Assessing Music Teachers

How do we assess a music teacher?  This is an important question for parents, who with little or no musical knowledge themselves, are still eager for their children to learn music.  How do they know who the best and worst teachers are?

I happen to think that it is a marvellous thing that music education is given a very high priority in Singapore.  Julie Tan, a former chair of the Singapore Music Teachers’ Association, has said that being a music teacher is one of the most stable jobs currently on offer here.  She’s right.  History has shown that, even in the midst of major financial slumps, parents still value music education sufficiently highly to make sacrifices to ensure its continuity.  And given the absolute obsession with graded music exams here, once you start a child off at Grade 1, that child is effectively locked into lessons for the next eight years, if not longer.  With financial, legal and commercial organisations laying off staff in the path of encroaching IT advances, there is as yet no computerised alternative to the human interaction between music teacher and student.

You would have thought, then, given the centrality of music education within Singapore and the heavy involvement of government in it, a coherent and credible system of teacher assessment would have long been established.  But that is, sadly, very far from the case.  Those responsible for assessing teachers have a mind-set stuck firmly in the 1940s and 1950s when Singapore came under the colonial governance of the United Kingdom and when attitudes saw London as the ideal on which Singapore should be modelled.

It might have been right then.  It is not right now.  The UK changed its approach to training and assessing teachers decades ago; it seems as if Singapore harks back to the heady days of colonial rule and austere judgements taking no consideration of humanity of individuality.  And what is music teaching if it is not a very human interaction between individuals?

It is not just a political point; it is a qualitative issue.  Singapore actively (if accidentally) discriminates against good teachers and promotes bad ones because of its outdated and misguided approach to teacher assessment.

When I have applied for teaching jobs in other countries, I have been assessed by the knowledge, passion and communication skills I have shown in letters of application and interviews, by means of a practical demonstration, a visit by an assessor to a class I have been teaching, or, more recently (I am happy to say), by repute.  That’s not how it’s done here.

In Singapore it all boils down to an unshaking belief, held not just by parents (who would not generally be expected to know any better) and by some teachers, but most shockingly, by those in government service charged with maintaining Singapore’s educational standards, in the power, authority and musical legitimacy of a London-based organisation called the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (the ABRSM as it is largely known to Singaporeans).  Set up in colonial Britain in 1890 with the highly laudable intention of promoting “the cultivation and dissemination of the art of Music in the United Kingdom and throughout the Dominions”, the ABRSM has since grown to become a global monolith, assessing over 610,000 students worldwide every year, of which an astonishing 10% are in Singapore. 

The ABRSM did not invent the notion of the graded music exam – that idea had been mooted by another London-based organisation, Trinity College, in 1874 – but they have such a total stranglehold over graded music exams in Singapore that it has almost become a synonym; “my child’s doing her ABRSM this week”. 

In the days of the British Empire, the graded music exam served a very valuable purpose, and it still does today.  It provides a very useful framework – if not an out-and-out full curriculum – to teachers who are not good enough to devise one of their own, or imaginative enough to teach to a pupil’s strengths rather than their weaknesses.  And the sad fact is that, even today, there are hundreds and thousands of bad music teachers who exist solely on the basis of being able to follow the ABRSM syllabus and to treat it as a stand-alone teaching curriculum (which the ABRSM would be the first to say it was never designed to be). For them the ABRSM is a life-saver, giving them legitimacy which is only reinforced by a society which sees music education purely in terms of ABRSM goals.

There is also value in the exam system in helping parents identify a child’s progress in an activity with which they themselves are unacquainted but can recognise certification where they could not recognise ability.  And the pupils themselves often flourish with the incentive of an exam; dread it as they might, there is purpose when there is another step on the ladder in sight.

I spent 40 years as a music examiner, 20 of them with the ABRSM.  I had my issues with the system, of course, but I recognised the extreme good work we were doing and, for all its flaws, I am still utterly convinced that the graded music examination system has many benefits, particularly to those with limited teaching skills or unambitious musical intentions.  And it has undoubtedly opened the eyes and ears to generations who would otherwise not have been exposed to music.

The purpose of the ABRSM is to assess students.  My problem is when those in authority use the ABRSM graded examination system to assess teachers.  I have often heard stories, and met those with first hand experience of the situation, but when a student came to me the other day bearing a letter from a Singapore school I saw for the first time the appalling – I would venture to use the word catastrophic – damage being done to music education by Singapore’s single-minded obsession with the ABRSM.

This conservatory student has been one of our bright stars.  A brilliant brass player and profoundly intelligent musician, in the years to come he could realistically audition for a principal chair in any orchestra of his choosing.  Yet he has decided he does not want a career in performing, but in teaching.  I find that a wonderful thing.  Yet he has been rejected, not because he is no good but because  he never did his ABRSM Grade 5 theory.  I have the letter in front of me, signed by a civil servant in the country’s Ministry of Education and it is unequivocal:  “We would like to request for a document to certify that xxx has attained his ABRSM Grade 5 in Music Theory. We understand that based on the CV, xxx is currently pursuing a degree in the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, NUS. But due to the nature of our ITQ Specs, we will need documentation of the qualifications that he has attained with regard to the ABRSM grade.” (The irony that the Singapore government regards a qualification from a London organisation over which it has no jurisdiction regarding academic standards as more valid than one from one of its own tertiary education establishments was not lost on the student.)

Any of us who teach music theory or history in tertiary establishments know that much of our early time with new students is spent disabusing them of the ideas inculcated through ABRSM grade 5 theory.  The ABRSM grade 5 theory exam is not wrong, it is just so simplistic that it loses all relevance to the real world of professional music making.  And yet the government seems determined that teachers should not have the kind of level of advanced musical knowledge I would want and expect from any teacher educating my child, but that they revert to a simplistic set of sterile misconceptions which belong more to the 1890s than the 2010s.

In a recent class discussion, a Singapore student stated that “Singaporeans are defined by our qualifications”.  How right she was.  And until such time as those responsible for assessing teachers can find their own way of assessing Knowledge, Passion and Communication (the three key attributes to a good teacher), Singapore will remain a place where quality is seen as a bit of paper rather than as an ability, and where good teaching is turned away in preference to bad.

The Individualisation of Music

In the beginning (or thereabouts) music was believed to be the sole property of the gods.  The ancient Greeks and Chinese believed in the Harmony of the Spheres, a music created by the movement of celestial bodies.  They understood it to be inaudible to man and, therefore, audible only to the gods. 

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With the evolution of human thought, that “inaudible” music was rendered audible by artificial means – the invention of instruments and the formalised art of singing.  The church, being that element of human existence closest to God, took possession of this music, and established a system of notation which allowed it to be disseminated among those who were able to read it.  It was now the exclusive property of religious leaders and priests – the only people educated in the ways of musical notation – as well as those ordained by them to practice the art of music.

With the Reformation in the early 16^th century, the new Protestant churches were defined almost as much by their music as their religious beliefs, while around a century later and with the growing concept of statehood above and beyond religious affiliation, music became associated with royalty. The 18^th century saw wealthy families and courts using music as an outward symbol of wealth, ordering their servant musicians to produce on demand music to satisfy their needs as a unified group.  That all changed with the outbreak of war in 1914.  The established political order disintegrated.  Great emperors, kings, tsars and rulers were seen as fallible, God was seen as impotent, and religion and aristocratic lineage were seen as irrelevant. 

What has happened to music, so long associated with gods, sacred rites, the church and the ruling elite, has been one of the most intriguing and enduring legacies of the First World War.

Stylistically, we know it became irredemably fragmented.  The comfortable – if dubious and misleading – categorisation of music into stylistic periods could no longer hold sway.  A promotional leaflet sent to me to be edited a few days ago spoke of a performance of Gershwin’s Piano Concerto as “a must for lovers of contemporary music”.  When I suggested that this was wrong, I was given the line that music fell into the categories of Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern/Contemporary, so Gershwin was clearly a contemporary composer.  Similarly we see people struggling in vain to box up the huge diversity of music since the First World War with such pointless labels as Modern, Post-Modern, Twentieth-Century, all of which are as meaningless as they are demeaning to the music itself.  The fact is, there is no common, blanket stylistic feature which links music written since 1918; and while I would argue that this is also the case with all music ever written, I can see certain elements which might lead some people to think that there is some superficial and vague connection between composers living in previous eras. 

However, if we are still scrabbling around in the dark trying to fulfil our sterile desire to categorise music written since 1918, the passage of time has allowed us to look back and see one very definite change which has unified music since then.  And that is its dissemination.  Not so much the way it has been disseminated – although the advent of recording and broadcast, evolving with alarming rapidity in that 100 year period – as to whom it is disseminated.  (Although I readily agree that the two are inseparably linked.)

Once fit only for the gods, then fit only for the church, then fit only for the god-like rulers of nations, and then fit only for a tiny elite distinguished by accident of birth, music is now the possession of everyone.  Each of us is, in effect, our own god, our own church, our own ruler and our own master.  Suddenly music, once accessible only to a tiny minority, is accessible to everyone regardless of faith, social status, wealth, race or education, and that has had a profound effect on what music actually is.

There was a time when music served a purpose.  Once people started to write music, rather than simply acknowledge its existence as a natural phenomenon, the church led the way in defining music and its function. Composers wrote to glorify a god or satisfy specific patrons.  The church no longer leads.  Where once society followed and obeyed church rulings, church now follows and obeys society’s demands.  That is why issues such as gay marriage, abortion, social equality have become so divisive, with those who hark back to the days when the church’s teachings held sway finding it impossible to accept the contrary will of society.  So it is with music.  Our church music is, by and large, a feeble, wishy washy and witless imitation of what is popular in society at large, and if churches commission new music, it remains firmly within the walls of the specific church which commissioned it, and rarely ventures out into the wider public domain.  For many, the church and its music are an irrelevance, a peripheral element to society.

Our rulers are no longer rich, wealthy, god-fearing men born to their roles, but clumsy, thoughtless and often ill-educated politicians who see ruling as a career choice rather than an ordained state.  They have neither the interest in nor the knowledge of music, and generally leave it well alone, happy to bend to the will of society when it comes to selecting music for state occasions.  Hence the cheap and nasty Canadian manufactured songs which adorn the Singapore National Day Parades and the Revolutionary songs from Catholic France which get the Malaysians so stirred with national pride every August.

So with neither our religious nor our temporal leaders showing leadership in music, it is left to each of us individually to do with it as we wish.  In this, the technological revolution which has allowed us free and easy access to music whenever we want and wherever we are, has only helped us take possession of a once exclusive and elusive art form.  And with that has come a complete change in attitudes and understanding.

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Ask anyone to define music, and they will instead offer their emotional response to it.   The quality or value of a piece of music is determined, not by others, but by each of us individually.  If we like it, it’s good; if we don’t it’s bad.  There are as many different musical tastes and preferences as there are people on the planet, and no one musical work can ever stand out as exceptional, because we now engage with music as individuals not as members of society.  There can never be another St Matthew Passion or Beethoven Ninth Symphony simply because we do not share music en masse nor do we accept the validity of somebody else’s view above our own.  Generations of music students have been taught that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven are great composers.  Who is there now to teach the next generation who our next great composers are?  The best we can hope is that a YouTube video will go viral – and as nobody stomachs YouTube videos of more than a few minutes’ duration, the hope of something really great emerging through that channel is a forlorn one.

With this individualisation of music, we have a fundamental change in what music is.  No longer can it serve a function or inspire us collectively.  Instead, each piece is accepted only on its own terms by an individual.  Writing music for a common body – the church, the nation – is no longer relevant.  The days of great composers and great music are over; in its place comes music for personal gratification and stimulation. 

I am not sure that one is better than the other, but like music, we will all have our individual views on this.

 

Heavenly Hildegard

I enjoyed this CD which I reviewed for MusicWeb International.  Here's my review - and you can order it from them.

 

Considering she lived almost a thousand years ago and stands as one of the first composers in musical history whose name can be unquestionably attributed to specific and original musical works – she composed 77 settings of her own mystic visions - we know a surprising amount about Hildegard von Bingen.  We know about her family, her early days in a convent, the window out of which she looked on the world (and through which the world looked at her), her dealings with the religious and temporal leaders of her age, her remarkably persuasive and, as we would call it today, entrepreneurial abilities, the places she visited, the people she knew, the ideas, thoughts and opinions she had and, of course, the mystic visions which led her not only to set them to music but to commit the music to  manuscript and thus to posterity.  What we do not know is how that music was performed in her own time, what it sounded like then and how contemporary listeners and performers responded to it.

It is a common failing among those who attempt “authentic” performances of music to authenticate them only in terms of physical instrumental attributes and notions of pitch and tempo.  In other respects, such performances all too often assume 21^st century concepts and ethics as being constants throughout the ages, and wrap up historical evidence in sounds designed to meet the expectations of 21^st century ears rather than those of earlier times.  In the case of Hildegard, we only have those 21^st century ears to go on, so this is not a recording which in any way attempts to address the issue; there is no pretence that these are in any way aiming at an “authentic” performance style.

Ask any member of the general public to describe classical music and very soon the word “beautiful” will crop up.  Otherwise intelligent and logically-minded people will often go weak at the knees in the face of old classical music and coo lovingly about its beauty and its calming effects.  It is rather sad that great music is so often reduced to superficial notions of beauty – like the assessment of a woman as beautiful rather than as a living, breathing, thinking, and complex human being.  That feminine analogy is singularly apt when dealing with Hildegard, for it is often difficult to assess her as a composer without having to wade through acres of feminist ideologies.  Barbora Kabátková’s booklet notes with this CD are no exception, and highlight the concept of women relegated to an inferior status to men since the days of Eve.  Without wishing to get into feminist arguments, I would only say that such arguments only serve to diminish the extraordinary achievement of Hildegard, not in being a woman in a man’s world, but in being a composer in a world where composers did not exist at all as individuals. 

The Tiburtina Ensemble comprises nine women’s voices which blend beautifully in this sequence of carefully selected extracts from Hildegard’s Visions.  While they trace with immaculate precision the musical fabric of Hildegard’s creations, a trio of “old-testament instruments” – two harps and a zither (or dulce melos) – provides an improvised accompaniment, as well as a couple of purely instrumental interludes.   With the aid of a misty acoustical environment, a perfectly manicured vocal tone, delicate and ethereal improvised instrumental support – often tinkling away in the background like so many wind chimes in an ornamental garden – and a general atmosphere of ersatz-medievality, we have Hildegard presented on disc here in much the manner we might expect from a movie director keen to take us back to a long-forgotten age, where chivalrous knights serenaded unattainable maidens in high castle windows (preferably with flowing golden tresses).  It has that slightly false feeling of creating its own legend, rather than cutting through legend to the hard facts underneath.  We even have the long-drawn out final fade as an anonymous setting of Psalm 8 evokes a procession of medieval nuns moving out of the chapel and into the twilight zone beyond.

However, there is no denying that this is a highly effective and, yes, beautiful recording, which, in default of a genuinely authentic approach, gives our 21^st century ears just what they like.  In her booklet notes, Kabátková, who also directs the ensemble and is one of the two harpists (the other is also a singer in the group, Hana Blažíková, while the zither player is Margit Ubellacker) writes how the recordings were made over several days in the Cistercian Monastery at Osek where the musicians were able to ponder “the events of recent days – the sweeping celebrations of the 70^th anniversary of the end of World War II, or the cruel bloodshed in Ukraine and Syria” while recalling that the monastery had been transformed during the 1950s by the Communist regime into a “prison facility for nuns from several congregations throughout the whole of Czechoslovakia”.  Little wonder that this recording positively oozes atmosphere, reflection and an aura of deep devotion and spiritual commitment.

Do not look to this recording to give historical substances to one of music’s first great composers.  Instead relish the way this ancient music speaks to our own age when treated with such love and devotion by these committed and sincere performers.

One Orchestra. Two Conductors. A World of Difference

Andre Previn memorably tried to show on his 1970s Saturday evening TV programme about orchestras that without a conductor on the rostrum, even the best orchestras would soon fall apart.  His demonstration fell rather flat; when he walked away from the rostrum, the orchestra carried on just as well without him. 

But Previn was working with the London Symphony, and they were (and are) one of the best orchestras in the world.  His experiment would have worked better with a less accomplished orchestra; one which needs a conductor not just to keep them together but to inspire them to make music rather than play their instruments around the same time.

It did not exist then, but today's Singapore Symphony would have been a rather better choice than the LSO of the 1970s.  However, the vital role a conductor plays has never been so vividly demonstrated as it was last week with two very different concerts given in the same concert hall by the SSO.

Last weekend they gave a concert under Kristjan Järvi, and it was pretty dreadful.  On Wednesday they gave a different programme under Pavel Baleff, and it was spectacular.  The change which came over this orchestra was not down to repertory, personnel or rehearsal time; it was purely down to conductor.

Most musicians know and respect the name Järvi.  It is one of the great conducting dynasties of our time.  Its patriarch, Neeme, is one of the great conductors of our time.  His son Paavo has also carved out a pretty impressive conducting career.  Paavo's young brother, Kristjan is following along in their footsteps.  But whatever conducting skill he possesses, it certianly was not sufficient to inspire in the members of the SSO anything worth listenign to.

Few musicians outside his native Bulgaria and the city of  Baden-Baden, where he is chief conductor, have heard of Pavel Baleff (two years' Kristjan Järvi's senior).  Yet he inspired the SSO to heights they have seldom before attained (I certainly have never heard them play better).  It can only be the conductor, with just five days between the two concerts, such a magical transformation from listless meandering to incisve focus can not have occurred for any other reason.  I reviewed both concerts for the Straits Times and reprint my reviews below.  It still seems hard to believe that this was one and the same orchestra.

The Ring – An Orchestral Adventure

Singapore Symphony Orchestra/Jean-Yves Thibaudet (piano) Kristjan Jarvi (conductor)

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (27^th October)

It was difficult to identify any coherent thread running through this programme other than a sense that nothing was quite as it seemed.  A piece about China was Estonian, music described as Egyptian was actually French and a thoroughly German opera was given a makeover by a Dutchman who took out all the words and removed the singers.

Kristjan Järvi, the youngest member of the famous Estonian musical dynasty, not only conducted the concert but composed the concert opener.  Intended to portray his favourite Chinese city, the odd assemblage of capital letters in the title - ShANgHAi Wonder - made it look more like a chemical formula.  The odd assemblage of trite and derivative musical gestures did nothing to dispel that impression.

 

Making a welcome return to Singapore, Jean-Yves Thibaudet sailed breezily over the phenomenal technical difficulties of Saint-Saens’ Fifth Piano Concerto.  Composed during a cruise down the Nile, this has ever since been called “The Egyptian”.  Thibaudet must have been wondering whether he, Järvi and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra were all on the same boat for today’s musical journey.  

 

Jarvi’s hand often strayed from the tiller, and the orchestra was left floundering around, wondering which direction to take.  The charming oriental melody in the second movement from the piano and the clever gamelan-type effects from the orchestra came as little moments of solid ground in an otherwise wobbly performance.  Luckily, Thibaudet took command of the final movement and brought it into harbour with enough panache to get the audience clamouring for more.

 

All orchestral percussionists relish a challenge, and Dutchman Henk de Vlieger is no exception.  Responding to a challenge thrown down by his conductor in 1992, he set out to distil the 15 hours of music in Wagner’s epic four-part Ring Cycle into a single, hour long concert work. The result - The Ring – An Orchestral Adventure – splices together all the big tunes from the original, cutting out the action, the voices and the boring bits.

 

Buoyed up by four harps, a fistful of French Horns and Wagner Tubas, and a veritable battery of percussion including a weighty profusion of anvils (which sounded uncannily like the inside of a clock museum around midday) the SSO threw themselves at this luscious score with enormous enthusiasm.

 

Unfortunately, so did Järvi, and the ensuing lack of discipline led to some horribly scrappy moments – the worst being a general silence just before the final ecstatic apotheosis which was anything but silent.

 

Against this, however, there were marvellous, unforgettable moments.  The Magic Fire Music positively shimmered with intensity, and the woodwind bird calls against dreamily murmuring strings were simply captivating. 

 

Best of all was Siegfried’s stirring horn call brilliantly delivered by Han Chang Chou in what must be, for me, the most memorable single musical moment of 2017.  Which was just as well.  Much of the rest of this concert I would prefer to forget.  This was not the SSO’s finest hour.

  

A Night At The Opera

Diana Damarau (soprano), Nicolas Teste (bass-baritone), Singapore Symphony Orchestra/Pavel Baleff

Esplanade Concert Hall

Wednesday (1 November)

This was a gala concert aimed at opera lovers, and they certainly got their money’s worth.  But if, by some astonishing error of judgement, somebody had turned up expecting a normal orchestral concert, they would surely have left this marathon session feeling equally satisfied.

A combination of two marvellous singers, an orchestra on absolutely cracking form and a conductor whose direction was nothing short of inspirational, made this a night to remember.

Pavel Baleff may not be a household name, even among classical music aficionados, but his conducting inspired the Singapore Symphony Orchestra to a level of excellence they rarely achieve and which, one suspects, surprised even them.

Clear, precise, economical with gesture and with a commanding presence which ensured this programme of 16 individual items flowed seamlessly, Baleff laid his cards on the table at the very start with an incisive and immensely musical interpretation of Rossini’s Barber of Seville Overture.  The dynamics, ranging from a whimpering whisper to a thrilling thunder, were perfectly measured for maximum effect, and the controlled precision of the playing was marvellous to behold.

Even more impressive was the famous Dance of the Hours, which got the audience screaming with enthusiasm.  The Prelude to the Flying Dutchman did much to restore the SSO’s Wagner credentials after last weekend’s wobbly efforts.

Bass-baritone Nicolas Teste has a voice full of rich, opulent darkness and, compelling as he was in King Phillip’s aria from Verdi’s Don Carlos, he really came into his own in Mogst du, mein Kind from The Flying Dutchman.  His austere, monumental vocal presence seemed ideal for the night after Halloween.

The concert’s headline act was Teste’s wife, the soprano Diana Damrau.  The whole programme was a testament to her intelligent and imaginative approach, drawing on arias which were not necessarily what we might have expected, but which brought together genuine musical interest with lavish opportunities to display her remarkable vocal powers

The usual suspects in any operatic soprano recital were there – Una voce poco fa from The Barber of Seville, Je Veux Vivre from Romeo et Juliette and, of course, Sempre Libera from La Traviata  – as well as relative rarities – from Bellini and Meyerbeer. 

On all of these Damrau put her own unique stamp, effortlessly filling the hall with a voice which had such physical presence that it was like being drawn into a warm, colourful and intense embrace.  Add to this the occasional pirouette and a great deal of expressive hand action, and everything was transformed from being an operatic aria into a vivid and compelling character portrait.  This was singing of a quality few in Singapore will have experienced at first hand before.

Colombia's Best-Kept Secret

It would be pretty difficult to get further away from Singapore than Colombia.  That, certainly, is a fair reason why most Singaporeans know so little about that South American country.  But in today’s world, with its ease of travel and communications, there is no excuse why one of its most impressive treasures remains largely hidden from international view.

Colombian singer Betty Garcés made her Asian début last night in Singapore, and while a large enough audience of Colombian expats and Singapore vocal students and teachers had assembled, few, if any, were quite prepared for what followed.

This was a stunning voice, a magnificent performing presence and a consummate artist.  The standing ovation which she received after her 90 minute recital was entirely deserved, as was the level of perplexity voiced by so many at the post-recital reception about why it was this astounding talent had not already made its mark on the wider world.  In short, voices like Betty Garcés are sufficiently rare for them to be deserving of the widest international attention.  A quick series of emails and calls to friends in the business around the world have reinforced the picture of a voice nobody seems to have encountered; it’s not just Singapore which has been basking in ignorance of this astonishing talent.

With immense power, consistency and monumental presence, her voice filled the hall and could have easily filled a space several times as large.  Diction was fabulous, and the delivery was such that we did not need texts or translations (just as well – there weren’t any) to know exactly she was singing about.  Minimal hand actions and discrete facial expressions were all that was needed to support a vocal instrument of this superb quality.  One or two very top notes, perhaps, felt a trifle strained, but in matters of pitch, projection, control and expression, there was nothing to explain why this voice has not joined the pantheon of great sopranos in demand the world over.

Accompanied by fellow-Colombian Alejandro Roca, who gave a couple of brief introductions, Betty Garcés’ programme fell neatly into two halves.  The first was devoted to songs from the early decades of the 20^th century. 

Opening with a selection of five songs from Joseph Marx (1882-1964), she instantly captured hearts with her sumptuous and beautifully poised voice, revelling in the intoxicating world of Marx’s opulent post-Richard Strauss harmonic palette.  And, as if to reinforce the almost incredible impression she had made with the opening songs, a performance of the indescribably beautiful “Marietta’s Lied” from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt was itself indescribably beautiful.  Puccini seems very much her thing – one could imagine this voice as the ideal Mimi – but it was not La bohème here nor indeed anything operatic.  Instead, Garcés chose three rare Puccini songs – Sole e amore, Sogno d’Or and Morire – and sung them with such purity and sincere affection that one can only hope she will get round to recording them one day.  I know two of them, at least, from a recording with Kiri Te Kanawa; and I would not like to say which of these two singers is the better in this repertory.  A bit of true Italian opera did creep in with Adriana’s aria from Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur and it was only to be expected that Garcés sung it with total and complete assurance and conviction.

If, in the first half, she had established the fact that she was an exceptionally gifted and sensitive soprano, in the second she paid homage to her homeland – or, at least, her home continent.  Some Villa Lobos and Ginastera were impressive.  Spellbinding would be a better word for Francesco Braga’s Engenho Novo.  Not a song I had ever encountered before, the demands it places on the tongue (rattling off syllables at a rate of knots) the lungs (never apparently pausing for breath) and the brain would seem virtually insurmountable.  Yet Garcés delivered it with effortless fluency, bringing humour and joy into what must have been an extremely challenging two-and-a-half minute sing. 

She offered a lovely selection of six songs by the Colombian composer Jaime Léon (1921-2015) which, as Roca had suggested, would almost certainly have been the first time they had been heard in Singapore.  Garcés certainly sold the songs on us, so compelling and beautiful was her performance of them, and as for the last one, Letra para cantar al son del arpa with its spectacular harp-like piano glissandi, tossed off with great relish by Roca, if this does not find itself in the repertory of at least one of the Singapore vocal students in the audience I would be very surprised.

Garcés proved to be a brilliant ambassador for Colombia’s musical life.  She also showed herself to be one of the great sopranos of our time.  Perhaps it’s time the world got to know it.