Singapore Symphony Orchestra
14 FEBRUARY 2025
Supported By
Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall
Artists
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Hans Graf Quantedge Music Director
Chloe Chua violin
Ng Pei-Sian cello
Program
KOH CHENG JIN Luciola singapura
BRAHMS Concerto for violin and cello in A minor, Op.102
– INTERVAL –
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No.5 in E minor, Op.64
Duration: approximately 2 hours including interval
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Welcome
The Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is incredibly honoured to make our Australian debut in this multi-city tour. This marks a joyful milestone in the orchestra’s journey of sharing our love for music with concertgoers not only in Singapore, but around the world.
Australia is special to Singaporeans. The longstanding relationship between our two countries is strong and vibrant in many areas. One of which is our ties in the arts and culture sector, resulting in various initiatives that support collaboration between our nations. Last year, the National Arts Council (Singapore) and Creative Australia signed a Memorandum of Understanding to signal our commitment to greater creative partnerships and development opportunities for artists and arts organisations in both countries. In Singapore, the SSO presents worldclass musical experiences over a 44-week calendar in the Victoria Concert Hall and Esplanade Concert Hall. We are humbled by the strong reception of our audience, with a 90% house average at our concerts in the past year. Beyond the concert halls, our music has lifted spirits and enriched diverse communities through performances at schools, hospitals, and public venues such as national parks and neighbourhood centres. We also run the Singapore National Youth Orchestra and the Singapore Symphony
Choruses, including the youth and children’s choirs, as part of our commitment as the national orchestra to nurture the next generation of music-makers.
The SSO turned 46 in 2025, and we are privileged to have gained international recognition, for example, being placed on BBC Music Magazine’s list of the world’s best orchestras in 2022. Additionally, our album recordings have seen global interest, with our recent Butterfly Lovers Concerto and Paganini reaching #1 on Apple Music’s Worldwide Classical Chart, and Top 10 on the official US and UK classical music charts.
We are thrilled to take the stage in Australia under the baton of our Quantedge Music Director Maestro Hans Graf to present Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, and Brahms’ Double Concerto for Violin and Cello, performed by 18-year-old Singaporean violin sensation Chloe Chua and our very own SSO Principal Cellist Ng Pei-Sian, an Australian. We also bring you Singaporean composer Koh Cheng Jin’s award-winning Luciola singapura, featuring the distinctive sound of the Chinese instrument yangqin. We are especially excited to be performing in Melbourne after the roaring success of our side-by-side collaboration with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chorus last year in Singapore as part of our two orchestras’ own ongoing MoU.
We thank the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, and National Arts Council of Singapore for their support towards this historic tour in Singapore’s 60th anniversary year. And, on behalf of the SSO musicians and management, I thank you, our concertgoers, for welcoming us with such warmth and light, and hope all of you enjoy today’s concert.
Kenneth Kwok Chief Executive Officer Singapore Symphony Group
Dear Friends,
It is my pleasure to welcome you to this evening’s performance by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) in the iconic Hamer Hall.
As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of Singapore-Australia diplomatic relations this year, the SSO’s inaugural visit and performances across Australia is a significant milestone in the rich cultural exchange between Singapore and Australia.
Tonight’s concert highlights the wealth of talent and dedication of our SSO musicians, and also reflects the deep and enduring friendship between our two countries. I believe such international programmes will foster deeper connections between our nations through the universal language of music.
I extend my heartfelt thanks to our Australian hosts and partners who have made this evening possible. The strong and longstanding partnership between the SSO and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) attests to the extensive people-to-people ties that Singapore and Australia have nurtured over time. I am confident that these bonds, based on a deep reservoir of trust and a shared commitment to enrich lives, will continue to flourish.
I hope the concert will bring you joy and perhaps inspire more visits to Singapore.
Yours sincerely,
Anil Nayar
Singapore High Commissioner to Australia
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Since its founding in 1979, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) has been Singapore’s flagship orchestra, touching lives through classical music and providing the heartbeat of Singapore’s cultural scene. The SSO’s Music Director is the renowned Austrian conductor Hans Graf.
The SSO has earned an international reputation for its orchestral virtuosity, having garnered sterling reviews for its overseas tours and over 50 recordings, culminating in its 3rd place win in the prestigious Gramophone Orchestra of the Year Award 2021. In 2022, BBC Music Magazine named the SSO as one of the 23 best orchestras in the world.
Recent critically acclaimed albums include Herrmann’s Wuthering Heights (Chandos) and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Chloe Chua (Pentatone). The SSO also leads the revival and recording of significant works such as Kozłowski’s Requiem and Ogerman’s Symbiosis (after Bill Evans).
The SSO performs over 60 concerts a year at the Esplanade and Victoria Concert Halls in Singapore, as well as outdoor and community venues. Bridging the musical traditions of East and West, Asian musicians and composers are regularly showcased in its concert seasons.
Anytime, anywhere.
Singapore Symphony Choruses perform Kozłowski’s Requiem
Benjamin Schmid plays Prokofiev Violin Concerto no. 2
Chloe Chua plays Paganini Violin Concerto No. 1
Hans Graf conducts Don Juan
Hans Graf Quantedge Music Director
Armed with a spirit of musical curiosity and discovery, creative programming and commanding presence on stage, Austrian conductor Hans Graf has raised orchestras to new heights while winning audiences young and old. With Graf, “a brave new world of music-making under inspired direction” (The Straits Times) began at the Singapore Symphony in 2020, where he leads as Quantedge Music Director.
Graf was formerly Music Director of the Houston Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, Basque National Orchestra and Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg. He is a frequent guest with major orchestras and opera houses worldwide, receiving the
Österreichischer Musiktheaterpreis award at the famed Vienna Volksoper in 2014.
Hans Graf’s discography includes extensive surveys of Mozart, Schubert and Dutilleux, as well as a GRAMMY and ECHO Klassik award-winning recording of Berg’s Wozzeck. With the Singapore Symphony, Graf has recorded works by Paul von Klenau, Mozart, Stravinsky and his own edition of Kozłowski’s Requiem.
Hans Graf is Professor Emeritus at the Universität Mozarteum, Salzburg, and a recipient of the Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur (France) and the Grand Decoration of Honour (Austria).
Koh Cheng Jin composer
Writing music characterised by “lyrical centers,” that “channeled spirituality” and “vehemence” (The Straits Times), Singaporean composer and Yangqin performer Koh Cheng Jin strives to transcend cultural boundaries with imaginative storytelling and musicmaking. She was recently a grant winner of the New York State Council on the Arts and commissioned composer for the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art centennial celebrations and Singapore International Violin Competition. Her collaborators include the Ensemble InterContemporain, Central Conservatory of Music, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Chinese Orchestra, Ding Yi Music Company, American Guild of Organists, Verona Quartet, among many others.
Some of her most significant accolades are a BMI Foundation Young Composer (William Schuman) Prize, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Palmer Dixon and Gena Raps Chamber Music Prizes (both from Juilliard), and the Society of New Music Brian Israel Prize. Festivals that have featured her music include the Singapore International Festival of Arts and Singapore International Piano Festival.
Having completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at Juilliard, she is currently a PhD MacCracken composition fellow at New York University (GSAS).
Chloe Chua violin
Chloe Chua (b. 2007) shot to international stardom after winning a joint 1st Prize with Australia’s Christian Li at the 2018 Menuhin Competition.
The young Singaporean star’s stunning musicality has captured the hearts of audiences everywhere. America’s preeminent arts television series, PBS’s Great Performances called Chloe “one of the most promising young musicians in the world”. In the 2024/25 season, she performs in Germany, China, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia.
Chloe was Artist-In-Residence of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra during their 2022/23/24 seasons—the youngest
ever appointed to this role. Her sophomore album Butterfly Lovers and Paganini debuted in the Top 10 on the UK Official and Billboard Classical charts and reached No.1 on Apple Music’s Classical Top 100. A complete Mozart Violin Concertos with Hans Graf is set to follow.
Chloe began violin studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts at 4, honing her skills under Yin Ke. She is currently studying under Kolja Blacher at Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, Berlin. Chloe performs on a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Milan, 1753, on generous loan from the Rin Collection.
Ng Pei-Sian cello
The HEAD Foundation Chair
Renowned for his exceptional musicianship, cellist Ng Pei-Sian is one of the most outstanding musicians of his generation, winner of the coveted Gold Medal and First Prize at the 55th Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition in London and Commonwealth Musician of the Year 2007. Since 2010, he has served as Principal Cellist of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.
He has performed concertos in Europe, Asia and with major Australian symphony orchestras. Notable collaborations include Tan Dun’s Crouching Tiger Cello Concerto with the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra under the baton of the composer, as well as Sollima’s “Violoncelles Vibrez!” for
two cellos with Yo-Yo Ma and chamber performances with Renaud Capuçon, Alina Ibragimova, and Cho-Liang Lin.
Born in Sydney in 1984, he studied with Barbara Yelland in Adelaide and Janis Laurs at the Elder Conservatorium of Music before winning the prestigious Elder Overseas Scholarship to study at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Pei-Sian’s studies under Ralph Kirshbaum culminated in the RNCM Gold Medal, the college’s highest honor.
Pei-Sian performs on a rare cello by Francesco Goffriller “ex-Daniel MüllerSchott”, Udine, c. 1720.
Program Notes
Koh Cheng Jin (b. 1996)
Luciola singapura (2021)
The composer writes: Commissioned by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra for Singapore’s 56th birthday concert in 2021, Luciola singapura commemorates the major discovery of a new species of firefly that same year, the first since 1909, made by researchers from Singapore’s Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum.
The Luciola singapura or Singapore Firefly, located in the Nee Soon Swamp Forest—Singapore’s last remaining freshwater swamp forest—is genetically and morphologically distinct from other species, hence deserving of its name. It has a beautiful, shimmery golden appearance, a sight truly unforgettable once beheld. With the colourful addition of the yangqin (Chinese dulcimer), an instrument special to my musical upbringing, the music strives to evoke the mysterious allure and animated vitality of this wondrous, luminous creature. Chinese music gestures can also be heard dispersedly, combined with long melodic lines and fresh harmonies. Beyond the fusion of musical cultures and science, the work expresses the desire to celebrate all things uniquely Singaporean. It is my hope that Luciola singapura serves as a timely reminder for the preservation of endangered species and core habitats in the face of ceaseless modernisation and climate change.
© 2024 Koh Cheng Jin
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
Concerto for violin and cello in A minor, Op.102
I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Vivace non troppo – poco meno allegro – tempo I
Soloists
Chloe Chua violin Ng Pei-Sian cello
Brahms could be difficult, as several friends found to their cost. His relationship with the great violinist Joseph Joachim, first interpreter of the Violin Concerto and Violin Sonata in G major, was fraught with misunderstandings and in 1884, when Joachim and his wife divorced and Brahms took Amalie’s side, the friendship ruptured completely.
In the early 1880s Brahms frequently collaborated with the conductor Hans von Bülow, touring extensively as soloist in both of his Piano Concertos and conducting a number of his orchestral works. But then in 1885 a misunderstanding arose between them and the two were estranged for a year. To heal the rift with Joachim Brahms composed the Double Concerto; at the same time, his olive branch to Bülow was the dedication of his Violin Sonata in D minor.
Both, along with a number of other significant late works, were composed during summer vacations on the Lake of Thun in Switzerland, the Double Concerto dating from 1887. The rift with Joachim was most definitely healed when he and cellist Robert Hausmann played through the piece with the composer at Baden Baden later that year, in the presence of perhaps the one friend with whom Brahms never fell out: Clara Schumann.
It is Brahms’ last orchestral work, and not surprisingly exhibits a number of features of Brahms’ (and indeed many composers’) ‘late style’. Unlike, say, the Violin Concerto, this is a work that underplays its virtuosity; in fact, after that first rehearsal the solo parts were revised, three or so times in the case of the violin part, to make them more, not less, difficult. Joachim and Brahms both had strong views on how that might be achieved, though he admitted, with needless modesty, in a letter to Clara Schumann that he needed the advice of someone ‘better acquainted with fiddles’ than he was.
The unusual combination of soloists— Brahms’ own idea—presented some problems of balance. The orchestra provides strong rhetorical statements of major thematic material, but is then deployed in textures of great delicacy when accompanying the soloists. The work’s opening, for instance, offers a terse orchestral gesture that sets up the typically Brahmsian tension between duple and triple metres, before leaving the stage to a lengthy passage for the cello, a second orchestral flourish, and then the violin joined by the cello. This alternation between strenuous orchestral textures and the ornate writing for the soloists continues throughout the movement.
The serene beauty of the Andante derives partly from Brahms’ exquisite use of the wind section to create a cool backdrop for the restrained but still expressive themes that move to a generous, lyrical climax. The finale is, naturally, an example of Brahms’ ‘gypsy-rondo’ style, which plays on sudden contrast between perky and lyrical, duple and triple metres, and solo writing which features ornate passagework and hefty double-stopped chords. By way of a coda there is an exquisite, slightly slower passage of delicate tracery before the rondo theme brings the piece to a close.
© 2014 Gordon Kerry
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Symphony No.5 in E minor, Op.64
I. Andante – Allegro con anima
II. Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza
III. Valse (Allegro moderato)
IV. Andante maestoso – Allegro vivace
After completing his Fourth Symphony (1877), Tchaikovsky wrote to his former pupil Sergey Taneyev: ‘I should be sorry if symphonies that mean nothing should flow from my pen.’ He insisted that the Fourth definitely followed a ‘program’, even though, like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on which he had partly modelled the work, it could not be expressed in words. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Tchaikovsky’s own Fifth Symphony, composed in summer 1888, likewise could not ‘mean nothing’, and even if a precise meaning will probably never emerge, Tchaikovsky did leave clues as to the direction of his thoughts.
Fate and providence were certainly on his mind, having in mid-1887 spent two distressing months at the bedside of a dying friend. Later in his sketchbook he verbally outlined a first movement whose slow introduction began with ‘total submission to fate’, followed by an allegro that introduced ‘murmurs, doubts, laments, reproaches’ before considering succumbing to ‘the embrace of faith’. He described this as ‘a wonderful program, if only it can be fulfilled’. Although no irrefutable evidence links this plan directly with the 1888 symphony, the Fifth’s main theme does lend itself to a musical personification of grim fate (in its minor form) and of beneficent providence (in its major form), and a journey from the first to the second is a plausible program, if not for the opening movement (which ends in the minor), then for the whole work.
The main theme (played at the outset by solo clarinet) also pays homage to
the man Tchaikovsky called ‘the father of Russian music’, Mikhail Glinka. He borrowed the germinal first eight-note phrase from Glinka’s opera A Life for the Czar, where it opens the second half of a melody sung in succession by all three principal characters in the first act trio. But Tchaikovsky develops Glinka’s melodic fragment (first sung to the words ‘Do not turn to sorrow’) into an entirely new motto theme whose subliminal transformations and literal reprises bind the symphony’s four movements together. The first transformation is into the dance-like theme of the Allegro con anima announced by clarinet and bassoon.
The horn melody in the second movement is one of the most beautiful in all of Tchaikovsky’s music. He actually scribbled on a sketch of this melody (in French): ‘I love you, my love!’ But it is more than just a love theme; it, too, is subtly related to the motto (of the motto’s first eight notes, it is a varied reworking of the last five). This connection is made explicit when the undisguised motto returns, portentously with trumpets and kettledrums, just before the reprise of the love theme.
Tchaikovsky called the third movement a ‘waltz’, a modestly understated example compared with his great ballet waltzes, but one whose easy mood makes it a perfect structural foil to the slow movement’s passionate intensity. It may well be significant that he crafted the tune out of snippets of a Tuscan folksong, called La Pimpinella, that he heard in Florence in 1877, sung by (as he noted) a ‘positively beautiful’ young (male) streetsinger. Certainly significant, the waltz tune also audibly echoes the rhythm of the preceding movement’s soulful horn theme, of which it is essentially a faster, lighter reworking. The same rhythm also reappears in the sinuously exotic subsidiary tune introduced by the bassoon. But only once does the motto itself intrude on this pleasant reverie, from clarinets and bassoons, right at the movement’s close.
The motto returns fully, in major mode, as a solemn march, introducing the fourth movement, sumptuously scored with all the violins playing down low in unison with the cellos, passing next to the woodwinds, before trumpets and kettledrum signal the imminent Allegro vivace. Tchaikovsky energises the motto’s second, falling-scale element to create a new minor-key theme that launches further transformations and combinations of germinal fragments, underpinned by the quick tick-tock of bassoons, kettledrums and basses, plateauing out on a brilliantly shrill majorkey woodwind chorus. Winding down and then up again through more furious returns of the minor-key theme, a massive climax builds, breaking back into the now almost unbearably splendid march, the motto’s apotheosis capped at the last possible moment by a trumpet reprise of the first movement’s allegro theme.
Graeme Skinner © 2014
In Recital
25 June 7.30pm
Ryman Healthcare Winter Gala with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jaime Martín
28 June 7.30pm
Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall
Lang Lang
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The MSO Gala Series is presented by MSO Premier Partner, Ryman Healthcare
Singapore Symphony Orchestra playing tonight
First Violin
David Coucheron
Co-Principal Guest
Concertmaster
Kong Zhao Hui
Associate Concertmaster
Chan Yoong-Han
Assistant Principal
Cao Can
Duan Yu Ling
Foo Say Ming
Jin Li
Kong Xianlong
Cindy Lee
Karen Tan
William Tan
Wei Zhe
Ye Lin
Zhang Si Jing
Lim Shue Churn*
Yew Shan*
Second Violin
Jeong Yeon Im
Guest Principal
Tseng Chieh-An
Nikolai Koval
Sayuri Kuru
Hai-Won Kwok
Margit Saur
Shao Tao Tao
Wu Man Yun
Xu Jueyi
Yin Shu Zhan
Zhao Tian
Wilford Goh*
Martin Peh*
Ikuko Takahashi*
Viola
Manchin Zhang
Principal, Tan Jiew Cheng Chair
Guan Qi
Associate Principal
Gu Bing Jie
Assistant Principal
Marietta Ku
Luo Biao
Julia Park
Shui Bing
Janice Tsai
Yang Shi Li
Stuart Johnson*
Patcharaphan Khumprakob*
Yeo Jan Wea*
Cello
Ng Pei-Jee
Guest Principal
Yu Jing
Associate Principal
Guo Hao
Assistant Principal
Chan Wei Shing
Christopher Mui
Jamshid Saydikarimov
Song Woon Teng
Wang Yan
Wu Dai Dai
Zhao Yu Er
Double Bass
Joan Perarnau Garriga
Guest Principal
Yang Zheng Yi
Acting Principal
Karen Yeo
Assistant Principal
Jacek Mirucki
Guennadi Mouzyka
Wang Xu
Victor Lee*
Esther Toh*
Flute
Jin Ta
Principal, Stephen Riady Chair
Evgueni Brokmiller
Associate Principal
Miao Shanshan
Oboe
Rachel Walker Principal
Carolyn Hollier
Clarinet
Philip Arkinstall Guest Principal
Li Xin Associate Principal
Liu Yoko
Bassoon
Guo Siping Principal
Liu Chang Associate Principal
Christoph Wichert
Zhao Ying Xue
*Guest musician
^Musician on annual contract
Horn
Austin Larson Principal
Gao Jian Associate Principal
Marc-Antoine Robillard
Associate Principal
Bryan Chong^
Hoang Van Hoc
Alexander Oon*
Trumpet
Jon Paul Dante Principal
David Smith Associate Principal
Lau Wen Rong
Nuttakamon Supattranont
Trombone
Allen Meek Principal
Damian Patti Associate Principal
Bass Trombone
Wang Wei Assistant Principal
Tuba
Tomoki Natsume Principal
Timpani
Christian Schiøler Principal Percussion
Jonathan Fox Principal Harp
Gulnara Mashurova Principal
Piano Nicholas Loh*
Yangqin
Patrick Ngo*
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