January 2019 is a significant month in the annals of
the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. 24th
January marks the 40th anniversary of their very first public concert,
while the 26th January sees the Orchestra’s Music Director, Lan Shu,
presenting his final concert after 22 years in the post. The first of these is, of course, a matter of
considerable celebration, and the second is tinged with regret, but both events
prompt me to look forward and suggest some of the issues facing the Orchestra
if it is to survive and flourish over another 40 years.
The story of how the Singapore Symphony Orchestra came
into being is well-known. In 1973 the
then Deputy Prime-Minister, Dr Goh Keng Swee, gave a speech in which he famously
declared that it was a “scandal” that Singapore did not have a symphony
orchestra of its own, and went on to claim; “The Singapore government believes
that there is more to life than making money, and an orchestra would be
worthwhile as it would raise the standard of culture of Singaporeans”. Of
course, Goh’s use of the word “scandal” (even if modified by the word “minor”)
has caused much comment over the years, but many seem to have forgotten the historical
context in which Goh was speaking.
Since breaking out on its own from Malaysia in 1965,
Singapore had been engaged in the single-minded pursuit of creating an identify
and forging a unique character. The obstacles
facing it were immense; a tiny land mass, no natural resources (including
water) and a population comprising almost entirely immigrants most of whom felt
more allegiance to their country of ancestry than the place where they happened
to live and work. In the eyes of the
international community, Singapore had become something of a laughing stock as
it engaged in what appeared to be the headlong destruction of its heritage in
its clamour to position itself as a global haven for absorbing and generating
money.
The briefing I had before coming to work in Singapore
for the first time in the mid-1980s was that it was a place which not only had
no culture but treated its people only as pawns in the game of making
money. Health care, social benefits,
cultural activities and efforts to create some sense of national identity and
unity (beyond a shared interest in amassing wealth) were not, I was told, part
of the Government’s strategy, and although I was coming to Singapore as a music
examiner, I should expect a pretty desultory musical landscape. Lots of children did music exams but only to
feed the competitive obsession which, so I understood, was positively
encouraged by the government. I was told
that there was a professional orchestra, but both those briefing me and those
who had been here previously, assured me it was “pretty dreadful”. These briefings may not have been particularly
correct or fair, but they reflected what was then a pretty universal global
view of Singapore.
In a bid to shake off that international perception,
Goh made his speech in 1973. Yet it was
another five years before it yielded any real concrete results; a delay which
would have been inconceivable had the intention been to build a new bank or
create a new financial hub. So I am
tempted to conclude that the creation of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra was
not really done to satisfy a domestic need, but to make a political statement
on the world stage. And the fact that
within a year of its creation the Orchestra undertook its first foreign tour,
and has continued to tour internationally to an extent no equivalent symphony
orchestra in the world has ever done, underlines that sense that the Singapore
Symphony Orchestra’s politico-ambassadorial function is as important (if not more
so) as its domestic artistic one.
But whether or not one believes that the Singapore
Symphony Orchestra was created for external political reasons or for internal
artistic ones, the fact is that it has now become a major artistic force not
just in Singapore, where it remains the only truly professional orchestra (despite
the specious claims of others), but in the region, where it stands as one of
Asia’s finer symphony orchestras.
I cannot recall whether my first experience of hearing
the Singapore Symphony Orchestra live was in 1985 or 1987, but I can recall
that it was a pretty desultory one. The
programmes were ambitious beyond the scope of most of the players and the
conductor (the first Musical Director, Choo Hoey, faced an uphill struggle to
overcome a very variable level of musical talent both within his players and
himself), and it seemed impossible to inspire an audience who seemed to see orchestral
concerts as social events with indifferent musical accompaniment. Unquestionably, however, Choo Hoey did a
wonderful job in keeping the orchestra going in the face of often unhelpful and
destructive official and unofficial “support”, and his replacement in 1997 by a
man almost wholly unknown to the musical community outside China, did not seem
to augur well.
But there was something else on the horizon which was
to project both Lan Shui and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra into an orbit of
musical brilliance which nobody could ever have foreseen during the 1980s. Within the first decade of the 21st
century, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra transformed itself into an outstanding
orchestra in its own right, attracting an enthusiastic a dedicated following at
home and prompting some pretty extravagant reviews from certain members of the
world’s press – reviews, which in the main, were fully justified.
People often regard a symphony orchestra as a kind of
musical island, solely responsible for its own successes or failures. But that is not the reality of the situation,
and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra has faced and will face issues which, by
itself, it cannot resolve. Certainly the
change of Music Director in 1997 coincided with a huge transformation in status,
moving it from a small provincial orchestra with limited appeal domestically
and regarded by many outside observers as a slightly ridiculous orchestra
trying hard to punch well above its weight, into a highly credible ensemble
well able to hold its own on the biggest international stages. But that transformation was brought about,
not by Lan Shui, but by the 2002 move into the Esplanade, with its wonderful
purpose-built facilities, its enticing musical acoustics and its
international-standard performing environment.
Such a top-class performing home served to raise the orchestra's profile
at home and abroad, allowed it to broaden its repertory, and attracted players
of a calibre who might not have felt that the Victoria Concert Hall and its
cramped, dated and un-musical environment offered much inducement for their
future careers. More importantly, the
Esplanade attracted a larger audience than had ever been able to attend VCH
concerts, and the larger audience as well as the higher profile the orchestra
was attaining, was the major factor in increasing standards.
Lan Shui was, certainly, the right man at the right
time to capitalise on this sudden physical change in the musical landscape of
Singapore, and he has clearly raised the playing standards of the orchestra
phenomenally. He has done so by focusing
on big late19th/early 20th century repertory - significantly, his final concert this month
will be a performance of one of the iconic works of the great Romantic repertory,
Mahler’s Second Symphony - and many might argue that both in the recording studio
and on international tours, Shui has reached his (and his orchestra’s) zenith,
in performances of Rachmaninov. This
concentration on a relatively small, if high-profile, part of the repertory does,
however, cause problems. Outside the big
works of the late 19th and early 20th century, the
Singapore Symphony Orchestra often seems uneasy. A concert earlier this month when they
performed the music of Steve Reich was notable for the complete lack of
sympathy the orchestra showed for this repertory (“they just could not seem to
get into the groove”, was the comment of one of my colleagues), while the
foundations of orchestral repertory - Haydn, Mozart, et al - do not feature
prominently in the orchestra’s schedule and when they are performed, usually come
across as lacklustre and undistinguished.
This gives the orchestra a slight sense of musical instability; they
easily scale high mountains, but can't till the fields or nurture the orchards,
and fight shy of exploring new territories. On top of that, increasing ventures
into the world of locally-sourced new music too often ignore musical standards
in the interests of domestic appeal. Specialised concerts of old or new music
usually see the Singapore Symphony Orchestra revert to the kind of playing
levels more akin to their 1980s persona than their 2010s one.
As a result, I see the orchestra as having entered a
period of stagnation, where it produces world-class performances of big,
romantic music but wobbles once it moves out of this repertory. The change of music director will not in
itself solve this problem, and there is no major new performance venue on the
horizon which might goad them into refreshing their musical outlook. If the
Singapore Symphony Orchestra wants to break out from this period of stagnation
and produce consistently world-class performances at home and abroad, there
needs to be a change of mind-set in its audience and management.
Much as he loved music, the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew did
the Singapore Symphony Orchestra no favours in some of his utterances, and
helped give root to a common perception amongst Singaporeans that classical
music is an alien culture. This is not
true, but many believe it is and regard the Singapore Symphony Orchestra as a
foreign body importing a foreign art form.
This creates a certain barrier between the audience and the
orchestra. Classical music supporters in
Singapore (which includes much of the orchestral management) are enthusiasts
for music rather than hard-nosed music professionals. They listen to the great orchestras and
musicians on record, flock to performances when big names appear, and enjoy
spectacular orchestral showpieces rather than the kind of orchestral
bread-and-butter which truly tests an orchestra's ability to communicate with
its audience. For them an orchestra is
great if it does a Mahler Symphony; but they ignore one that plays Haydn. Until such time as the Singapore audience can
be more musically-open-minded and educated, there will be no incentive for the
Singapore Symphony Orchestra to move on.
This, perhaps, is the greatest challenge facing the
incoming music director. His or her
energies need to be channelled not in improving the orchestra (which, certainly
on a good day, needs very little improvement) but in improving the audience;
not numerically but mentally. There
needs to be active engagement with education.
Not the token gestures afforded by random (and, on occasions I fear,
cringe-makingly bad) pre-concert talks and cut-and-paste programme notes, nor
the occasional schools’ concerts which aim not to educate, but to show how much
“fun” there is in classical music. There
needs to be a consolidated attempt to address the omissions in the current music
education scene in Singapore, where music teachers rarely teach proper listening skills
(not the silly aural tests of graded music exams, which serve no purpose whatsoever,
but proper, systematic training in critical listening) and where the physical act of making music is taught without adequate reference to its aural and intellectual aspects. Social, religious and political context needs
to be taught so that audiences can contextualise the music they hear and not
merely accept it as a kind of therapeutic noise. An educated and aware audience recognises that
the greatest benefits to be drawn from an orchestral concert are intellectual,
emotional and sensual in equal proportion.
If we look at Hong Kong, where an orchestra of similar
age (45 this year) has progressed and continues to progress into one of the
finest orchestras in Asia, we see huge numbers of similarities but one key
difference. The Hong Kong audience is
highly critical, musically savvy and cerebral while the Singapore audience
remains fixated on spectacle and superficial display. In Singapore we teach music students how to
play instruments, sing, pass exams and win competitions, but we don't teach
them how to appreciate music as a purely aural activity. It is up to the incoming Music Director to
help find a way of solving this issue and building up an audience of educated,
musically literate and critically aware listeners to support the
orchestra. If that is not done, I do not
see them progressing much beyond where they are now.
So happy birthday Singapore Symphony Orchestra, may
you have decades of musical excellence ahead of you. And in bidding farewell to one Musical
Director, I praise him for his incredible achievements in transforming the
orchestra into the enviable force it is today and in leaving it in such
excellent health. Now, though, is not
the time to rest on laurels, but to address those issues which have not
hitherto seriously been addressed. To
paraphrase Dr Goh, it is something of scandal that such an excellent orchestra
does not yet have the domestic audience it truly deserves.