Ibert Flute Concerto • Shostakovich 5

SSO subscription concert

Ibert Flute Concerto • Shostakovich 5 4 MAR 2017 SAT | ESPLANADE concert hall Performing Home of the SSO

LAN SHUI Music Director

4 MAR 2017 | SAT

Ibert Flute Concerto • Shostakovich 5 Singapore Symphony Orchestra Yu Long, conductor

SERGEI PROKOFIEV The Love for Three Oranges: Suite, Op. 33a 15’00 1. The Eccentrics 2. Infernal Scene 3. March 4. Scherzo 5. The Prince and the Princess 6. The Flight JACQUES IBERT Flute Concerto 18’00 1. Allegro 2. Andante 3. Allegro scherzando – Moderato assai – Tempo I Jin Ta, flute Intermission 20’00 Jin Ta will sign autographs in the stalls foyer.

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 44’00 1. Moderato 2. Allegretto 3. Largo 4. Allegro non troppo Concert duration: 1 hr 55 mins Planning a night out at the SSO? You can view our programme notes on www.sso.org.sg three days before a concert.

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 the cultural scene in the cosmopolitan city-state.

In addition to its subscription series concerts, the orchestra is well-loved for its outdoor and community appearances, and its significant role educating the young people of Singapore. The SSO has also earned an international reputation for its orchestral virtuosity, having garnered sterling reviews for its overseas tours and many successful recordings.

The SSO makes its performing home at the 1,800-seat state-of-the-art Esplanade Concert Hall. More intimate works and all outreach and community performances take place at the 673-seat Victoria Concert Hall, the home of the SSO. The orchestra performs 100 concerts a year, and its versatile repertoire spans all-time favourites and orchestral masterpieces to exciting cutting-edge premieres. Bridging the musical traditions of East and West, Singaporean and Asian musicians and composers are regularly showcased in the concert season.

This has been a core of the SSO's programming philosophy from the very beginning under Choo Hoey, who was Music Director from 1979 to 1996.

Since Lan Shui assumed the position of Music Director in 1997, the SSO has performed in Europe, Asia and the United States. In May 2016 the SSO was invited to perform at the Dresden Music Festival and the Prague Spring International Music Festival. This successful five-city tour of Germany and Prague also included the SSO’s return to the Berlin Philharmonie after six years.

In 2014 the SSO’s debut at the 120th BBC Proms in London received critical acclaim in the major UK newspapers The Guardian and Telegraph. The SSO has also performed in China on multiple occasions.

Notable SSO releases under BIS include a Rachmaninov series, a Debussy disc, Seascapes featuring sea-themed music by Debussy, Frank Bridge, Glazunov and Zhou Long, and the first-ever cycle of Tcherepnin’s piano concertos and symphonies. The SSO has also collaborated with such great artists as Lorin Maazel, Charles Dutoit, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lang Lang, Yo-Yo Ma, Leonidas Kavakos and Gil Shaham.

“A fine display of orchestral bravado for the SSO and Shui” The Guardian

Yu Long

conductor

The preeminent Chinese conductor with an established international reputation, Yu Long is currently Artistic Director of the Beijing Music Festival and the China Philharmonic Orchestra, Music Director of the Shanghai and Guangzhou Symphony Orchestras, the Co-Director of MISA Shanghai Summer Festival, and the Principal Guest Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.

Yu Long frequently conducts the leading orchestras and opera companies around the world, including the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Hamburg State Opera, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester Leipzig, NDR Sinfonieorchester, Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic and Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

In 2014, Yu Long and the China Philharmonic became the first Chinese conductor and the first Chinese orchestra to play at the BBC Proms Series with a televised performance at the Royal Albert Hall. In 2008, for the first time in history, a Chinese orchestra performed at the Vatican under Yu Long’s baton.

Pope Benedict XIV attended the performance in the Paul VI Auditorium and praised it as a big step in promoting cooperation between the East and West.

Yu Long is a Chevalier dans L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the recipient of the 2002 Arts Patronage Award of the Montblanc Cultural Foundation.

Yu Long was honoured with the title of L’onorificenza di commendatore in 2005. In December 2014, he was awarded France’s highest honour of merit by joining la Légion d’Honneur. In October 2015, Yu Long received the Sanford Medal presented by Yale University’s College of Music and the Global Citizen Award by the Atlantic Council. In April 2016, Yu Long was elected as a Foreign

Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In June 2016, he was an award receipt of The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Leading the development of orchestral landscape in China, Yu Long has created the nation’s first orchestral academy as a partnership between Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Conservatory and the New York Philharmonic. In 2014 the New York Philharmonic named Yu Long an honorary member of its International Advisory Board.

Jin Ta

flute

Jin Ta joined the Singapore Symphony Orchestra as Principal Flautist in 1998.

He started learning music at the age of five, and studied flute under Zhu Tong De at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. He received his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Keith Bryan and Leone Buyse. Following this, he pursued his graduate studies with Fenwick Smith at the New England Conservatory in Boston. In 1997, Jin Ta studied as an artist diploma candidate with renowned American flautist Paula Robison.

Jin Ta has performed extensively throughout Boston and has won numerous national and international competitions. He was the First Prize winner in the Boston Pappoutsakis Memorial Foundation Competition, the Memphis Young Artist Competition, and the year 2000 Haifa International Flute Competition in Israel. He was also a prize winner at the Flute Talk Competition and the National Flute Association Young Artist Competition.

The National Repertory Orchestra (Colorado), Springfield Orchestra (Massachusetts), Shenzhen Symphony, Xiamen Symphony, US Capital Wind Orchestra, and the Pacific Music Festival (Japan) are just some of the orchestras and music festivals Jin Ta has performed in. An enthusiastic performer and educator, he has toured Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and held masterclasses at the Central Music Conservatory, Shanghai Music Conservatory and Shenzhen School of Fine Arts. In 2001, he toured the US with Israel’s Haifa Chamber Orchestra and in September 2002, gave a series of recitals in Taiwan. Jin Ta has recorded the works of Fauré, Poulenc and Ibert, among other composers, and can be heard on the Taiwanese label, NewArt.

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SSO Musicians Lan Shui

Jason Lai

Joshua Tan

Choo Hoey

Okko Kamu

Lim Yau

MUSIC DIRECTOR

ASSOCIATE CONDUCTOR

ASSOCIATE CONDUCTOR

CONDUCTOR EMERITUS

PRINCIPAL GUEST CONDUCTOR

Choral Director

FIRST VIOLIN concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich°

Ye Lin* Yeo Teow Meng Yin Shu Zhan* Zhang Si Jing*

CO-CONCERTMASTER Lynnette Seah

ASSOCIATE CONCERTMASTER Kong Zhao Hui*

FIXED CHAIR Chan Yoong-Han Cao Can* Chen Da Wei Duan Yu Ling Foo Say Ming Gu Wen Li Jin Li Cindy Lee Lim Shue Churn^ Sui Jing Jing Karen Tan William Tan Wei Zhe

SECOND VIOLIN ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL Michael Loh

FIXED CHAIR Hai-Won Kwok Nikolai Koval* Priscilla Neo Chikako Sasaki* Margit Saur Shao Tao Tao Lillian Wang Wu Man Yun* Xu Jue Yi*

DOUBLE BASS PRINCIPAL Guennadi Mouzyka

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL

VIOLA PRINCIPAL Zhang Manchin

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL Guan Qi

FIXED CHAIR Gu Bing Jie* Marietta Ku Lim Chun^ Liu Kuan** Luo Biao Shui Bing Tan Wee-Hsin Tong Yi Ping Janice Tsai^ Yang Shi Li

CELLO

Yang Zheng Yi

FIXED CHAIR Karen Yeo Olga Alexandrova Naohisa Furusawa^ Ma Li Ming Jacek Mirucki Wang Xu

FLUTE PRINCIPAL Jin Ta

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL Evgueni Brokmiller Roberto Alvarez Miao Shanshan

PRINCIPAL

PICCOLO

Ng Pei-Sian

ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL Roberto Alvarez

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL Yu Jing

FIXED CHAIR

OBOE PRINCIPAL Rachel Walker

Guo Hao Chan Wei Shing Song Woon Teng Wang Yan Wang Zihao* Peter Wilson Wu Dai Dai Zhao Yu Er

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL Pan Yun Carolyn Hollier Elaine Yeo

COR ANGLAIS ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL Elaine Yeo

CLARINET

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL

TIMPANI

PRINCIPAL

Gao Jian Jamie Hersch Marc-Antoine Robillard

PRINCIPAL

Ma Yue

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL Li Xin

Kartik Alan Jairamin

Liu Yoko Tang Xiao Ping

TRUMPET

Christian Schiøler

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL Jonathan Fox

PRINCIPAL

PERCUSSION

Jon Paul Dante

PRINCIPAL

BASS CLARINET

Jonathan Fox

ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL

Tang Xiao Ping

David Smith

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL

BASSOON

Lertkiat Chongjirajitra^ Sergey Tyuteykin

Mark Suter

PRINCIPAL

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL

PRINCIPAL

Liu Chang

Allen Meek

Mark De Souza Lim Meng Keh Tan Pei Jie^ Zhu Zheng Yi

Christoph Wichert Zhao Ying Xue

ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL

HARP

Damian Patti

PRINCIPAL

CONTRA BASSOON

Samuel Armstrong

Zhang Jin Min

TROMBONE

Gulnara Mashurova

ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL Zhao Ying Xue

HORN PRINCIPAL Han Chang Chou

Eilidh McRae^

BASS TROMBONE ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL

PIANO/CELESTE

Wang Wei

PRINCIPAL Shane Thio^

TUBA PRINCIPAL Hidehiro Fujita

* With deep appreciation to the Rin Collection for their generous loan of string instruments. ° Igor Yuzefovich plays an instrument generously loaned by Mr & Mrs G K Goh ^ Musician on temporary contract ** Member of the Shanghai Orchestra Academy

Musicians listed alphabetically by family name rotate their seats on a per programme basis.

Musicians’ Chair The Singapore Symphony Orchestra thanks the following organisations for supporting our Musicians’ Chair Programme. The programme supports artistic excellence initiatives in the orchestra’s annual operations.

Principal Cello

Ng Pei-Sian

PrincipAL Double Bass

FIXED CHAIR, Cello

Guennadi Mouzyka

Guo Hao

CORPORATE SEATS The Singapore Symphony Orchestra appreciates the support of companies in our Corporate Seats scheme. The scheme supports the Orchestra through regular attendance of subscription concerts. $20,000 and above Petrochemical Corporation of Singapore (Pte) Ltd Japanese Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Singapore $10,000 and above Hong Leong Foundation Stephen Riady Group of Foundations Nomura Asset Management Singapore Ltd Prima Limited

1979 FUND The Singapore Symphony Orchestra gratefully acknowledges the following corporations and individuals for their contributions towards the 1979 Fund.

The 1979 Fund is a campaign for contribution to the SSO Endowment Fund.

Allen & Gledhill LLP Stephen Riady Group of Foundations United Overseas Bank Limited Mrs Odile Benjamin Ms Cham Gee Len Prof Cham Tao Soon Mr Chng Hak-Peng Mr Chng Kai Jin Mr Goh Yew Lin Mr Khoo Boon Hui Prof Tommy Koh Ms Liew Wei Li Prof Arnoud De Meyer Mr S R Nathan Mr Andreas Sohmen-Pao Dr Tan Chin Nam Ms Tan Choo Leng Mr Wong Nang Jang Prof Chan Heng Chee Anonymous For more information or to make a donation, please contact the Development & Sponsorship Team at 6602 4218 or anthony@sso.org.sg.

U P COM ING CONCERT S

24 MARCH 17 | fri, 7.30pm ESPLANADE Concert Hall

Petrushka • Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 Okko Kamu conductor Nikolai Lugansky piano A puppet comes to life and falls in love with a ballerina in Stravinsky’s Petrushka, a colourful masterpiece filled with gorgeous Russian folk melodies. Expect grandiose and wild passion as Nikolai Lugansky returns to play Brahms’ First Piano Concerto.

“His performances dig so deeply into the substance beneath the surface.” – The Daily Telegraph on Nikolai Lugansky

STRAVINSKY Petrushka (1947 version) BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15

Pre-concert Talk 6.30pm-7pm I library@esplanade

esplanade Concert Hall

Messiaen Turangalîla Lan Shui conductor Andreas Haefliger piano Cynthia Millar ondes Martenot Olivier Messiaen wrote of his epic Turangalîla-symphonie: ‘It is a love song, a hymn to joy; love that is fatal, irresistible, transcending everything, suppressing everything outside; joy that is superhuman, overwhelming, blinding, unlimited.”

Andreas Haefliger and Cynthia Millar join Lan Shui, the SSO and combined forces for this radiant 75-minute symphony of 10 movements.

“A milestone of 20th-century music” – The New York Times

MESSIAEN Turangalîla-symphonie

Pre-concert Talk 6.30pm-7pm I library@esplanade OPEN REHEARSAL Sat, 1 Apr 17, 9.30am I Esplanade Concert Hall Open to SSO Subscribers, Friends of the SSO and ticket holders.

U P COM ING CONCERT S

1 APRIL 17 | SAT, 7.30pm

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SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)

The Love for Three Oranges: Suite, Op. 33a

15’00

In 1918, the 27-year-old Prokofiev set out eastward across Russia en route to America via Vladivostok and Yokohama. In the fall, his concert tour landed him in Chicago, where the directors of the opera company expressed interest in producing one of his operas. Prokofiev first suggested The Gambler, still awaiting its premiere, but the score was in Russia and inaccessible.

Negotiations finally settled on a new commission, The Love for Three Oranges.

The first performance took place on 30 December 1921, sung in French, with the composer on the podium.

It was a qualified success. Following the event, Prokofiev wrote: “The Chicago audience was both proud and bewildered. Proud of having first produced a ‘modern opera’, and bewildered by the unusual music and by the fact that this enterprise should have cost some $250,000, as was reported in the newspapers. One person said: “Those oranges were the most expensive in the world”. But the single New York performance a short time later was no success at all, and the opera went into hiding until it was revived in 1949 by the City Center Opera Company in New York. In 1924, Prokofiev prepared the sixmovement Suite heard in tonight’s concert. This was played for the first time in Paris on 29 November 1925. The music is full of the acerbic harmonies, droll tunes, rhythmic angularity, grotesque sounds and satirical twists characteristic of Prokofiev’s early style.

The opera’s plot is derived from a story by the eighteenth-century Italian satirist Carlo Gozzi, and is just as zany as the title. Historian Donald Grout called its plot “merrily lunatic”. The title also refers to a Russian theatrical journal of avant-garde orientation. Comedy, fairy tale and satire all combine in the story of a young Prince who is fated to die unless he can somehow be made to laugh. All kinds of outlandish tricks are attempted, but nothing works until, in the best manner of fairy tales, the one character who is conspiring to ensure the Prince’s death, the evil Fata Morgana, inadvertently trips and falls in a ridiculous heap during her entry to the palace. The Prince is cured, but Fata curses him by declaring he must now find and fall in love with three magic

oranges. After a series of bizarre adventures, he finds them. Inside each is a princess: all three are dying of thirst, but one of them is revived with a bucket of water and – no surprise to opera aficionados – falls in love with the Prince.

“The theatrical aspect of the opera interested me tremendously,” wrote Prokofiev. “The way in which the action developed on three distinct planes – the fairy tale characters, the creatures from the underworld, and the comic characters belonging to the theater itself – was absolutely novel”. In fact, though, Mozart had done something quite similar in The Magic Flute, an opera Prokofiev certainly must have known, as well as in Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Frau ohne Schatten, recently written operas Prokofiev almost certainly did not know.

The Suite opens with The Eccentrics, one of five oddball groups (the others are Tragedians, Comedians, Empty Heads and Lyricists) who serve as an onstage audience. They attempt to make the Prince laugh; they also argue, comment on and even try to interfere with the story. Their music consists of the opera’s opening fanfare and passages from Act I. The Infernal Scene depicts the sorceress Fata Morgana at a card game, whose stakes are power. She wins.

Next comes the well-known March, to which the court jester Truffaldino enters with the morose Prince.

During the Scherzo, scurrying strings suggest the fleet progress of the Prince and Truffaldino in search of the three oranges.

The Prince and Princess embodies the tenderly romantic love duet, with the vocal lines given over to instruments in the orchestra. This music occurs just after the prince liberates the third dehydrated princess from her orange tomb.

The Flight portrays the chaotic shuffling about as Fata Morgana and her minions attempt to escape retribution.

JACQUES IBERT (1890-1962)

Flute Concerto

18’00

“A dapper Parisian, Jacques Ibert wrote dapper music – clean, crisp, insouciant, witty, unashamedly derrière-garde.” This is David Mason Greene’s succinct and accurate description of Ibert. He is often considered one of the most “French” of French composers, yet he never aligned himself with any movement, school, ideology or ism. “All systems are valid provided that one derives music from them”, he maintained. His style unites neoclassical restraint, craftsmanship, balance and forms with impressionistic use of colour, texture and mood. His considerable output embraces works in nearly every genre except the symphony and the oratorio, and is especially rich in music for theatre productions: ballets, operas and film scores (over 60 of the latter!). His best-known orchestral works are the Divertissement (1930), the Flute Concerto (1934) and Escales (1922), inspired by travels to Mediterranean ports during his career as a naval officer in World War I. Ibert wrote his Flute Concerto between 1932 and 1934 for the great French flautist Marcel Moyse (1889-1984), who gave the first performance on 25 February 1934 in Paris. The cadenza of the third movement was later used as an examination piece at the Paris Conservatoire, where Moyse taught for many years. This concerto has become one of Ibert’s best-known works and one of the standards of twentieth-century flute literature.

The three movements conform to the standard concerto layout: a central slow movement framed by two fast, energetic movements. The Andante offers a gentle and genial songlike movement, while the Finale is virtuosic and incorporates some witty metrical patterns. An episode in slower tempo and in a more relaxed mood provides contrast. The concerto demands of the soloist a command of both technical fluency and lyrical expressiveness, in addition to exploiting the soft, somewhat precarious lower range of the flute.

SWIRE–SSO

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Since its launch in January 2013, the SWIRE-SSO Ticketing Scheme has benefitted over 29,000 students, enabling them to enjoy worldclass performances by the SSO in the Esplanade Concert Hall and Victoria Concert Hall at subsidised ticket prices as low as $10. Larger school groups were also rewarded with a free music appreciation talk in their campus to enhance their concert experience.

To learn more about the SWIRE-SSO ticketing benefits for students, please email shafiqah@sso.org.sg or call 6602 4245. Schools are able to use the Tote Board Arts Grant to subsidise up to 50% (excluding GST) of the ticket price.

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)

Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47

44’00

On 21 November 1937, the first performance of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony was given in Leningrad (St. Petersburg today). Since then – eighty years ago!

– it has become a foundation stone of the orchestral repertory, a symphony as important and essential as one by Schumann, Brahms or Tchaikovsky; a big, sturdy symphony cast in the traditional four-movement mold, lasting about three-quarters of an hour, written in a more or less familiar, easily accessible style. It has become, in common parlance, a “warhorse”, indeed, one of the half dozen or so most popular symphonies composed in the twentieth century.

Many of the works we today hail as masterpieces suffered difficult birth pangs, but Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony sprang into the world fully accepted. In this case, there is a double irony, for the composer managed to please two entirely different — in fact, diametrically opposed — ideological fronts simultaneously: the first, Soviet officialdom, which was demanding from Shostakovich music free of “formalistic perversion”, or music easily intelligible to the Soviet masses; and secondly, those who believed in the mandate for a creative artist to produce only according to the dictates of his aesthetic impulses and personal convictions. Both camps were totally satisfied with the symphony, and have produced no end of conflicting ideas as to the “meaning” of the symphony.

The composer’s own equivocal comments have further muddled the situation.

A direct quotation from some highly authoritative source can be found to support almost any viewpoint.

Shostakovich subtitled his symphony “A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism” as a palliative to the heavy-handed government critics who had mercilessly railed at his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the ballet The Limpid Stream and other works. Further for the benefit of Soviet officialdom, Shostakovich claimed that the symphony had as its theme “the making of a man. I saw a man with all his experiences in the centre of the composition. ... The finale is the optimistic solution of the tragically tense moments of the first movement”.

Highly-placed critics and government officials swallowed the hypocrisy. The composer’s true feelings were revealed to the public, at least in the West, only years later, in a harrowing document called Testimony, a book published posthumously in 1979: “I never thought about any exultant finales, for what exultation could there be? I think that it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godounov.

It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, ‘your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing’, and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, ‘our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing’. What kind of apotheosis is that?” Lending support to this assertion is the generally accepted fact that the “exultant” finale, especially its coda, is the weakest part of the symphony.

Occupying a middle ground between the forces of the exhilarated and the bitter is the Soviet writer G. Orlov, who believes that here “Shostakovich turned to the age-old theme of man’s assertion of himself in the difficult and stubborn combat with hostile forces in the sublime theme of struggle for high ideals, for the optimistic and active perception in its contradiction and complexity”.

This conforms closely to the traditional romantic view of a big symphony as a generalised portrayal of conflict and struggle leading to triumph, as seen in such works as the Fifth Symphonies of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Mahler.

Conductor Leopold Stokowski offered a somewhat poetic view: “Shostakovich painted in tone the inner and outer experiences of an artist’s life — sometimes expressing the boisterous humour of crowds in the street, as in the fourth movement, sometimes painting with ironic splashes of colour a gamin-like humour, as in the second movement, and sometimes telling by the simplest orchestral means the innermost reveries of his spirit in dark and melancholy colouring, or rising to sublime heights of ecstasy, as in the third movement”.

Needless to say, one is free to accept or reject any or all of these interpretations, and to listen to the symphony only as an abstract configuration of purely musical components. The work abounds in extended but easily recognisable and memorable themes that lend themselves to fragmentation and development. There are passages of haunting beauty (the closing pages of the first movement especially, described by one writer as “strange spatial

loneliness”); pressing intensity (the inexorable build-up to the climax of the third movement); mordant wit (the cumbersome, grotesquely ponderous effect of the opening of the second movement, set off by squealy high woodwinds a moment later); strident militarism (the sardonic march in the first movement or the principal theme of the finale); and an almost unlimited number of imaginative and inventive orchestral effects: fanfares, extremes of range (the finale’s coda begins with horns in unison playing the lowest note but one in the entire repertory for that instrument), prominent use of piano and celesta, wide leaps with mischievous effects, unexpected contrasts of high/low and loud/soft, and chamber-music delicacy contrasted with massive tuttis.

Regardless then of the ideological, philosophical or musical preconceptions and attitudes one brings to bear on Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, the music has shown itself capable of both absorbing and transcending them all, and in so doing, has secured for itself a secure niche in the pantheon of the world’s greatest and most popular symphonies.

Programme notes by Robert Markow

Board Of Directors & Committees

PATRON President Tony Tan Keng Yam

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Mr Goh Yew Lin (Chairman) Ms Yong Ying-I (Deputy Chairman) Mr Ang Chek Meng Mrs Odile Benjamin Mr Chng Hak-Peng Mr Lionel Choi Prof Arnoud De Meyer Mr Heinrich Grafe Mr Kwee Liong Seen Ms Liew Wei Li Ms Lim Mei Prof Lim Seh Chun Mr Andreas Sohmen-Pao Ms Tan Choo Leng Mr Paul Tan Dr Kelly Tang Mr Yee Chen Fah

NOMINATING AND EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Mr Goh Yew Lin (Chairman) Mr Paul Tan Ms Yong Ying-I

AUDIT COMMITTEE Mr Yee Chen Fah (Chairman) Mr Kwee Liong Seen Ms Lim Mei

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SNYO COMMITTEE

Prof Cham Tao Soon (Chairman) Mr Alan Chan Ms Chew Gek Khim Mr Choo Chiau Beng Dr Geh Min Mr Goh Geok Khim Mr Khoo Boon Hui Prof Tommy Koh Mr JY Pillay Dr Stephen Riady Ms Priscylla Shaw Dr Gralf Sieghold Mr Andreas Sohmen-Pao Dr Tan Chin Nam Ms Tan Choo Leng Mr Tan Soo Nan Mr Wee Ee Cheong

Ms Liew Wei Li (Chairlady) Mr Ang Chek Meng Ms Vivien Goh Dr Kee Kirk Chin Mrs Valarie Wilson

ARTISTIC ADVISORY COMMITTEE Prof Bernard Tan (Chairman) Mr Mervin Beng Dr Chang Tou Liang Mr Foo Say Ming Prof Bernard Lanskey Ms Pang Siu Yuin Dr Kelly Tang Mr Zhang Jin Min

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