elements of the performance of
Rossini’s Stabat Mater which, in addition
to plenty of exposed wind parts, involves quite a lot of unaccompanied choral
singing – and this always stayed perfectly in tune.
I have had a great fondness for Rossini’s sacred music
ever since first pedalling my way through the harmonium part of the Petite Messe Solennelle. The Stabat Mater is similarly operatic in
character, wearing its religious devotion on its sleeve but not without a
strong feeling of sincerity. It was a
work Rossini did not want to write, once written wanted to keep secret, and in
the end fought legal battles to be allowed to complete and to bring out into
the public domain; such is the off-stage drama which so often seems to surround
Rossini’s music. Anyone performing it has to make the decision; do we play up
the operatic or suppress it in order to convey the religious?
Lim Yau got it right (and how I wish last Friday’s loosely
controlled quasi operatic attempt at Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater had shown such interpretative maturity). His choral forces – a huge choir very top
heavy on paper but actually much more balanced in reality – was responsive,
alert and confident. This was a very
fine example of massed choral singing.
The four soloists, described by some of the most
outrageously conceited biographies I have ever read, were of varied vocal quality.
But all of them were well up the task of bringing across the music along the
lines defined by Lim’s whole approach.
Soprano Lin Ching-Ju (she is, apparently, “world-renowned”) wobbled a
bit too much for my taste, vibrating across so many notes in the pursuit of one
that it was not easy to pick out a melodic line. Jessica Chen (who “frequently receives
invitations to perform with eminent companies and orchestras”) was a splendid
contralto, rich and robust, spot on in pitch and diction, and utterly
self-assured throughout. Lin Chien-Chi (“a
secret star”) was an ideal Italianate tenor, strutting his superficial passion,
putting the top notes on to isolated pedestals and generally doing all the
things which Rossini would have expected.
Firm and vocally precise, William Lim (who modestly devotes his
biography to a long list of past performances which seems to include every bit
of music ever written for the male voice) had a few projection problems and
looked particularly strained and nervous, rarely taking the risk of raising his
eyes from the score.
There were balance issues – as there always will be
when so many musicians are crammed on to the stage of a concert hall not
designed, acoustically, for such big sounds – but while Lim Yau was demonstrative
in trying to keep his orchestra down, they did not seem to respond. And, perhaps, this was a good thing. For this was a concert designed to show off
what was an outstanding orchestra and a brilliant choir – projecting soloists
above this, for all its stylistic legitimacy, would have stifled the overall sense
of involvement which was such a powerful element of this performance.
It would be wonderful to hear this again. Before that, however, someone might like to
give a few basic lessons in marketing and advertising to those who put on
classical music events in Singapore. How
nice it would be to attend concerts by design rather than accident.
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