Singapore Symphony Orchestra Jul-Aug 2023

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2 first time Is this your at the SSO?

WELCOME! You’ve begun a richly rewarding musical journey and we want you to feel comfortable at the SSO. If there’s something you’ve always wanted to ask, check out our FAQ!

WHAT SHOULD I WEAR?

We don’t enforce any dress code. Many come in business attire or smart casual outfits, and that’s great.

WHEN SHOULD I CLAP?

Many pieces of music have multiple sections called movements. E.g. most concertos have three movements while symphonies usually have four. Traditionally, applause is only expected at the end of the entire work, rather than between each movement.

If you’re unsure, check our programme booklet, or wait for the conductor to put down the baton at the end, and acknowledge the orchestra and audience.

CAN I TAKE PHOTOS AND VIDEOS?

Video and photography of any kind are not permitted when musicians are actively performing. However, non-flash photography is allowed during bows and applause. Take home a musical memory and tag us on @singaporesymphony!

THREE CONTINENTS CELLO CONCERTO

For the enjoyment of all patrons during the concert:

• Please switch off or silence all electronic devices.

• Please minimise noises during performance. If unavoidable, wait for a loud section in the music.

• No photography, video or audio recording is allowed when artists are performing.

• Non-flash photography is allowed only during bows and applause when no performance is taking place.

Go green. Digital programme books are available on www.sso.org.sg.

Photographs and videos will be taken at these events, in which you may appear. These may be published on the SSO’s publicity channels and materials. By attending the event, you consent to the use of these photographs and videos for the foregoing purposes.

Cover: Karen Yeo, Fixed Chair Double Bass, Singapore Symphony Orchestra (Photo: Sloth Creatives)

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 with its 44-week calendar of events.

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 through its school programmes. The SSO has also earned an international reputation for its orchestral virtuosity, having garnered sterling reviews for its overseas tours and many successful recordings. In 2021, the SSO clinched third place in the prestigious Orchestra of the Year Award by Gramophone. In 2022, BBC Music Magazine named the SSO as one of the 21 best orchestras in the world.

In July 2022, the SSO appointed renowned Austrian conductor Hans Graf as its Music Director, the third in the orchestra’s history after Lan Shui (1997–2019) and Choo Hoey (1979–1996). Prior to this, Hans Graf served as Chief Conductor from 2020.

The orchestra performs over 60 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. The SSO makes its performing home at the 1,800-seat state-of-theart Esplanade Concert Hall. More intimate works, as well as outreach and community performances take place at the 673-seat Victoria Concert Hall, the Home of the SSO. The SSO launched its digital concert hall, SSOLOUNGE, in 2021.

Beyond Singapore, 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 fivecity tour of Germany and Prague also included the SSO’s second performance at the Berlin Philharmonie. In 2014, the SSO’s debut at the 120th BBC Proms in London received praise in major UK newspapers The Guardian and The Telegraph. The SSO has also performed in China on multiple occasions.

The SSO has released more than 50 recordings, with over 30 on the BIS label. Recent critically acclaimed albums include Scriabin’s Poems of Ecstasy and Fire and Shostakovich’s Jazz & Variety Suites. In 2023, a Four Seasons album on Pentatone and a complete Mozart Violin Concerto cycle with Chloe Chua and Hans Graf will be released. The SSO also leads the revival and recording of significant works such as the Kozłowski Requiem, Ogerman’s Symbiosis (after Bill Evans) and concertos by Paul von Klenau.

SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

The SSO has collaborated with such great artists as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Joe Hisaishi, Neeme Järvi, Okko Kamu, Hannu Lintu, Andrew Litton, Lorin Maazel, Martha Argerich, Ray Chen, Diana Damrau, Stephen Hough, Janine Jansen, Leonidas Kavakos, Lang Lang, Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham and Krystian Zimerman.

The SSO is part of the Singapore Symphony Group, which also manages the Singapore Symphony Choruses, and the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, as well as the VCHpresents chamber music series, the Singapore International Piano Festival and the biennial National Piano & Violin Competition.

Our Story

The mission of the Group is to create memorable shared experiences with music. Through the SSO and its affiliated performing groups, we spread the love for music, nurture talent and enrich our diverse communities.

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

HANS GRAF Music Director

With the distinguished Austrian conductor Hans Graf, “a brave new world of musicmaking under inspired direction” (The Straits Times) began at the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, as Chief Conductor in the 2020/21 season, and Music Director since the 2022/23 season.

Graf was formerly Music Director of the Houston Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, Basque National Orchestra and the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg. He is a frequent guest with major orchestras worldwide including the orchestras of Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Vienna, Leipzig Gewandhaus, DSO Berlin, Dresden, Royal Concertgebouw, Oslo, Hallé, London, Royal Philharmonic, Budapest Festival, St Petersburg, Russian National, Melbourne, Sydney, Seoul, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the Bavarian, Danish and Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestras. Graf has led operas in the Vienna State Opera, Munich, Berlin, Paris, Strasbourg, Rome and Zurich. In 2014 he was awarded the Österreichischer Musiktheaterpreis for Strauss’s Die Feuersnot at the famed Vienna Volksoper, where he returned in 2021 to lead Rosenkavalier.

Hans Graf’s extensive discography includes all symphonies of Mozart and Schubert, the complete orchestral works of Dutilleux, and

the world-premiere recording of Zemlinsky’s Es war einmal. Graf’s recording of Berg’s Wozzeck with the Houston Symphony won the GRAMMY and ECHO Klassik awards for best opera recording. With the Singapore Symphony, Graf has recorded the music of Paul von Klenau, Józef Kozłowski’s Requiem and a complete Mozart Violin Concerto cycle with Singapore’s Chloe Chua.

Hans Graf (b. 1949) is Professor Emeritus for Orchestral Conducting at the Universität Mozarteum, Salzburg. For his services to music, he was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre de la Légion d'Honneur by the French government, and the Grand Decoration of Honour of the Republic of Austria.

© BRYAN VAN DER BEEK

CHLOE CHUA

violin/Artist-In-Residence

Chloe Chua (b. 2007) shot to international stardom after winning the joint 1st Prize at the 2018 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists.

The young star from Singapore has also garnered the top prize at the 24th Andrea Postacchini Violin Competition, 3rd prize at the 2017 Zhuhai International Mozart Competition, as well as accolades at the Thailand International Strings Competition (Junior Category Grand Prize) and the Singapore National Piano & Violin Competition (1st Prize, Junior 2017, 3rd Prize, Junior 2015).

Her stunning musicality despite her young age has captured the hearts of audiences around the world, and her performances have taken her to concert halls and orchestras across the U.S.A., U.K., Italy, Germany, Saudi Arabia, China, Thailand and Singapore, in festivals such as the Copenhagen Summer Festival, New Virtuosi Queenswood Mastercourse, Atlanta Festival Academy and the Singapore Violin Festival.

For the 2023/24 season, Chloe extends her Artist-In-Residency at the Singapore Symphony Orchestra for a second season, performing several concerts and recording projects across 2023 and 2024. Her debut album of The Four Seasons and Locatelli’s Harmonic Labyrinth will be followed by a set of complete Mozart Violin Concertos with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Hans Graf.

Chloe has been with Singapore’s Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) School of Young Talents since age 4, and is currently under the tutelage of Yin Ke, leader of their strings programme.

Chloe performs on a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Milan, 1753, on generous loan from the Rin Collection.

© REX TEO

CHLOE CHUA AND HE ZIYU

HE ZIYU viola

The outstanding violinist He Ziyu, winner of the Salzburg International Mozart Competition and the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition in 2016, was 18, one of the youngest soloists ever to perform with the Vienna Philharmonic when he made his debut under Adam Fischer in the Musikverein in 2017.

In the 2021/22 season Ziyu made his debut with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Lio Kuokman, and was invited by Hans Graf to join the Singapore Symphony Orchestra for concerts and recordings. He has also performed with the Swiss Camerata and the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra under Howard Griffiths, the Sofia Philharmonic under Uros Lajovic, and the Beethoven Philharmonic with Thomas Rösner. Highlights include concerts at the BBC Belfast Proms in the Park, his debut at the George Enescu Festival, a concert and recordings of works by Hans Werner Henze with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg under Maestra Lin Liao, and solo recitals at the Vienna Konzerthaus in the “Great Talents” series.

As the violinist of the renowned Altenberg Trio, he performs regularly in the Vienna Musikverein in the trio’s popular concert series. In their centenary year he is an ambassador for the publishers Bärenreiter whose Mozart editions he particularly admires.

He Ziyu began his violin studies at the age of five in his native China with Zhang Xiangrong. At age 10, he was invited by Paul Roczek to study with him at the Salzburg Mozarteum University. He completed his master’s degree there in summer 2021 and is currently continuing his postgraduate violin studies with Benjamin Schmid and Paul Roczek, and his viola studies with Thomas Riebl.

He Ziyu plays a violin by Andrea Guarneri from 1688 and a Giuseppe Guadagnini viola dated 1797, made available to him by generous private sponsors.

© NANCY HOROWITZ

SEIKA ISHIDA

Born in 1997, Seika Ishida began playing the piano at the age of three. Having completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees with the highest scores at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in the class of Anna Malikova, she is currently pursuing postgraduate studies there.

In September 2019, she was awarded the 1st Prize, as well as the Best Chinese Works Prize at the 3rd Zhuhai International Mozart Competition, where she performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 under the baton of Lavard Skou Larsen. In February 2020, she received the diploma and the Best Compulsory Work Prize at the 14th International Mozart Piano Competition in Salzburg. In November 2022, she won the 2nd prize at the 5th Istanbul International Piano Competition “Orchestra'Sion”, after which she gave her debut concerts with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 conducted by Andrew Litton. After two consecutive years of on-campus auditions (22/23), she performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9

“Jeunehomme” with the Webern Symphonie Orchester organized by the university, and the concerts were broadcast by the Austrian public broadcaster ORF.

In June 2023, the 3rd BechsteinBruckner Competition Austria was held, a collaboration between C. Bechstein Pianoforte AG, the Brucknerhaus Linz and seven Austrian conservatories and music universities that offer a Piano Solo degree. Each nominated a student for the competition, and Ishida emerged the winner. She will make her debut at the prizewinner’s concert at the Brucknerhaus in November.

piano

Conductor Yue Bao made her subscription debut with the Houston Symphony on their opening night concert of the 20/21 season, and has led the orchestra both at Jones Hall and at their summer concert series at the Miller Theatre. She made her Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut at the Ravinia Festival in 2021.

This season, Bao debuts in Munich with the Munich Symphony and in Paris conducting a programme of new works with the renowned Ensemble Intercontemporain. She will further debut with the Singapore Symphony

Orchestra and with the Orchestra of St Luke’s.

In recent seasons, Bao has conducted the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, and the Calgary Philharmonic. She also debuted with the San Francisco Symphony.

Bao was the Bruno Walter Memorial Foundation Conducting Fellow at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. She served as the Ting Tsung and Wei Fung Chao Foundation Assistant Conductor at the Houston Symphony. She also served as the David Effron Conducting Fellow at the Chautauqua Music Festival.

She has worked extensively in the United States and abroad. Equally at home with both symphonic and operatic repertoire, she has conducted Eugene Onegin, Carmen, and Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium

Along with her Artist Diploma from The Curtis Institute of Music, where she was the Rita E Hauser Conducting Fellow and studied with Yannick Nezet-Sèguin, Bao holds Bachelors of Music degrees in orchestral conducting and opera accompanying from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and a Master of Music degree in orchestral conducting from the Mannes School of Music.

YUE BAO conductor

©

MICHAEL STARGHILL

Jan Vogler’s distinguished career has brought him together with renowned conductors and internationally acclaimed orchestras around the world. His great ability allowed him to explore the sound boundaries of the cello and to establish an intensive dialogue with contemporary composers and artists. This includes regular world premieres, including works by Tigran Mansurian (with WDR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Semyon Bychkov), John Harbison (with Mira Wang and the Boston Symphony Orchestra), Udo Zimmermann (Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra), Wolfgang Rihm (Double Concerto with Mira Wang), Jörg Widmann (Cello Concerto Dunkle Saiten, dedicated to Jan Vogler himself) and Nico Muhly/USA, Sven Helbig/ Germany and Zhou-Long/China (Drei Kontinente - Konzert für Cello und Orchester, composed for Jan Vogler).

His latest recording with Sony Classical combines the world premiere recording of the Cello Concerto by Enric Casals with the Cello Concerto by Lalo, his partners being the Moritzburg Festival Orchestra and conductor Josep Caballe Domenech.

Highlights of Jan Vogler’s career as a soloist are concerts with the New York Philharmonic – both in New York and Dresden at the occasion of the reopening

of the rebuilt Dresdner Frauenkirche under the direction of Lorin Maazel in 2005, Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh and Montréal Symphony Orchestras, Mariinsky Orchestra, Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra dell’ Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic as well as with The Knights. He collaborates with conductors such as Andris Nelsons, Fabio Luisi, Sir Antonio Pappano, Thomas Hengelbrock, Manfred Honeck, Omer Meir Wellber and Kent Nagano.

Jan Vogler has been Director of the renowned Dresden Music Festival since October 2008 as well as Artistic Director of the Moritzburg Festival since 2001.

JAN VOGLER cello

© MARCO GROB

MARIO VENZAGO conductor

Mario Venzago was, until summer 2021 and for 11 years, the Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Bern Symphony Orchestra. Prior to that, he has led as Principal Conductor or General Music Director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Basque National Orchestra in San Sebastian, and the Basel Symphony Orchestra. He was also Principal Conductor of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Artist in Association of the Finnish Tapiola Sinfonietta and Artistic Director of the Baltimore Summer Fest, as successor to Pinchas

Zukerman and David Zinman. Mario Venzago has conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the orchestras in Philadelphia and Boston, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Filarmonica della Scala and the NHK Symphony Orchestra.

In the season 2022/23 Mario Venzago conducted Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Museumsorchester Frankfurt, Bochumer Symphoniker, Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra, Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz and many others.

Several of his CDs have won international prizes such as the Grand Prix du Disque, the Diapason d’or and the Edison Award. The project “The other Bruckner” with the recording of all ten symphonies was released on the CPO label. A collaboration with Sony Classical led to the spectacular recording of Franz Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony with the Kammerorchester Basel, completed and conducted by Mario Venzago, and the recording of all serenades and symphonies of Johannes Brahms. Most recently in 2022, Prospero released his recording of Schubert’s reconstructed 7th Symphony with Bern Symphony Orchestra. His recording of the Suite from Bernard Herrmann’s “Wuthering Heights”

with Singapore Symphony Orchestra was released on Chandos Records in June 2023.

BLISS –MOZART'S CLARINET CONCERTO

© ALBERTO VENZAGO

Julian Bliss is one of the world’s finest clarinettists, excelling as a concerto soloist, chamber musician, recitalist, jazz artist, and masterclass leader.

In recital and chamber music he has played at most of the world’s leading festivals and venues, including Gstaad, New York’s Lincoln Center, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Verbier, and London’s Wigmore Hall. As a soloist, he has appeared with leading international orchestras including the London Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Paris, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Sao Paolo Symphony.

This season, Bliss premieres a new concerto for Clarinet and Wind Orchestra, written for him by John Mackey, with Dallas Winds and further performances taking place across the United States. Other highlights include Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Penderecki’s Clarinet Concerto No. 2 with the English Chamber Orchestra at Cadogan Hall, alongside festival appearances and performances with his Jazz Septet celebrating the music of Gershwin, Hollywood, and Benny Goodman.

In 2010, he established the Julian Bliss Septet which has since performed to packed houses across the US and in European festivals, at Ronnie Scott’s (London) and Live from Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola (Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York). A recording of the Gershwin programme ‘I Got Rhythm’ released in 2021 to rave reviews –“impressive recording by talented clarinettist Julian Bliss and his excellent Septet [...] the whole ensemble is on fire” – Gramophone.

As creator of his Conn-Selmer range of affordable clarinets under the Leblanc brand, he has inspired a generation of young players and introduced a substantial new audience to his instrument.

JULIAN BLISS clarinet

© BEN WRIGHT

The Orchestra

HANS GRAF

Music Director

RODOLFO BARRÁEZ

Associate Conductor

CHOO HOEY

Conductor Emeritus

LAN SHUI

Conductor Laureate

EUDENICE PALARUAN

Choral Director

WONG LAI FOON

Choirmaster

FIRST VIOLIN

(Position vacant) Concertmaster,

GK Goh Chair

Kong Zhao Hui1

Associate Concertmaster

Chan Yoong-Han2

Fixed Chair

Cao Can*

Chen Da Wei

Duan Yu Ling

Foo Say Ming

Jin Li

Kong Xianlong

Cindy Lee

Karen Tan

William Tan

Wei Zhe

Ye Lin*

Zhang Si Jing*

SECOND VIOLIN

Tseng Chieh-An Principal

Michael Loh Associate Principal

Nikolai Koval*

Sayuri Kuru

Hai-Won Kwok

Chikako Sasaki*

Margit Saur

Shao Tao Tao

Wu Man Yun*

Xu Jueyi*

Yeo Teow Meng

Yin Shu Zhan*

Zhao Tian

VIOLA

Manchin Zhang Principal

Guan Qi Associate Principal

Gu Bing Jie* Fixed Chair

Joyce Huang

Marietta Ku

Luo Biao

Julia Park

Shui Bing

Janice Tsai

Dandan Wang

Yang Shi Li

CELLO

Ng Pei-Sian Principal, The HEAD Foundation Chair

Yu Jing Associate Principal

Guo Hao Fixed Chair

Chan Wei Shing

Jamshid Saydikarimov

Song Woon Teng

Wang Yan

Wu Dai Dai

Zhao Yu Er

DOUBLE BASS

Yang Zheng Yi Associate Principal

Karen Yeo Fixed Chair

Olga Alexandrova

Jacek Mirucki

Guennadi Mouzyka

Wang Xu

FLUTE

Jin Ta Principal, Stephen Riady Chair

Evgueni Brokmiller Associate Principal

Roberto Alvarez

Miao Shanshan

PICCOLO

Roberto Alvarez Assistant Principal

OBOE

Rachel Walker Principal

Pan Yun Associate Principal

Carolyn Hollier

Elaine Yeo

COR ANGLAIS

Elaine Yeo Associate Principal

CLARINET

Ma Yue Principal

Li Xin Associate Principal

Liu Yoko

Tang Xiao Ping

BASS CLARINET

Tang Xiao Ping Assistant Principal

BASSOON

Liu Chang Associate Principal

Christoph Wichert

Zhao Ying Xue

CONTRABASSOON

Zhao Ying Xue Assistant Principal

HORN

Austin Larson Principal

Gao Jian Associate Principal

Jamie Hersch Associate Principal

Marc-Antoine Robillard Associate Principal

Bryan Chong^

Hoang Van Hoc

TRUMPET

Jon Paul Dante Principal

David Smith Associate Principal

Lau Wen Rong

Nuttakamon Supattranont

TROMBONE

Allen Meek Principal

Damian Patti Associate Principal

Samuel Armstrong

BASS TROMBONE

Wang Wei Assistant Principal

TUBA

Tomoki Natsume Principal

TIMPANI

Christian Schiøler Principal

Mario Choo

PERCUSSION

Jonathan Fox Principal

Mark Suter Associate Principal

Mario Choo

Lim Meng Keh

HARP

Gulnara Mashurova Principal

With deep appreciation to the Rin Collection for their generous loan of string instruments. Musician on temporary contract

Kong Zhao Hui performs on a J.B. Guadagnini of Milan, c. 1750, donated by the National Arts Council, Singapore, with the support of Far East Organization and Lee Foundation.

Chan Yoong-Han performs on a David Tecchler, Fecit Roma An. D. 1700, courtesy of Mr G K Goh. Musicians listed alphabetically by family name rotate their seats on a per programme basis.

Guest Musicians

CHLOE CHUA AND HE ZIYU | 27 & 28 JUL 2023

FIRST VIOLIN

David Coucheron

Guest Concertmaster

Lim Shue Churn

SECOND VIOLIN

Wilford Goh

Yew Shan

VIOLA

Erlene Koh

Yeo Jan Wea

CELLO

DOUBLE BASS

Hans Olov Davidsson

Guest Principal

Julian Li

Ma Li Ming

Hibiki Otomo

OBOE/COR ANGLAIS

Simon Lee

BASSOON

Ignas Mazvila Guest Principal

HORN

TRUMPET

Matt Dempsey

EUPHONIUM

Hidenori Arai

PERCUSSION

Tan Pei Jie

HARP

Fontane Liang

Luke Chong

Jo Kishigami

Alexander Oon

Lin Juan SEIKA ISHIDA PLAYS CHOPIN | 4 & 5 AUG 2023

FIRST VIOLIN

Paul Kim

Guest Concertmaster

DOUBLE BASS

Hans Olov Davidsson

Guest Principal

OBOE

Simon Lee

BASSOON

Marcelo Padilla Guest Principal

THREE CONTINENTS CELLO CONCERTO | 19 AUG 2023

FIRST VIOLIN

Matthieu Arama

Guest Concertmaster

Lim Shue Churn

SECOND VIOLIN

Wilford Goh

Ikuko Takahashi

VIOLA

Yeo Jan Wea

CELLO

James Ng

Wang Zihao

DOUBLE BASS

Julian Li

Hibiki Otomo

OBOE

Luis Teo

BLISS – MOZART'S CLARINET CONCERTO | 25 & 26 AUG 2023

FIRST VIOLIN

Ma Jun Yi

Guest Concertmaster

BASSOON

Marcelo Padilla Guest Principal

BASSOON

Marcelo Padilla Guest Principal

ALTO SAXOPHONE

Samuel Phua

PERCUSSION

Cheong Kah Yiong

Sng Yiang Shan

CELESTA/PIANO

Beatrice Lin

SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

THE SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

2023/24 SEASON

JULY 2023 – JUNE 2024

SSO.ORG.SG

Featuring Chloe Chua, Julian Bliss, Mischa Maisky, Han-na Chang, Leonidas Kavakos, Rudolf Buchbinder, Paul Lewis, Chloë Hanslip, Andrew Arthur, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and more.

Photo: Sloth Creatives

CHLOE CHUA AND HE ZIYU ELEGANT AND HEROIC

Thu & Fri, 27 & 28 Jul 2023

Esplanade Concert Hall

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Hans Graf Music Director

Chloe Chua violin / Artist-In-Residence*

He Ziyu viola*

MOZART MOZART

Overture to The Magic Flute

Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E-flat major, K. 364*

Intermission

R. STRAUSS

Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”)

Meet-and-Greet on Fri (28 Jul) only

7 mins

30 mins

20 mins

40 mins

Concert Duration: approximately 1 hr 50 mins (including 20 mins intermission)

Meet Chloe Chua and He Ziyu at the foyer, level 1, during intermission for photo opportunity. Capped at 10 minutes, first come, first served. No autograph signing.

CHECK-IN TO TONIGHT'S CONCERT

Scan this QR code with the Singapore Symphony Mobile App.

Dedicated to

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791)

Overture to The Magic Flute (1791)

In 1791, Mozart found himself in an impossible situation. His patron, the Emperor Joseph II, had died in 1790 and the new emperor Leopold II had brought Florentine opera to Vienna, dismissing most of the singers, musicians, and composers previously active at court. To make matters worse, Mozart’s librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, embroiled in scandal, had left Vienna. Interestingly, Da Ponte later moved to New York where he was a grocer and the first professor of Italian Literature at Columbia College (later Columbia University).

For most of his career, Mozart had been associated with Italian opera—whether opera seria on lofty mythological themes or light, entertaining opera buffa for the imperial court—and these had been cash cows for him. Now he had neither funding nor texts. To the rescue came Emanuel Schikaneder, a friend of Mozart’s from the Freemasonic circles in Vienna. Schikaneder was an actor, singer, playwright, and impresario, and had been running the Theater auf der Wieden which specialised in German singspiel, or operas with spoken dialogue. The singspiel genre was popular but lowbrow—Schikaneder’s first hit production was entitled “The Stupid Gardener from the Mountain”, and a sub-genre he specialised in was Zauberoper (“Magic opera”), essentially musicals with fairy-tale plots and plenty of special effects.

Mozart had a cheeky, sometimes vulgar sense of humour, so the idea of writing for a new, broader audience and a new income stream must have appealed. Thus Schikenader commissioned from him

The Magic Flute, with its varied cast of characters: a pair of bird-human lovers, real human lovers, an evil Moor, an Egyptian high priest, an evil Queen of the Night, ghostly armoured men, trios of cherubic boys and wraith-like women, enchanted animals, as well as magical bells and flutes. Imagine a modern audience watching a stage production that was equal parts The Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, and The Sound of Music, and one gets an idea of the impact it must have had.

The Magic Flute premiered 30th September 1791 and ran several times a week with Mozart directing from the fortepiano until his health no longer allowed it. As he lay dying late at night on 4th December that year, he had the consolation of knowing that he had pulled off the greatest operatic success of his career, and that at that very moment all levels of Viennese society from nobles to tradesmen and families were being entertained by his music.

Instrumentation

2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, strings

World Premiere

30 Sep 1791, Vienna

First performed by SSO

17 Oct 1980

CHLOE CHUA AND HE ZIYU

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E-flat major, K. 364 (1779)

I II III

Allegro maestoso

Andante

Presto

Mozart’s reputation as a child prodigy is well-known, and the usual image of young Mozart has him seated at the keyboard, wowing noble audiences with his abilities, yet it is often forgotten that he was also a child virtuoso on the violin. How could it be otherwise, for his father Leopold, deputy kapellmeister for the court orchestra of the prince-archbishop of Salzburg and author of a treatise on playing the violin, presumably gave the young Mozart his first violin lessons.

Skipping forward to 1779, our Mozart is a sprightly young man of 23 and in the musical retinue of Prince-Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg. Having just returned from a concert tour of Paris and Mannheim, and chafing under the strict rules imposed by his employer, Mozart wanted to experiment with the new forms and styles he had encountered. One was the Sinfonia Concertante, a form popular in Paris, rather like the Baroque concerto grosso (where groups of soloists alternate with full ensemble), but with greater emphasis on the soloists. The product—a hybrid symphonyconcerto of massive proportions, in which Mozart returned to the instrument of his childhood while simultaneously indulging in pure creativity.

Unlike his concerti and symphonies, the orchestration is relatively light—only pairs of oboes and horns in addition to the usual strings. He splits the violas in two, making

for essentially a five-part string texture, a feature that harks back to rich sound-world of viol consort music from the early 1600s. The first movement Allegro maestoso opens with a galant-style fanfare—Mannheim was an important centre of the galant style, which preferred lighter lyricism—and with other galant features sprinkled thoroughout, Mozart basically asking “Can you tell I was in Mannheim recently?”. The soloists enter and converse, and Mozart (who particularly enjoyed playing viola) never permits the viola to shine less than the violin. In fact, his original score notates the viola part in D major, necessitating the player to tune up all the strings up a semitone, giving the darker viola an additional brilliance next to the violin.

While the Paris sinfonia concertante usually had two movements, Mozart gives us three. Mozart usually wrote reflective major-key slow movements but this Andante is one of his rare minor-key examples, and has almost baroque feel to it. Here the genius partnering of violin and viola result in an uncommonly heartfelt depth of emotion, and the entire C minor movement feels like a tragic scene from one of his operas. The final Presto is a bubbly rondo where the irrepressible Mozartean smile returns, with horns and oboes punctuating the galloping of the strings.

Alas for Mozart, his employer did not look kindly upon his musical experiments at the expense of his duties as court organist, and he was dismissed “with a kick on my arse” (as Mozart put it). Salzburg’s loss was Vienna’s gain, as Mozart moved to Vienna for the next chapter of his life, buoyed by his newfound freedom.

RICHARD STRAUSS (1864–1949)

Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”, 1898)

The tondichtung (tone poem) was a genre that saw great popularity in Europe from the mid-19th century to the first quarter of the 20th century, and German composer Richard Strauss was perhaps its greatest exponent, producing no fewer than ten. What was a tone poem? A long-form instrumental work for orchestra, the tone poem was usually a single movement intended to evoke images based on moods, stories, or scenes, but without the intent to depict a narrative or specific flow of events.

In summer 1898, at the age of 34, Richard Strauss was on holiday in the Bavarian Alps before taking up a post as the principal conductor of the orchestra at the Berlin State Opera. He was a composer and conductor of international repute, much in demand, but for now, the cool mountain air was invigorating him and his creative juices were flowing. Using the model of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony (a work he considered unjustly underperformed) he proposed to write a heroic work in the form of a tone poem, a genre of which he had already written six examples. “Thus to fulfill a pressing need I am composing a largish tone poem entitled Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”), admittedly without a funeral march, but nonetheless in E-flat major, with

Instrumentation

2 oboes, 2 horns, strings

World Premiere Unknown

First performed by SSO

28 May 1988

(Chua Lik Wuk, violin; Jiri Heger, viola)

lots of horns—which is always a measure of heroism,” he wrote.

Ein Heldenleben is a work in six movements played without a break, and Strauss’s own programme notes written for its premiere by the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester (Frankfurt Opera House and Museum’s Orchestra) on 3rd March 1899 revealed that the hero of the work was none other than the composer himself, making the tone poem an autobiographical work. Strauss initially gave brief descriptive working titles to the sections but later asked that they be removed, perhaps thinking they gave too much away to the audience, but many places and writers have retained them as useful for understanding the work.

Der Held (The Hero) opens the work, brave and bold, fearless and charming. Trumpets evoke the romantic notion of a knight in shining armour as the range of dynamic and pitch indicate how far and wide our hero’s deeds may be seen. Not everyone was thrilled—some critics were revolted by what they saw as his egotism. Des Helden Widersacher (The Hero’s Adversaries) is where Strauss presents the hero’s enemies— the music critics—represented by interjecting, heckling woodwinds that are finally banished

by the brass. Strauss was explicit that Des Helden Gefährtin (The Hero’s Companion) depicted his wife, represented by a violin playing the most touching melody in the entire work. Enchanted by this vision of loveliness, our hero arrives in his full armour and heroic airs, proceeding to sweep her off her feet, and brings her voluptuously where family audiences may not enter.

Unfortunately, the bliss does not last as our hero is called away to Des Helden Walstatt (The Hero at Battle), where trumpets and percussion—those instruments of martial association par excellence—paint a furious scene. War is followed by peace, so comes Des Helden Friedenswerke (The Hero’s Works of Peace), a languid elegiac movement where Strauss quotes extensively from his previous compositions, just in case it was not blatantly obvious the piece was about himself, yet the very work of managing to weave together disparate themes never originally intended to be played together was a heroic achievement. Des Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung

(The Hero’s Retirement from the World and Completion) crowns the work with an apotheosis: the hero finishes off his adversaries, relaxes a bit, exchanges words of assurance with his companion before riding off into the sunset, filled with hope and confidence.

Audience reception was sharply divided, a reaction that continues to this day. By casting himself as the hero of his own work, was Strauss being ironic? He was unbending in the face of criticism, but also had a keen sense of ironic humour. By referencing and caricaturing his critics, Strauss was, to use a modern term, “high-level trolling”, and the enraged critics proved they had taken his troll bait as expected. At any rate, Strauss

here gives the listener enough space to see (hear?) and imagine their own struggles and lives in his music, and that may be why the work rapidly and firmly became a standard part of the orchestral concert repertoire.

Programme notes by Edward C. Yong

Instrumentation

3 flutes, piccolo, 4 oboes (1 doubling on cor anglais), 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 8 horns, 3 trumpets (briefly played offstage), 2 E-flat trumpets, 3 trombones, euphonium, tuba, timpani, snare drum, cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, bass drum, tenor drum, suspended cymbal, 2 harps, strings

World Premiere

3 Mar 1899, Frankfurt

First performed by SSO

24 May 1996

SEIKA ISHIDA PLAYS CHOPIN CONTEMPLATIVE

AND DIGNIFIED

Fri & Sat, 4 & 5 Aug 2023

Victoria Concert Hall

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Hans Graf Music Director

Seika Ishida piano*

WEBER CHOPIN SCHUBERT

Oberon Overture

Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21*

Intermission

Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944 “The Great”

9 mins

32 mins

20 mins

48 mins

Concert Duration: approximately 2 hrs (including 20 mins intermission)

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Autograph session with Seika Ishida during intermission at the foyer, level 2. A

CARL MARIA VON WEBER (1786–1826)

Oberon Overture (1825)

German composer Carl Maria von Weber rarely gets mentioned in historical surveys of Romantic-era music, but during his lifetime he was a virtuoso pianist, guitarist, conductor, critic, and a crucial figure in the development of German Romantic opera. In his childhood, he moved several times between Hamburg, Freiburg, Augsburg, Salzburg, and Vienna, following the employment of his musician father Franz Anton, and his teachers included Michael Haydn. Mozart’s wife Constanze was a cousin of Weber’s.

Weber is best-known for his operas, and in 1825 he was invited to set an English libretto based on the German poem Oberon (itself based on a mediaeval French tale). The result was Oberon, or the Elf-King’s Oath, a three-act opera with spoken dialogue. Weber was so committed to the project that he travelled to London and learned English so he could more effectively set the text. The opera premiered at Covent Garden in London on 12 April 1826 to great success, but the stress of producing the opera and social engagements ruined his health and he died in London less than two months later at the age of 40.

Slightly reminiscent of Rossini, the overture starts slowly and mysteriously, setting the scene for Oberon, the King of Elves, and Titania the Queen in an enchanted forest, as brass fanfares announce their entry. The delicate music continues sprightly and flowing, with only the barest hints of the story to come, which includes Charlemagne, the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid, a palace on the banks of the Tigris river, more

fairies, magical transportation, as well as an endless stream of exotic Persian and Moorish characters.

Instrumentation

2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, strings

World Premiere

12 Apr 1826, London

First performed by SSO

23 Jun 1980

FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810–1849)

Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21 (1829)

Maestoso Larghetto

In July of 1829, the 19-year-old Chopin spent three weeks in Vienna. The publisher Haslinger encouraged him to give a recital, which was so well-received that a second was quickly arranged, and proved equally successful. Upon returning to Poland, Chopin realised that if he was going to pursue a career as a concert pianist (a career move he soon abandoned), he would need some major display pieces of his own in his repertory. To this end he soon set about writing the F-minor concerto, which he premiered in Warsaw on 17 March, 1830 to great acclaim. Hence, Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F minor, the so-called No. 2, was actually his first, preceding the E-minor concerto by about a year. The reversal in numbering came about because the orchestral parts of the F-minor concerto were lost before it was published, and by the time they were recopied, the E-minor concerto had been published as No. 1.

The enduring appeal of a Chopin concerto lies in the piano writing – sweetly lyrical melodies, a quality of intimacy, the expressive nuances of colour and dynamics, the improvisatory character provided by such techniques as rubato, arpeggios and delicate ornamentation of the melodic lines.

The first movement’s two main themes are stated in the opening orchestral exposition –a strongly rhythmic idea with a quasi-military flavour (a rhythm also found in so many Italian operas of the period) and a more lyrical, bel canto subject announced by the

woodwind choir, the first of several felicitous uses of woodwind colour in this concerto.

The second movement is a nocturne of heavenly beauty and midnight poetry. The central episode of this ternary form (ABA) movement momentarily disturbs the placid waters, but the mood of quiet reverie is restored well before the movement ends.

The finale is a rondo imbued with the spirit and rhythm of the mazurka, a Polish country dance in triple meter with a characteristic accent on the third beat.

Instrumentation

2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings

World Premiere

17 Mar 1830, Warsaw

First performed by SSO

29 Oct 1982 (Fausto Zadra, piano)

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828)

Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944 “The Great” (1825)

Andante – Allegro, ma non troppo Andante con moto

Scherzo. Allegro vivace – Trio Allegro vivace

Musicology is not an exact science, and its conclusions are often revised in the light of new evidence. Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 was long thought to have been composed in 1828, the last year of his life, but it is now known that the “Great Symphony’’ was the “grand symphony” mentioned in one of his letters of March 1825. The work was completely scored by the summer of 1826 but was considered too long and difficult for the amateur orchestra of Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, and does not seem to have been performed in his lifetime.

The first movement opens Andante with a horn, that instrument par excellence of the Romantic period, its plaintive melody giving way to strings and winds painting a scene of swirling clouds above a peaceful mountain scene, before we enter a stream that takes us on an exhilarating Allegro ride down some rather fast-flowing waters. Schumann described this movement as being heavenly, but its scale put off early audiences and critics. George Bernard Shaw in 1892 called it “brainless”. Clearly Shaw had forgotten that heaven was meant to be endless!

An Andante con moto second movement follows, starting with a march-like theme led by a solo oboe and taken up by the ensemble. Comparisons have been made to the marches in Beethoven’s Third and Seventh symphonies, and Schubert, a great fan of Beethoven, must have had those in his mind while he wrote these. Like a soldier

on a march, the oboe leads us through a succession of quiet forests, dangerous precipices, and bustling countryside settlements, yet keeping steady pace until we reach our destination.

The third movement is a spirited Scherzo and Trio, expansive and richly scored. Rhythmically relentless, Schubert shows his mastery of melody and harmony with several unexpected and surprising shifts.

The finale is an Allegro vivace in extended sonata form, with no fewer than six themes presented in succession. Schubert takes us on an exciting drive, giving us a recap of bits of melodies, rhythms, and key relationship we have already seen, almost like a “in last week’s episode” pre-title sequence. Yet at the heart of the movement Schubert does something extraordinary, giving us a quote from the choral finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on the woodwinds. Beethoven’s Ninth was premiered in 1824, the year before Schubert began work on this symphony, and Schubert was in the audience. By quoting the Ode to Joy theme, was Schubert acknowledging his debt to Beethoven or presenting himself as worthy to stand in succession? We may never know, but given the forward-looking nature of Schubert’s own work, history has proven him more than worthy.

The symphony was rediscovered ten years after Schubert’s passing by Robert Schumann, who brought it back with him to Leipzig, where it was finally premiered in 1839, with Felix Mendelssohn conducting. Mendelssohn found promoting the work abroad difficult, with orchestras flatly refusing to play it, with its lengthy string and woodwind passages. It was not until the late 19th century it found acceptance and began to be loved by musicians and listeners alike.

Programme notes by Edward C. Yong (Weber and Schubert) and Robert Markow (Chopin)

Instrumentation

2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, strings

World Premiere

21 Mar 1839, Leipzig

First performed by SSO

24 Apr 1981

THREE CONTINENTS CELLO CONCERTO ENERGETIC AND MODERN

Sat, 19 Aug 2023

Esplanade Concert Hall

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Yue Bao conductor

Jan Vogler cello*

BARBER

MUHLY, HELBIG & ZHOU LONG

Overture to The School for Scandal, Op. 5

8 mins

RACHMANINOFF

Three Continents Cello Concerto* Asian Premiere Intermission Symphonic Dances, Op. 45

32 mins

20 mins

35 mins

Concert Duration: approximately 1 hr 50 mins (including 20 mins intermission)

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Autograph session with Jan Vogler during intermission at the foyer, level 1.

SAMUEL BARBER (1910–1981)

Overture to The School for Scandal, Op. 5 (1931)

Samuel Barber is best known for the famous Adagio for strings, but that softly glowing piece is an outlier in his otherwise very hard-edged and colourful oeuvre. He was exposed to huge amounts of music growing up, and as a composer prodigy was already writing ambitious pieces when very young, including an operetta at age 10. He ended up attending lessons at the Curtis Institute alongside normal schooling, and this Overture, an early opus number 5, was his first completed work for orchestra.

Barber chose to shy away from the modernist experiments of the early 20th century in favour of a firmly tonal language here. The orchestration shows him to be influenced by the glittering sounds of Richard Strauss, though his particular choice of topic, the 1770s English comedy of manners by Richard Sheridan, is classical in flavour (think an English high-society version of the intrigues from the Mozart-da Ponte operas).

While Barber aimed to capture the plot of the play, he was not very successful at a musical illustration of any of its events. Rather, it is far easier to hear the bubbling humour and “buoyant gaiety” of its spirit in the music: Barber’s chosen sonata form enables its angular first subject to pit itself against the pastoral melody of the second, presented in the oboe. Fugue-like moments preempt Barber’s later masterpieces in polyphony, especially the great fugue from the Piano Sonata, and the exciting development between the two subjects launches the music into a wonderful climax followed by a long coda. The one quiet

interlude before a final fanfare is especially operatic in manner, and the triumphant cadence rubber-stamps a young composer’s entry into the American musical limelight.

Instrumentation

2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, glockenspiel, harp, celesta, strings

World Premiere

30 Aug 1933, Philadelphia

First performed by SSO

4 Apr 1997

NICO MUHLY (b. 1981)

SVEN HELBIG (b. 1968)

ZHOU LONG (b. 1953)

Three Continents Cello Concerto (2019) Asian Premiere

I II III

Cello Cycles

Aria Tipsy Poet

Art has no rules and artists have no predefined modus operandi. There is always space to do things differently and opportunities to surprise, even in centuriesold fields like that of classical music. It was in the spirit of experimentation that the world-famous cellist, Jan Vogler, commissioned the three pieces that would comprise his upcoming concerto, “I have been fortunate to premiere many concertos by wonderful composers of our time. But this upcoming project is special, it is experimental and yet it seems exactly what we should work on in the future,” says Vogler about the piece.

3 Composers - 3 Continents is a threemovement cello concerto composed by Nico Muhly, Sven Helbig and Zhou Long, commissioned and performed by Vogler. In stark contrast to most musical collaborations however, the concerto was not worked on by its composers together, but rather each movement was crafted independently from the other. Wanting to fully explore each composer’s creative freedom, Vogler set no limits or themes for the compositions he commissioned.

“When I first heard about the idea to write a movement of a concerto with two other composers writing the other two, I was deeply confused: were there going to be parameters like ‘you all must end with the

note A’ or ‘they have to be played without pause’?” remembers thinking Muhly, who has written more than 80 works for the concert stage and collaborated with, amongst others, Philip Glass and Björk. “We had no idea what the others would do. There was no exchange of ideas. I just knew that I would write the slow movement in the middle of the concerto,” says Helbig, whose previous compositions include orchestral and electronic pieces and who has worked with artists as diverse as Olga Scheps, René Pape, Rammstein and the Pet Shop Boys.

As its name suggests, 3 Composers - 3 Continents is a piece which encompasses a worldly motif informed by the diverse backgrounds of its composers; Nico Muhly is an American, Sven Helbig a German and Zhou Long a Chinese. “The cultural exchange between the US, Europe and Asia is of high importance in the 21st century. Many of us live a globalized life, but we don't know enough about the culture of the other continents,” says Vogler.

Commissioned to be premiered at the Dresden Music Festival, Vogler thought the concerto would be a fit to the festival’s 2019 theme: “Visions”. The piece certainly puts forward an innovative vision of composition given its dismembered and free-form creative process, but it also puts forward a vision of a world that celebrates diversity,

“The idea was to show that it is a wonderful thing to be deeply connected to your own culture and still to be curious and informed about the culture of your fellow humans. The 3 composers of this concerto do exactly this, each of them composes one movement entirely in their own musical language, but they share the piece with great colleagues from other continents,” explains Vogler.

3 Composers - 3 Continents not only merges national borders and cultural traditions, but also overcomes genre-boundaries, “the specific traditions from which all three of us come create a piece that feels, if not deliberately international, like a conversation between people from different places,” explains Muhly. “It happens naturally that you bring all your experiences and cultural background to the music. I am sure it will be obvious from the music, where the three of us are from,” adds Helbig.

Perhaps the most identifiable sound comes from Zhou Long, a composer who is known for bringing together in his music the aesthetic sensibilities of East and West. His movement, “Tipsy Poet”, was based on a poem by the Chinese Du Fu (712 –770 AD) and conceived as a Scherzo, “I wrote a rhythmic motive for the cello solo and a dialogue between the cello and the orchestra,” explains the Pulitzer Prize-winning musician. With his movement, Long also wanted to feature the sonority and spirit of the Guqin, an ancient Chinese sevenstringed zither.

Helbig on the other hand was inspired by the cello itself, an instrument he sees as both peaceful and “an emblem for reconciliation.” Composed as a typical Aria, Helbig wanted to let the cello sing for itself in his part. The movement was conceived with the fragility

of our political and ecological environment in mind, as well as being inspired by a “momentary reflection of how I feel in between reading the news and having a wine, Odi et Amo,” explains the German composer and music producer.

The American, Muhly, on the other hand, created with his movement something more vivacious and dynamic; a quick set of variations on a set of repeating chords. “Each variation has its own orchestral obsessions and colours, whilst the soloist remains constant: a straight line moving through antagonising brass, interrupting percussion, and a near-constant halo of higher strings,” says Muhly of his piece “Cello Cycles”.

The three different paths each composer has taken to his movement, combined with Jan Vogler’s signature soulful and rich cello performance, resulted in a concerto that is both innovative and universal, “Through cultural understanding we can overcome fear and tendencies to feel the need to protect our own culture at the expense of other humans whom we share our plate with,” says Vogler.

3 Composers - 3 Continents received its world premiere on May 18th, 2019 as part of the Dresden Music Festival, performed by Jan Vogler with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Cristian Măcelaru. Vogler subsequently took the concerto on a world tour to celebrate its nature as a truly world-encompassing project.

Programme notes courtesy of the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne.

The concerto was originally slated to be performed by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra on 28 Aug 2020. Post-pandemic, it receives its Asian premiere tonight.

Instrumentation (Cello Cycles)

2 flutes (1 doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bassoon, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, crotales, glockenspiel, vibraphone, wood blocks, güiro, roto toms, tam-tam, bass drum, harp, strings

Instrumentation (Aria)

3 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, tam-tam, chimes, bar chimes, vibraphone, glockenspiel, harp, strings

Instrumentation (Tipsy Poet)

2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, glockenspiel, xylophone, suspended cymbal, vibraphone, crotales, temple blocks, water cymbal, triangle, marimba, wood blocks, bowl chimes, opera gongs, tam-tam, mark tree, chimes, claves, wind gong, congas, bass drum, harp, strings

World Premiere

18 May 2019, Dresden

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873–1943)

Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 (1940)

I II III

Non allegro – Lento – Tempo I

Andante con moto (Tempo di valse)

Lento assai – Allegro vivace

Rachmaninoff, despite spending half of his life in America and dying in Beverly Hills, always considered himself to be “a Russian composer”, though he took pains to disclaim that he did not deliberately make efforts “to be original, or Romantic, or nationalistic, or anything else”. His music, solidly backward-

looking in a time when composers were fighting to express the psychological disruptions of the ravages of war, was solidly tonal, probably informed by his own career as one of history’s greatest-ever pianists, playing the music of the composers that came before him.

He resisted the fashions for the music of his younger countrymen, especially Stravinsky and Prokofiev, when writing for himself and for anyone else. However, something of the rhythmic insistence typical of the younger firebrands shows up in this late work by the old master, with the nervous march of the first movement and the twitchy, apocalyptic ending to the third. But if there was one thing Rachmaninoff could not resist, it was in indulging his penchant for the big tune, and the pride of place in this triptych goes to the famous alto saxophone solo: deeply steeped in Russian sentiment, and accompanied by the piano, it is a beautiful moment of chamber music in a busy score.

The second movement is full of Hollywoodian nostalgia, especially in the string writing with closely-spaced strings recalling the Golden Age cinema. Some of Rachmaninoff’s most sensuous harmony lends glamour to this decadent dance hall, flecked with woodwind arabesques and an extremely unusual viola-section solo. The increasing anxiety going into the final moments of this waltz are surprisingly foreboding. Perhaps a reference to Poe’s Masque of the Red Death? Rachmaninoff knew Poe’s stories, after all, having set a Russian translation in The Bells…

That uneasy sense blooms into open doom, with the mediaeval Dies irae quoted prominently all over the finale. There is dark magic in this music, with augmented chords flitting around ghost-like, and skeletons dancing with the bony sounds of the xylophone and tambourine. In the irregular rhythms and syncopations it is easy to hear Stravinsky, but Rachmaninoff loved the old chant all his life, and accords it the utmost respect in a formal coda that is at once incredibly cleverly composed and full

of powerful, terrifying emotion. America of 1943 could have hardly missed the tinges of death in this great composer’s final work. Rachmaninoff himself was dead two years later, only a month after finally becoming an American citizen.

Instrumentation

2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, cymbals, suspended cymbal, bass drum, tam-tam, snare drum, xylophone, glockenspiel, chimes, harp, piano, strings

World Premiere

3 Jan 1941, Philadelphia

First performed by SSO

15 Apr 1994

Programme notes by Thomas Ang (Barber and Rachmaninoff)

BLISS – MOZART'S CLARINET CONCERTO SERENITY, WIT AND NOBILITY

Fri & Sat, 25 & 26 Aug 2023

Victoria Concert Hall

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Mario Venzago conductor

Julian Bliss clarinet*

ROSSINI MOZART

Semiramide Overture

Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622*

Intermission

HAYDN

Symphony No. 100 in G major, Op. 90 “Military”

12 mins

25 mins

20 mins

24 mins

Concert Duration: approximately 1 hr 40 mins (including 20 mins intermission)

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Autograph session with Julian Bliss during intermission at the foyer, level 2. A

GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792–1868)

Semiramide Overture (1823)

Rossini, bel canto opera composer par excellence, decided to return to his roots for his final Italian opera, drawing from the vocal traditions he was familiar with from his youth as well as the new Romantic awareness of the Baroque period. Semiramide was so well received critically that some commentators consider it an extension of the Baroque opera practice; however, with its tragic topic and large orchestra, it was undoubtedly a product of the early Romantic era.

Despite its scale and Rossini’s own ambitions for the drama, it was completed in only 33 days, and featured his mistressturned-wife (Isabella Colbran) in the major role. While that speed was typical for Italian opera composers of the day, the overture was unusually enough composed last, and drew heavily from the musical material of the opera. The rhythmic opening is dark and brooding, and the passage for four horns preempts the equivalent moment in the opera proper. Rossini’s orchestration is colourful and finely balanced, with pizzicato strings supporting a beautiful oboe melody, before the Allegro section takes over and the orchestra gathers its forces into a full pelt.

Instrumentation

flute, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, strings

World Premiere of Opera

3 Feb 1823, Venice

First performed by SSO

3 Jul 1981

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791)

Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622 (1791)

I II III

Allegro Adagio Rondo. Allegro

The Clarinet Concerto was the last instrumental work Mozart completed before his death. In addition, it is the culmination of his career as “The Prince of Concerto Writers”. That it was a concerto for clarinet was doubly fitting, for this was the wind instrument Mozart had loved above all others. The Clarinet Concerto occupied him from late September to mid-October, 1791, and was written for the virtuoso clarinettist Anton Stadler, Mozart’s friend, fellow Freemason, and member of the court orchestra.

Mozart’s love affair with the clarinet goes back a long way. His awakening to the beauty of the instrument began probably in 1777/78, when he was visiting Mannheim and heard clarinets in the orchestra there. “You cannot imagine the glorious effect of a symphony with flutes, oboes and clarinets”, he wrote to his father.

This sublimely beautiful work has enchanted generations of listeners, yet few realise that the form in which they know is a significantly altered version of Mozart’s original. Stadler had in his possession an instrument now called the basset clarinet (not the same as the basset horn, an alto member of the clarinet family required in the Requiem, among other works). This basset clarinet could play four semitones lower than the conventional clarinet in A, and Mozart exploited this extended low register to the fullest. But the instrument quickly went out of fashion, and by the time the first printed editions appeared (first decade of the 19th

century), the solo part had already been adapted for the standard instrument.

Whether the concerto is heard on a modern or a period instrument, connoisseurs and neophytes alike will appreciate the qualities that have raised this concerto not only to the summit of the repertory for this instrument, but to the pantheon of Mozart’s very greatest masterpieces. The enormous variety of tone colours, the subtle dynamic shadings, the liquid smooth lines, the beguiling melodies, the way Mozart exploits all registers of the solo instrument, and the air of tenderness and serenity that suffuses the work.

The concerto opens with a theme of utmost simplicity and gentle sentiment. The sense of airy lightness that pervades the movement, even in moments of melancholy, can be attributed in part to the exquisite

“You cannot imagine the glorious effect of a symphony with flutes, oboes and clarinets”

refinements of the scoring. Cellos often play without the supporting double basses, and flutes play a prominent role while oboes are absent altogether. The ravishingly beautiful slow movement, in the words of Alec Hyatt King, “seems to reflect the timeless and beatific vision of a mind at peace with itself”. The finale is a rondo based on a dancelike theme that seems to transcend joy, as if smiling through the tears.

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732–1809)

Instrumentation

2 flutes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings

World Premiere

16 Oct 1791, Prague

First performed by SSO

14 Jul 1979 (David Lewis, clarinet)

Symphony No. 100 in G major “Military” (1793)

I II III IV

Adagio – Allegro

Allegretto

Menuet. Moderato

Presto

The eighth of 12 “London symphonies” written by Haydn, the nickname comes from the prominent trumpet fanfares in the second movement and at the end of the finale, which is also coupled with a battery of percussion effects. With the auxiliary sounds of the triangle and cymbals augmenting a standard late-Classical orchestra, this was an easy association to make; one reviewer even commented after the premiere on how Haydn managed to evoke the “hellish roar of war”!

Opening with a slow introduction, Haydn gives no clue of the drama to come, and the first movement itself is cast in sonata form. While that may be the case, Haydn’s choice of only flutes and oboes for the opening theme of the Allegro proper is a mark of how sensitive he was to orchestral effects. He also enjoyed playing around with audience expectations of the form, and here the second subject is delayed to come in well after the expected key change occurs. There are several other unexpected harmonic

eruptions to come over the course of this movement, and set the stage for further dramatic happenings in the rest of the symphony.

The second movement is even more richly scored than the first. Haydn reuses some music that he had previously written for the King of Naples, but the divided violas and the clarinets lend the music some additional polyphonic meat. When the music turns toward the minor, the military percussion makes an appearance; a further innovation occurs when Haydn tacks on a long coda with a big outburst and even calls for the timpani to be rolled, a new technique at the time.

Elegance returns to the fore with the highmannered minuet, contrasting with the dramatic A-flat major that came before. However, the chromaticisms have taken their toll on the music, and the finale, though ostensibly chirpy in manner at the outset, is dragged through some incredibly far-flung

keys in a wild development section. The military percussion returns, insisting on joining the orchestral tuttis, and the piece ends with some G major chest-thumping, as if insisting on victory.

Programme notes by Thomas Ang (Rossini and Haydn) and Robert Markow (Mozart)

Instrumentation

2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, strings

World Premiere

31 Mar 1794, London

First performed by SSO

1 Feb 1991

To Our Donor Patrons

We would like to express our deepest appreciation to the following individuals and organisations who support our mission to create memorable shared experiences with music in the past year.

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In July 2017, the SSO established the GK Goh Chair for the Concertmaster. Mr Goh Geok Khim and his family have been long-time supporters of the national orchestra. We are grateful for the donations from his family and friends towards this Chair, especially Mr and Mrs Goh Yew Lin for their most generous contribution.

Mr Igor Yuzefovich was the inaugural GK Goh Concertmaster Chair from July 2017 to June 2018. The position is currently vacant.

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In recognition of a generous gift from The HEAD Foundation, we announced the naming of our Principal Cello, “The HEAD Foundation Chair” in November 2019. The Chair is currently held by Principal Cellist Ng Pei-Sian.

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For more information, please write to director_development@sso.org.sg.

JIN TA PRINCIPAL FLUTE

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GAO JIAN ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL HORN

BOARD OF DIRECTORS & COMMITTEES

CHAIR

Goh Yew Lin

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DVOŘÁK’S RUSALKA

JEONG AE REE

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JOYCE LEE TUNG

REBECCA CHELLAPPAH Ježibaba

ASHLEY CHUA, RACHEL ONG, WEN-YU TSENG

Sprites

PREMIERE NIGHT TICKETS (W/ RECEPTION): $480, $280, $180 FOR RESERVATIONS PLEASE EMAIL INFO@NEWOPERA.SG For more information visit

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ORGAN

Acoustic Shock – An Organ and Electronic Music Spectacular

Sun 20 Aug, 4pm

Anne Maria Lim organ Benjamin Ang electronic music producer

INTIMATE MOMENTS

琴云秋乐 Nocturne

Tue 12 Sep, 7.30pm

Wed 13 Sep, 7.30pm

Yao

Musicians

SCAN TO BOOK

ORGAN

Unboxing the Organ with Dr

Phoon Yu and the Lorong Boys

Sun 1 Oct, 4pm

Phoon Yu organ

The Lorong Boys

CHAMBER

Leonidas Kavakos in Recital

Sun 15 Oct, 4pm

Leonidas Kavakos violin

Enrico Pace piano

All concerts are held at the Victoria Concert Hall unless otherwise stated.

Xiao Yun piano

of the SSO

Victoria Concert Hall Dance Studio

This programme features conversations in Mandarin only.

The mission of the Singapore Symphony Group is to create memorable shared experiences with music. Through the SSO and its affiliated per forming groups, we spread the love for music, nur ture talent and enrich our diverse communities. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra is a charity and not-for-profit organisation. You can suppor t us by donating at www.sso.org.sg/donate.

Stephen Riady Group of Foundations