SSO BAROQUE FES TIVAL
1 Nov 2024
Victoria Concert Hall
Water Music Sweet
1 Nov 2024
Programme
Handel
Water Music Suite No. 1 in F major, HWV 348
35 mins
J.C. Bach
Symphony in G minor, Op. 6 No. 6
13 mins
Intermission
20 mins
Handel
Concerto Grosso in G major, Op. 6 No. 1
12 mins
C.P.E. Bach
Symphony in E-flat major, Wq 179
12 mins
Concert Duration: 1 hr 30 mins (including 20 mins intermission)
Willi Zimmermann leader/violin
Born in Basel, Willi Zimmermann first took violin lessons at the age of six. In 1978 he gained admission to Sandor Zöldy’s class and eventually attained his teaching and concert diploma with distinction. A scholarship gave him the opportunity to pursue his studies with Sandor Végh and Günter Pichler.
From 1985 to 2007, Zimmermann was leader of the internationally acclaimed Amati Quartet.
He was the Principal Concertmaster of the Musikkollegium Winterthur orchestra from 1992 to 2010, and is currently Concertmaster of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, a position he has held since 2008. Zimmermann has collaborated with renowned artistes such as Krystian Zimerman, Fazil Say, András Schiff, Rudolf Buchbinder,
Heinrich Schiff, Thomas Zehetmair, Sir James Galway and Pinchas Zukerman. He has also performed as co-soloist with Daniel Hope, Giuliano Carmignola, Patricia Kopatchinskaja and many others. Zimmermann also leads the Berlin Baroque Soloists as Guest Concertmaster.
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 with its 44-week calendar of events. The SSO is led by Music Director Hans Graf, the third in the orchestra’s history after Lan Shui (1997–2019) and Choo Hoey (1979–1996).
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 over 50 recordings, culminating in its 3rd place win in the prestigious Gramophone Orchestra of the Year Award 2021. In 2022, BBC Music Magazine named the SSO as one of the 23 best orchestras in the world.
The SSO performs over 60 concerts a year at such venues as the Esplanade Concert Hall and Victoria Concert Hall in Singapore. Bridging the musical traditions of East and West, Singaporean and Asian musicians and composers are regularly showcased in its concert seasons. Its versatile repertoire spans all-time favourites and orchestral masterpieces to exciting cutting-edge premieres.
The SSO is part of the Singapore Symphony Group, which also manages the Singapore Symphony Choruses, the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, the Singapore International Piano Festival and the biennial National Piano & Violin Competition.
Baroque Festival: Water Music Sweet
The Orchestra
Violin/Leader
Willi Zimmermann
First Violin
Kong Zhao Hui
William Tan
Cindy Lee
Kong Xianlong
Wei Zhe
Zhang Si Jing
Jin Li
Second Violin
Zhao Tian
Sayuri Kuru
Yin Shu Zhan
Hai-Won Kwok
Wu Man Yun
Viola
Guan Qi
Luo Biao
Julia Park
Janice Tsai
Cello
Ng Pei-Sian
Jamshid Saydikarimov
Song Woon Teng
Wang Yan
Zhao Yu Er
Double Bass
Karen Yeo
Wang Xu
Oboe
Rachel Walker
Elaine Yeo
Bassoon
Guo Siping Horn
Jamie Hersch
Bryan Chong
Harpsichord
Shane Thio
George Frideric Handel
1685–1759
Water Music Suite No. 1 in F major, HWV 348
Overture
Adagio e staccto
Allegro
Andante [Presto]
Air
Minuet
Bourrée
Hornpipe
Allergo moderato
Dealing with quirky clients is nothing new to composers and musicians, so when King George I requested an evening concert on the River Thames, Handel and his musicians must have rolled their eyes inwardly. The opera company Handel had banked on working for had just closed down, and its orchestra jobless, so they were really in no position to refuse, so he dutifully produced three suites of light orchestral movements.
These were premiered on 17 July 1717, when a royal barge sailed upstream from Whitehall to Chelsea at 8 pm., accompanied by another barge with 50 musicians. Many Londoners came out to hear the music, which played continuously while the king’s barge was moving – the king was so pleased he ordered it repeated at least thrice. The only break was when the king went ashore at Chelsea, but otherwise the orchestra played continuously from 8 pm until well after half-past-four in the morning when the royal barge arrived back at Whitehall. No records survive of the musicians’ reactions to the long hours (more than eight hours of service—what would the union say!), the bobbing barge, the
humidity, or the difficulty of playing to candlelight in the summer night, but one imagines they were rather relieved when the event was over. They could not have imagined the work they premiered to become one of the most popular works in the repertoire some 300 years later.
“
Handel adds the classic English hornpipe—reminding his audience he now has a British passport!
Handel had managed to absorb the French, German, and Italian styles in his travels around Europe, and now settled in London, composed music that feels quintessentially English. Even the courtly minuet and French bourée, with continental origins, manage to sound English thanks to Handel’s magical touch. The Suite in F prominently features horns, which appear in English orchestras outside of the opera for the first time. One imagines the British audiences thinking ‘What was that funny instrument we heard? Hunting horns… but playing tunes instead of hunting calls!’. The Suite begins with the obligatory grand Overture, followed by an assortment of pretty slow movements and traditional dances, before ending with jubilant music. To these dances, Handel adds the classic English hornpipe—reminding his audience he now has a British passport!
Was this all just muzak to accompany a royal pleasure trip? Hardly. King George I, who had only been crowned a few years ago, had always had a poor relationship with his son George Augustus, Prince of Wales (later King George II). The Prince of Wales had constantly encouraged opposition to his father’s policies, and now they were not on talking terms. To make things worse, an opposing political faction was gathering around Prince George, who was throwing lavish parties and dinners to win support. What was poor daddy to do?
The answer was optics. Make a big public splash: throw a lavish party with A-list musical entertainment. That was what the whole river spectacle was all about—to have elegant and organized music in a barge towing behind the royal one, where the king sat with his two mistresses and watched the world, which in turn watched them. This was the king’s way of making his son look bad and reminding London that he could give bigger parties.
With the bold and stately accompaniment of Handel’s music, the king’s move appears to have worked—he reigned ten more years in peace, leaving Britain securely in the hands of the Hanoverian dynasty and of Parliament.
SSO Baroque Festival: Water Music Sweet
Johann Christian Bach
Symphony in G minor, Op. 6 No. 6
1735–1782
Allegro
Andante più tosto adagio
Allegro molto
In music history, we learn that the Baroque period is followed by the Classical, which is followed by the Romantic, and so on. Some composers fall neatly into periods but in reality, few things in life are so clear cut, and as with all historical matters, the closer one examines the evidence, the murkier things become. The Baroque was roughly 1600–1760, while the Classical was roughly 1730–1820, making for some 30 years of overlap. Composers did not wake up one day thinking ‘the Baroque is over, so we are now in the Classical and will compose in a different style’. Musical styles changed gradually, and like historical periods, defy categorization into neat discrete boxes. While they present objects of terror for music students writing essays, often it is the transitional composers straddling styles that provide the greatest interest, showing how a period dovetails neatly and seamlessly into the next.
Johann Christian Bach was the youngest son of the famous Johann Sebastian Bach and trained under him till his death, thereafter from his elder brother Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, eventually moving to Milan to study with Padre Martini and converting to Catholicism, becoming organist at Milan Cathedral and dabbled in Italian opera.
Bach found stardom in London, becoming music master to Queen Charlotte and earning the nickname ‘London Bach’. “
A decade later he found stardom in London and settled in England, becoming music master to Queen Charlotte and earning the nickname ‘London Bach’. There, in the fashionable heart of London, he joined forces with a fellow German expatriate composer Karl Friedrich Abel, and together they performed concerti, operas, and popularised a new genre: the symphony. This symphony was an Italian-style symphony, in three movements fast-slow-fast, often used as an overture and entr’acte in operas. It was in this form that the early Haydn and young Mozart wrote their symphonies, before the genre became the four-movement creature now considered the standard.
In 1770, J.C. Bach published his Six Symphonies, Op. 6, and these were products of that transitional age between the Baroque and Classical periods, often called galant. J.C. Bach’s symphonies clearly push the boundaries and have features both of Baroque and Classical styles, though leaning towards the latter. The Symphony in G minor, Op. 6 No. 6, would have been performed at the
enormously popular Bach-Abel concert series in the 1760s–70s.
The Allegro starts with an energetic sturm und drang tempest, full of angular unisons, wild leaps, tremolos, and it is not hard to see the beginnings of what was to come with Haydn and Mozart later. An Andante follows, the longest movement of the work, moving us into C minor. The music is gentle, but unease is never far away. The storm after the calm returns in the Allegro molto, full of the same energy from the first movement, but despite its intensity it subsides as suddenly as it began.
George Frideric Handel
1685–1759
Concerto Grosso in G major, Op. 6 No. 1
I II III
A tempo giusto
Allegro
Adagio
IV V
Allegro
Allegro
Another German expatriate in London, Georg Frideric Handel was a jack of all trades but managed to master them all. From opera to oratorios, from Latin motets to coronation anthems, from solo sonatas to concerti grossi, Handel could make to perfection anything a patron wanted. No surprise then, that he was the darling of London’s fashionable set and beloved by the king.
In 1741, the London publisher John Walsh produced Twelve Grand Concertos in Seven Parts, for four Violins, a Tenor, a Violoncello, with a Thorough-Bass for the Harpsichord. Compos'd by Mr. Handel. This was what we now call the 12 Concerti Grossi, Op. 6., and was sold to subscribers at the sum of 2 guineas each. There were 20 shillings to a pound, while a guinea was 21 shillings or £1.05 in decimal notation. Why the pricing in guineas? The guinea had an aristocratic overtone, and so professional fees (medical, legal, etc), prices of land, horses, fine art, bespoke tailoring, luxury furniture and suchlike were quoted in guineas. Till this day, the prices of racehorses at UK auctions are still quoted in guineas, the 5% difference being the auctioneer’s commission. Walsh thought of himself as a purveyor of fine goods, and Handel’s works were the very best.
Our Op. 6 No. 1 begins A tempo giusto (a just tempo), stately but poised, like a procession of nobles, the concertini group alternating with the ripieni. Excitement builds with the Allegro, swirling strings like a crowd of cheering onlookers waving, and unpredictably it all ends calmly. An Adagio bring some peace from the crowd, as if we have entered a cool and calm cathedral, leaving the crowds outside. This movement features some particularly beautiful writing for the string soloists. The festivities inside the cathedral start in the Allegro, with what seems to be the beginnings of a fugue but Handel subverts our expectations by not giving us strict counterpoint, instead presenting fascinating conversations, and surprises us with a quiet ending as if to tease us. Having toyed with our expectations, he supplies the expected dessert in the form of the final Allegro, where call-and-response motifs echo prominently between the soloists and ensemble.
SSO Baroque Festival: Water Music Sweet
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Symphony in E-flat major, Wq 179 1714–1788
III
Prestissimo Larghetto
Presto
Probably the best known of the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach lived and worked in Berlin for 30 years, gaining the nickname ‘Berlin Bach’ to differentiate him from his brother Johann Christian ‘London Bach’. During his time in Berlin from 1738–1768, he served the Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia (later King Frederick the Great) as harpsichordist of the court orchestra. His duties included accompanying his sovereign as the prince played flute sonatas of his own composition—Bach seems to have thought very little both of the prince’s flute playing and composing (Frederick wrote 121 flute sonatas and four flute concerti). While chafing at being little more than a household utility, he wrote the two-volume Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments (1753–1762), generally regarded as the first methodical, practical treatise on the subject, as well as hundreds of musical works, including several string symphonies (Wq. 173–181).
Like the symphonies of his brother Johann Christian, C.P.E. Bach’s symphonies are in the Italian three-movement format. The Symphony in E-flat major, Wq 179 was written in 1757, making it roughly contemporaneous with the earliest known of Haydn’s
compositions, but what a difference! The opening Prestissimo has much more excitement than Haydn’s works of the same period. Bubbling over with energy yet never losing his poise, Bach alternates passages of motion with bold contrasting breaks for us to catch our breath before taking it away again—is this a call to arms?
A charged Larghetto follows, like an uneasy sleepless night before a major event.
The Presto, with its horn calls, wakes us up for the main event—the hunt! A jaunty but steady ride through the forest shows us plenty of thematic variety while keeping to the unchanging rhythmic pattern. What was Bach chasing in his mind? Perhaps his freedom—which he finally gained in 1768 after protracted negotiations, moving to Hamburg, becoming Telemann’s successor as kapellmeister and ‘Hamburg Bach’. In Hamburg he was to have 20 more productive years, churning out masterpieces, including his oratorio Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu (The Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus) which was eventually performed in Vienna, conducted by the young Mozart in 1788, shortly before Bach’s death.
Programme notes by Edward C. Yong
Upcoming concerts at the Victoria Concert Hall
Beethoven with James Ehnes and Lawrence Renes
8 & 9 Nov 2024 I 7.30pm
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Lawrence Renes conductor
James Ehnes violin
Mozart with Rodolfo Barráez and Austin Larson
22 Nov 2024 I 7.30pm
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Rodolfo Barráez Associate Conductor
Austin Larson horn
Gloria!
29 & 30 Nov 2024 I 7.30pm
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Singapore Symphony Youth Choir
Singapore Symphony Children’s Choir
Stephen Layton conductor
Wong Lai Foon Choirmaster
