Singapore Symphony Orchestra: Chopin and Beethoven – Bruce Liu and Jukka-Pekka Saraste
Victoria Concert Hall, Singapore - 23/11/23
Home Thoughts from Abroad
Thirty years ago, I sang solo bass in two performances of Handel's ‘Messiah’ in the Victoria Concert Hall in Singapore. It has stayed in my memory as one of the most exciting experiences of my career, a melding of two diverse traditions into one musical triumph, four British soloists and a mixed expat and local choir and a largely Singapore Chinese orchestra.
I was able to acquire tickets for this concert in the November section of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra's season, and again marvelled at the differences between Edinburgh and Singapore.
Friday night is usually set aside to review the RSNO in the Usher Hall but for all of November this year, I have had the pleasure and privilege to be in Singapore and Australia. I've visited the Sydney Opera House but missed a performance of ‘Das Rheingold’ by two days and, in Melbourne, my hosts arranged for us to go to a chamber concert but got the year wrong in their schedule!
Consequently, when I saw that there was a concert of Chopin and Beethoven taking place in the very hall where I sang Messiah all those years ago, I determined to go and review it for the EMR. It was sold out, but an appeal by a former performer to return to the scene of his triumph won the day, and the friendly people at the SSO managed to find some tickets to sell to me.
We turned up minutes before a tropical storm hit Singapore and the newly renovated building, complete with sound-proofing and air-conditioning, kept all the sounds of the outside world at bay.
The first thing I noticed was the immaculate state of the foyers, bars and concert hall. The Victoria Concert Halls were created out of the former Town Hall of Colonial Singapore and a complete restoration and rebuild in 2010-2014 has given us the magnificent new complex of theatre and concert hall that we see now. The old concert hall where I sang has retained many of its original features but is now also a superb space of gleaming white marble and resonant hardwood. The most noticeable feature of the audience was its youth, the grey-haired dominance of the Usher Hall utterly replaced by a young vibrant throng, ready and willing to be entertained by great music. What a contrast!
Many of the young folk were there as fans of the Chinese-Canadian superstar pianist, Bruce Liu, who was to wow us with Chopin's 1st Piano Concerto. However, the concert started with Schoenberg's late Chamber Symphony No 2, which was played with aplomb by the SSO, conducted by the Finnish maestro, Jukka-Pekka Sarasate, familiar to Scottish audiences as the principal conductor of the SCO from 1987-1991. Mr Saraste's angular style of conducting is far removed from the flexible and balletic movements of the RSNO's Thomas Søndergård but no less effective and he moulded Schoenberg's thankfully more tonal 1938 composition into a form reasonably grateful on the ear. Readers will know by now my dislike of the 'Second Viennese School', but this later work, premiered in New York, was interesting, without being earth-shattering! The programme note's comparison with Strauss's operatic writing seemed well wide of the mark, but Saraste and the SSO gave a full-bodied and well played account of the piece, auguring well for the delights to come. The orchestra, about 80% Singapore Chinese, are a fine ensemble with excellent woodwind. I felt the timps player rather overdid things in the acoustic, which is very resonant, but balance generally was good. The renovations have reduced audience capacity from 950 to 650 approximately, and the really comfortable seats are quite large, so it is quite considerably smaller than the 2200 seater Usher Hall. However, the SSO remedy this somewhat by playing two nights consecutively.
Chopin's 1st Piano Concerto, written at the age of only 20 and premièred in Warsaw in 1830 is a warm and passionate vehicle for a virtuoso pianist and in the young Bruce Liu (still only 26), it had a worthy protagonist. With film star good looks and a profound understanding of Chopin's writing for the instrument, this Canadian, born in Paris to Chinese parents, is already well on the road to superstardom. Winner of the 2021 Chopin International Competition in Warsaw, he has been catapulted to fame in the last two years and, judging by the shrieks and yells from his adoring fans in the auditorium tonight, he is pretty popular. I can also confirm that he is the real deal, playing with technical perfection and great imagination. His exquisite account, in particular, of the slow movement, was truly magical and he made the technical demands of the finale seem like child's play. A lovely encore of a Chopin Nocturne and a fiery second of a more modern perpetuum mobile piece sealed the deal for his adoring fans. It was wonderful to see a young crowd cheering a classical concert, and it was good to see that most of them came back for the second half, a superb performance of Beethoven's amazing First Symphony, dating from 1800. A summation of the work of Mozart and Haydn and a harbinger of what was to come, this extraordinary work always delights me. Mr Saraste and the SSO gave an impassioned and thrilling performance with exquisite playing from every section. I particularly enjoyed the flute playing of Jin Ta and Mr Saraste became more fluent and more dramatic in his gestures as the symphony progressed.
All in all this was a fine concert, for me particularly memorable for the discovery of a major new pianistic talent and for the memories of a long ago ‘Messiah’. I hope these Home Thoughts from Abroad can give some encouragement to the view that classical music is still in robust health on the other side of the world!
