VCHpresents Chamber: Endless Sound

ENDLESS SOUND

SUN 9 FEB 2020 VICTORIA CONCERT HALL

PROGRAMME YAN HAI DENG Tunes of Jin Opera 晋调

5 mins

MAO YUAN, LIU TIE SHAN (arr. Steenbrink) A Legend from Yao 瑶族舞曲

6 mins

ZHANG JING PING (arr. Jiang Yi Wen) Harvest Celebration 庆丰收

4 mins

J.S. BACH (arr. Steenbrink) Andante from Violin Sonata No. 2, BWV 1003

4 mins

VIVALDI (arr. Wu Wei & Steenbrink) Sonata Op. 1 No. 12 “La Folia”

10 mins

- Intermission -

20 mins

HUANG RUO The Colour Yellow (2007)

22 mins

SHAHANKUN (arr. Jiang Yi Wen) Shepherd Song 牧歌

5 mins

CHONG KEE YONG Remembering of the Old Fishing Village 老渔港的回忆 Commissioned by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra

8 mins

NIE ER (arr. Wu Wei) Dragon Dance 金蛇狂舞

5 mins

- Autograph Session -

SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA MUSICIANS

Violin Duan Yu Ling Hai Won Kwok Kong Xian Long Cindy Lee Karen Tan Wu Man Yun Ye Lin Zhang Si Jing Viola Marietta Ku Julia Park Janice Tsai Wang Dandan Cello Ng Pei-Sian Guo Hao Chan Wei Shing Soon Woon Teng Double Bass Karen Yeo Guennadi Mouzyka

Flute/Piccolo Roberto Alvarez Oboe Rachel Walker Clarinet Li Xin Bassoon Christoph Wichert Horn/Conch Jamie Hersch Trumpet/Conch David Smith Trombone/Conch Damian Patti Percussion Mark Suter Mario Choo Piano/Celesta Shane Thio

WU WEI SHENG Sheng virtuose Wu Wei, has performed with leading orchestras and ensembles such as the Berliner, New York, London and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras, BBC Symphony, BBC Scottish Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony, Radio France Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble intercontemporain, Ensemble 2e2m with such conductors as Jaap van Zweden, Kent Nagano, Gustavo Dudamel, Marin Alsop, Myung Whun Chung, Susanna Malkki, Ilan Volkov, Markus Stenz and Matthias Pintscher etc.

He has appeared at a number of prestigious festivals and venues world wide, including the BBC Proms, Paris Autumn Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, Berliner

Festspiele, Warsaw Autumn, Musica nova Helsinki; the Berlin Philharmonie, Royal Albert Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Gewandhaus in Leipzig and Theatre du Chatelet in Paris.

He has given world premieres of 400 works, 20 concertos for sheng and orchestra by composers John Cage, Unsuk Chin, Jukka Tiensuu, Toshio Hosokawa, Enjott Schneider, Guus Janssen, Bernd Richard Deutsch, Ondrej Adamek, Liza Lim, Ruo Huang etc. As a prolific composer for Sheng, he has received composition commissions from the foundation Royaumont, Civitella Ranieri foundation New York and several other institutions.

He is a winner of the German music competition Musica Vitale, German

JOSHUA TAN CONDUCTOR

Global Root, German Record Critics Award, Edinburgh International Festival’s Herald Angels prize and Best Sheng Soloist Award China in 2017. He has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, Harmonia Mundi and Wergo. His recording Unsuk Chin: 3 Concertos (Deutsche Grammophon) garnered the International Classical Music Award and BBC Music Magazine Award in 2015. With “his extraordinary virtuosity” (the Guardian) his performance was one of the highlights at the BBC Proms in 2014.

He studied at Shanghai Music Conservatory and Hanns Eisler Academy Berlin with a DAAD scholarship. He has developed the ancient instrument into an innovative force in contemporary music. www.wuwei-music.com

Joshua Tan was Second Prize winner of the Mitropoulos International Competition and received the Young Artist Award Singapore, Bruno Walter Memorial Foundation Award, NACShell and the SSO/MOE Scholarship.

For an unprecedented two years running, his performances of Bernstein’s Mass and Don Pasquale were selected by The Straits Times as the best classical concert of the year in 2018 and 2019.

Joshua has conducted the Mariinsky Theater, Beethoven Bonn, Tokyo Philharmonic, Sapporo Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Taipei Symphony, China Philharmonic Orchestras amongst others. His vast repertory cover symphonic, operatic, ballet, film and multimedia works.

Presently Associate Conductor of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Principal Conductor of the Singapore National Youth Orchestra and Director of the Asia Virtuosi. He has served successful stints as Resident Conductor of the NCPA (China) Orchestra, and Principal Conductor of the Guiyang Symphony Orchestra.

A graduate of the Juilliard School, he studied with James DePreist and Charles Dutoit.

PROGRAMME NOTES

The Colour Yellow 玄黃 (2007)

by Huang Ruo Sheng, the Chinese mouth organ and a thousand-year-old traditional instrument in China, is often referred to be the ancestor of the Western organ. The modern sheng contains 37 bamboo pipes, ranging from G3 to G6, four complete octaves with every chromatic pitch in between.

Composer Huang Ruo has been lauded by The New York Times for having “a distinctive style.” His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz to create a seamless, organic integration using a compositional technique he calls “Dimensionalism.” His music has been premiered and performed by the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, National Polish Radio Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Asko/ Schoenberg, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta. Huang Ruo’s music is published by Ricordi. www.huangruo.com

Creating a concerto for a Western orchestra with a Chinese solo instrument is not an easy task. My challenge was to mix these very different instruments from both the Eastern and Western worlds into one united whole, as they not only sound quite different, but also tune differently. One of my solutions is to detune the Eastern and Western instruments and to use sounds between pitches, then melt them into a big pot to create a common ground for them to express their own character and identity freely.

The title for my Concerto for Sheng and Chamber Orchestra is The Colour Yellow. In Chinese, 玄黃. 玄黃 means a gate, something hidden inside it, many paths that could lead to an entirely different journey.

However, one can only take on such a journey by passing through the same entrance. The very same gate, in this concerto, is the ancient Chinese sheng. The solo sheng not only guides the orchestra but also the listeners going through its various stages and worlds. Yellow is the colour of skin, yellow is the Yellow Earth, the Yellow River, the Yellow Mountain. It is a work that echoes the past, spells the present, and foresees the future.

The Colour Yellow: Concerto for Sheng and Chamber Orchestra, composed for sheng virtuoso Wu Wei, is scored for solo sheng, with flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, two percussions, piano, and a string ensemble. The entire piece runs about 22 minutes, and has three sections, which should be played in succession.

Remembering of the Old Fishing Village 老渔港的回忆

by Chong Kee Yong When I was young, my father occasionally brought me and my siblings to a small fishing village in South Malaysia’s Johor, Kukup, where you will be able to see Singapore from. My father told me about the old days of Singapore when it was also a fishing village but later developed into a metropolitan city-country. It is important to remember that amidst the rapid development of a country, we must avoid losing our history, culture and natural environments.

In this work, I depict the daily life of a fishing village, in a hope to bring back the memory of a lost old fishing village.

Upon receiving the commission, there were discussions on employing popular folk tunes from Singapore into the work. Two popular Malay tunes "Dayung Sampan" and “Lenggang kangkung" were identified to represent the old fishing villages of Singapore. These two main folk tunes are hidden in the parts written for the string orchestra. The sheng represents a fisherman rowing his boat out to sea to fish.

This work is dedicated to Mr Wu Wei and in memory of my mentor Prof.

Chou Wen-Chung who passed away on 25 Oct 2019 while I was composing this work.

Dr. CHONG Kee Yong, one of Malaysia’s leading contemporary music composers, possesses one of the most exciting voices in new music today. His work has been hailed as “imaginative and poetic” by leading conductor-composer Peter Eötvös, and “very inventive and artistically pure” by composer Jonathan Harvey. The uniqueness of his music stems not only from a rich palette of sounds, but his experimentation into traditions, infusing his own Chinese and multi-cultural Malaysian heritage into his work.

Dr. Chong's distinctive style has won him many awards and commissions: Prix Marcel Hastir, 2nd Seoul International Competition, Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra International Composers' Award, Lutoslawski Award, BMW Award of Isang Yun Music Prize, the commission grant award by the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation, "The Outstanding Young Malaysian Award" and many others. He is the creative director of Studio C, President of the Society of Malaysian Contemporary Composers (2017-2019) and was the artistic director of the 2009 Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival and SMCC Contemporary Music Festival “SoundBridge” in 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019. www.chongkeeyong-studio-c.com

2019/20 Season

ORGAN

ORGAN, FRANร AIS 24 Feb, 12.30pm

INTIMATE MOMENTS

Franรงois Espinasse, organ SUPPORTED BY the Singapore Chapter of the American Guild of Organists Pre-registration is required.

CHAMBER

SONGS OF NOSTALGIA 29 Mar, 4pm Zhou Zhengzhong, baritone Lim Yan, piano

SUPPORTED BY

THE COLOURFUL WORLD OF ANIMALS 20 Mar, 7.30pm

Cindy Lee, violin Musicians of the SSO Conversations for this concert will be conducted in Mandarin.

BAROQUE FESTIVAL 11 Apr, 7.30PM 12 Apr, 4pm

Bojan Cicic, violin/conductor Musicians of the SSO Open rehearsal: 11 Apr, 10am. Free admission.

SUPPORTED BY

sso.org.sg/VCHpresents

PATRON SPONSOR