The Singapore Symphony Orchestra wrote to "correct" errors in a review of mine concerning their concert last Thursday. Having been away over the weekend, I have only just returned home and accessed the review I sent to the Straits Times at 23.22 on Thursday night. Here it is; it does not seem to be the same piece the SSO was complaining about!
So many people at
a Thursday night SSO concert might have been down to a celebration of St
Cecilia, a love for Dvorak’s music or even the anticipation of a Black Friday shopping
bonanza. But probably it was the evening’s
soloist who was the irresistible draw to Singaporean music lovers.
It was probably
just as well that Bulgarian conductor Pavel Baleff did not try to tame things or
put the orchestra under any kind of restraining leash. This was above all an emotionally-charged
performance which overflowed with so much expressiveness that the rough edges
were effectively smothered.
Dvorak wrote the Symphony
in New York and was inspired by the sights and sounds of America, all of which
were quite novel and strange to
him. It was this sense of awe-struck
amazement that Baleff brought to the Symphony and, indeed, to this entire
concert. Saint Cecilia might not have approved of such earthy pleasures, but everybody
in the audience most certainly did.
Dvorak
Cello Concerto
Ng
Pei-Sian (cello), Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Pavel Baleff (conductor)
Esplanade
Concert Hall
Thursday
(22 November)
Marc
Rochester
The Singapore
Symphony Orchestra chose to celebrate St Cecilia’s Day (the patron saint
of music) with an all-Dvorak programme.
Dvorak himself, a profoundly religious man, would doubtless have been touched
by this, even if it the significance of the date seemed to have passed the SSO
by.
None-the-less,
there was a tangible sense of celebration and festivity about the hall, reinforced
by a boisterous and excitable, if somewhat unkempt, performance of the Carnival
Overture. Possibly taken too fast for
the orchestra to keep itself perfectly in step, it nevertheless provided a pleasingly
rowdy opener for the capacity crowd.
The SSO’s own star
cellist, Ng Pei-Sian was clearly both inspired and deeply moved by the
reception he got both from his orchestral colleagues and his large fan-base in
the hall. The result was a performance
of the Cello Concerto which was seething with passion and boiling with
emotional turbulence. Ng gave it his
all, rapturously bursting in with his first solo entry, caressing the gorgeous
theme of the central movement like an intense lover, and joining in with gusto
the dances of the finale before his moment of deep introspection which reduced
him to tears, and got the audience exploding with admiration.
Throughout the
concert, Baleff’s speeds veered rather disconcertingly from extreme to extreme. But if nothing else, he inspired the SSO to
throw off their inhibitions to the
extent that, at times, they rather left him behind as they rushed off chasing
their next big moment. This relatively
hands-off approach from the conductor turned the performance of the ubiquitous
New World Symphony from the potential such a popular work has for sounding
routine (after all, the SSO give it an almost annual work-out) into something
which had an edge-of-the-seat sense of adventure.
Why did they change Bulgarian conductor to Romanian? Were they misinformed? The other change was "sso's own star cellist", own has been removed.
ReplyDeleteI presume "they" is the Straits Times. Bulgarian appears to be correct. And presumably the original wording indicated that NPS is a star cellist who is also in SSO, while the ST version suggests he is merely the star among SSO cellists. Of course SSO may simply have an all super-star cello section anyway.
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