SCO30 Opening Gala

Singapore Chinese OrchestraSingapore Conference HallJuly 18, 7.30pm

The programme of Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s 30th anniversary opening gala concert, led by principal conductor Quek Ling Kiong, was kept secret from all who attended up to the moment it began. The works had been selected based on audience feedback, a sample of what they wanted to hear most.

Surprising was the fact that most of the music was less than totally familiar or populist. Instead it was representative of repertoire SCO performed during its early years when led by conductors like Hu Bingxu and Xia Feiyun.

The Overture from Shang Yi’s The Dagger Society Suite, arranged by Sim Boon Yew, opened the show. Resplendent suonas backed by percussion fronted this celebratory number from the 1989 folk-dance opera.

Ma Shenglong and Gu Guanren’s Fisherman’s Song Of The Eastern Seas was a symphonic poem relating the toils, trials and tribulations of fisher-folk. Its conjoint sections depicted dawn with an evocative dizi solo, the outward journey with lyrical songlines, a proverbial storm to be weathered, before the emphatic triumph of a bountiful harvest.

Academy Award winner Tan Dun’s Yellow Earth followed with similarly programmatic content. The highly cinematic music opened dramatically with Raining From The Sky, lots of percussion, a plangent suona solo and vocalisations from the musicians. Gate Crashing The Bridal Chamber was suitably raucous, while Desiring Intimacy saw dizis and erhus expressing sensuousness in the highest registers. Coming back down to earth was Stone-Slab Waist Drum, with martial and ceremonial music dominated by percussion again.