As far as tastes go, the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto ranks up there among audience favourites anywhere there is a strong Chinese community. Performances have almost always guaranteed producers a box-office sell-out, regardless of the performer, encouraging producers of both our local professional orchestras to maximize earnings by having a run of child-prodigies/ex-prodigies take the stage instead of hiring big-name virtuoso, which has resulted in performances less ideal than the reputation of the work and the sold-out audiences deserve. A notable exception was Gil Shaham’s scrupulous performance last year.

Tonight’s violinist, Wang Zhijiong from China (right), is a young winner of many international competitions. For her part, she displayed sufficient technical proficiency and lyricism to render her interpretation an enjoyable one, though not enough to impose a distinct signature on such familiar music. In tandem with Choo’s interpretation, her playing was a mostly straight-forward account, handling its different demands parts with cool mastery, including the piece’s stylistic slides in imitation of the erhu interpolated subtly into her interpretation. However, once senses a lack of warmth in her playing.

After the rhapsodic introduction played by a solo woodwind, Choo Hoey, Conductor Emeritus of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, opted for a steady tempo in the principal theme, allowing the beauty of the melodic line to be expressed without resorting to sentimental wrangling. He saved the interpretive changes in tempi and dynamics to the declamatory passages later in the work, allowing Wang to express the protagonists’ sadness with freestyle displays in the cadenzas, while accompanying her closely. This approach had rendered a clean reading, allowing the music to flow as written without too much interpretive touches. However, it leaves the listener a little cool in this melodramatic music dramatizing a tragic love story.

Nonetheless, Choo successfully guided the orchestra and soloist with close rapport and a sure hand, delivering the work successfully to a pleased audience. The SCO under the baton of Choo Huey offered vibrant and graceful playing throughout. The night’s enthusiastic applause belongs to the orchestra as much as the august conductor.

In trying to expand its repertoire, the SCO have commissioned transcriptions of a number of works meant for the western orchestra. These works include classic western numbers such as Saen-Saint’s Carnival of the Animals, the West Side Story dances, and works of Chinese composers such as The Yellow River Cantata and its offspring The Yellow River Piano Concerto, with mixed results. Though this transcription has been in circulation for some time and wasn’t commissioned by the SCO, I feel that the Butterfly Lovers is the most successful of these transcriptions, bringing a period grace to the music that is similar to baroque music being played on authentic instruments.

A mixed bag of other works was also presented earlier in the evening, with a great contrast in styles. There was celebratory ceremonial music featuring plenty of clanging cymbals in the Anhui Folk Tune Rhapsody,and more transcriptions in the third and fifth movements of Kodaly’s Háry János Suite, substituting the yangqin for the original cembalom. The piece I liked most was The White Haired Girl Suite, an intensely dramatic work borrowing tunes from folk songs to portray a Chinese-opera tragedy. Overall, this concert made for a pleasant evening out, with a fine rendition of familiar music coupled with lively performances of lesser known works.

By Steven Ang

 

Our Awards	Write for us!	Writers' Profiles	Martha Argerich	Contact Us!	Random Review

All original texts are copyrighted. Please seek permission from the Classical Editor
if you wish to reproduce/quote Inkpot material.