After the Paris première of the opera Benvenuto Cellini in 1838, Berlioz - who had composed the score - wrote, "The overture was extravagantly applauded: the rest was hissed with exemplary precision and energy." So it is no wonder that few if any of us have ever heard of this opera, which was a flop, in spite of having an extremely interesting plot (see the box at right). Yet Berlioz's overture lived on to become, at least after his death, one of his most popular works. The overture, as is common in operas, actually attempts to run through the entire story, although it is quite impossible to guess what story is being told unless one has prepared oneself properly by reading the programme notes.

I personally found this a delightful piece to listen to, and its captivating power is directly related to the fact that it is depicting the highlight scenes of such an intriguing story. The overture begins with a loud burst of sound, then immediately steps back to a quiet passage led by the cellos and basses. Then the winds come in gently, followed by the violins and the bassoons, spreading out a beautiful landscape of sound. A very clear melody comes to the fore, led by the bass line, but before long the mood changes again into a sprightly passage almost like a dance.

Except for the "landscape" section mentioned above and a beautiful scenic passage led by the strings a couple of minutes before the end, I found the character of the music not to be strongly visual. Rather, it was dominated by sound and power. As the overture approached the end, it was veritably bursting with movement and excitement - and then, suddenly, a few seconds of complete silence. What a contrast! Just as the pregnant silence began to collapse into a dead stillness, the cello-bass section and then the violins came back in with a strong and short, but intensely radiant, conclusion. I suppose this represented the revealing of the statue - a symbol of the achievement of perfect beauty - at the end of the opera. In short, Berlioz's overture was a work full of emotional variety, energy, and constant variation between loud and soft, high and low, making it impossible to get bored even for an instant.

Well, the audience was now in a highly receptive condition for the appearance of the night's fifteen-year old violin soloist from Beijing, who certainly proved herself worthy of the epithet of "violin prodigy". Before this concert Yang Tian Wa had already played solos for 91 performances (since the age of five!), and delighted audiences not only around China, but in more than 20 countries, including Singapore. When I talked with her she asked me to guess her age, and I said 18, because, though she does look very young, her character just did not seem "childish". All those solo performances with famous orchestras have to make one a little "prematurely mature". Accordingly, it would have been nice if Ms Yang had worn something a bit more "adult" and befitting a solo performer than her plain, slightly-too-long dress and little white ankle socks.

But there was certainly nothing disappointing in her technique, as one found out right from her sensitive entrance that followed the orchestra's introduction. Moreover, she had good (if not totally commanding) stage presence, and obviously a very deep understanding of the music. Since the work consists of Bruch's adaptations of Scottish folk melodies divided into clear-cut movements, it offers a wide variety of moods - from the deeply melancholic to the ethereal to the joyful and boisterous - really giving the soloist a chance to demonstrate her capabilities on her instrument.

It is not without reason that Yoel Levi was billed as the main attraction of this third concert in the "Violin Explorers Series". After bringing the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) to national prominence as music director from 1988 to 2000, Levi moved on to become music director of the Flemish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Belgium, while continuing to appear internationally as a guest conductor. His acclaimed conducting appearances in recent years include performances of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection") with the ASO and Chorus in New York, Mahler's Ninth Symphony with the New York Philharmonic, Orff's Carmina Burana with the Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Festival, Britten's War Requiem with the Detroit Symphony, and Mendelssohn's Elijah with the San Francisco Symphony.

I was amazed that Levi conducted all three works in this concert without any scores, which certainly helped him give every ounce of his heart and soul to the actual work of conducting. I later found out that this is the first time in the history of the SSO that any conductor has conducted an entire concert without any scores! I assumed from this that Levi must have conducted these works dozens of times, but I later found out that this was the first time he had ever conducted Sibelius' Third! However, he is hardly a newcomer to Sibelius' music: based on his recording with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Gramophone magazine hailed the "raw, fiery excitement" of his interpretation of tone poems by Sibelius, and Diapson magazine wrote, "Yoel Levi has taken his place amongst the most eminent conductors of Sibelius." In the Sibelius performance particularly, the orchestra was extremely well integrated, balanced and precise, obviously the result of some very hard work under Levi's masterful baton.

The Sibelius symphony was, of course, the main feature of the evening, and I made a point of listening to it on CD both before and after the concert. While Sibelius's name is very familiar, I have listened carefully to very little of his music, and I was quite curious to find out what his distinctive qualities are as a composer. Four minutes into the first movement I wrote, "nothing intense here; he must be developing something." The second movement become more engaging, though, and the final movement alternated between soft, wispy passages without much drama on the one hand and very emotional loud passages on the other, building up finally to a vigorous rhythm supported strongly by the brass.

Sibelius' music is certainly distinctive, but my appreciation of it at this early stage remained on the level of revelling in a number of very beautiful passages - led variously by flute, clarinet, woodwinds, and the violins - and trying to write down in simple notation some of the rather simple and very catchy tunes, with variations, that dominated the second movement.

I never really became aware, however, of what the programme notes describe as "the undercurrent of foreboding [that] remains with us all the way to the end of the movement." A more apt description of my experience of the work is found in the introduction to the concert in the SSO's season booklet, where it says that the Third Symphony is "a pleasantly sunny work that finds the great Finnish nationalist composer at his least forbidding". Similarly, the programme notes point out that "Sibelius was rejecting the soul-searching angst of his Viennese contemporaries, in particular Mahler and his disciples". Personally, I prefer symphonies that do have some "soul-searching angst", and I find Mahler's works intensely moving and structurally brilliant. I have yet to develop an equivalent appreciation for Sibelius, but this was certainly no fault of the SSO's playing.

Yoel came across as a truly delightful person for those of us who met him at the Friends of SSO "Meet the Performers" dinner, and I am sure that the SSO truly enjoyed working with him. We hope to see him in Singapore again soon, hopefully with a lot fewer empty seats.

As for the soloist Yang Tian Wa, well, if she is this good at age fifteen, what kind of musician is she going to be at age 25, at age 35, and beyond? Here is a musician we should really keep an eye on. In ten years she could be another Anne-Sophie Mutter, who was only fourteen when she made her famous 1978 recording of Mozart's Violin Concertos Nos. 3 and 5 with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon 289 457 746-2). China has not only become "the factory of the world", but also a major producer of great musicians for the world market, in part as a reaction against the prohibition and suppression of Western music during the Cultural Revolution. (On this subject, every classical music lover should see the brilliant Canadian-Italian jointly produced film The Red Violin, available on DVD).

Barry Steben went home wondering if the symphony orchestras in China's major cities also have to play to half-empty halls. Music lovers, get out there and support the SSO!

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