Red Balloon Series: Reich in 60 Minutes

REICH IN 60 MINUTES 12 JANUARY 2019 VICTORIA CONCERT HALL BRAD LUBMAN, CONDUCTOR PAUL COLEMAN, SOUND DESIGNER

Since its founding in 1979, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) has been Singapore’s flagship orchestra, touching lives through classical music and providing the heartbeat of the cultural scene in the cosmopolitan city-state. In addition to its subscription series concerts, the orchestra is well-loved for its outdoor and community appearances, and its significant role educating the young people of Singapore. The SSO has also earned an international reputation for its orchestral virtuosity, having garnered sterling reviews for its overseas tours and many successful recordings. The SSO has collaborated with such great artists as Lorin Maazel, Charles Dutoit, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Diana Damrau, Martha Argerich, Lang Lang, Yo-Yo Ma, Janine Jansen, Leonidas Kavakos and Gil Shaham.

The SSO is part of the Singapore Symphony Group, which also manages the Singapore Symphony Choruses, and the Singapore National Youth Orchestra. 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 Singapore’s diverse communities.

BRAD LUBMAN conductor

Brad Lubman, American conductor and composer, has been widely recognised for his versatility, commanding technique and insightful interpretations. He is much in demand with major orchestras in Europe and the USA, including foremost ensembles for contemporary music, such as the Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta and Steve Reich and Musicians. Last season Lubman was featured at Grafenegg Festival as conductor, composer and teacher. As part of his residency he led the Tonkünstler Orchestra, as well as the world premiere of his Reflections for orchestra.

Lubman is Associate Professor of Conducting and Ensembles at the Eastman School of Music, and a faculty member at the Bangon-a-Can Summer Institute. He is founding Co-Artistic and Music Director of the NY-based Ensemble Signal. Their recording of Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians on Harmonia Mundi was awarded a Diapason d’or in June 2015.

Steve Reich is one of the greatest composers of our time. Many of his works have had a profound influence on many generations of musicians in a variety of genres. On tonight’s program, Pulse (2015) shows the contemplative and poignant side of Reich. City Life (1995) is in some ways more typical Reich, interesting in its use of sampled sounds recorded in New York City. Sounds of subways, horns, machines, and speech become the thematic material, or in some cases are used as decorative counterpoint. Steve Reich has said his main influences are Bach, Stravinsky, Bartok, and Coltrane. Therefore it seemed fitting to program Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste (1936), not only because it was composed the same year that Reich was born, but mostly because it remains one of the greatest works of that period in the 20th century. – Brad Lubman

SSO MUSICIANS FIRST VIOLIN

FLUTE

Olivia de Prato^ Concertmaster Kong Zhao Hui* Associate Concertmaster Chan Yoong-Han Fixed Chair Cao Can* Chen Da Wei Jin Li William Tan Wei Zhe

Jin Ta Principal Miao Shanshan

SECOND VIOLIN Michael Loh Associate Principal Hai-Won Kwok Fixed Chair Chikako Sasaki* Margit Saur Shao Tao Tao Xu Jue Yi* Zhang Si Jing* Zhao Tian*

VIOLA Zhang Manchin Principal Gu Bing Jie* Fixed Chair Julia Park Wang Dandan

CELLO Ng Pei-Sian Principal Yu Jing Associate Principal Guo Hao Fixed Chair Wang Zihao*

OBOE Rachel Walker Principal Carolyn Hollier

CLARINET Li Xin Associate Principal Tang Xiao Ping

TIMPANI Christian Schiøler Principal

PERCUSSION Jonathan Fox Principal Mark Suter Associate Principal Dutchie Prempree^ Zhu Zheng Yi

HARP Gulnara Mashurova Principal

PIANO Aya Sakou^ Shane Thio^

CELESTA Aya Sakou^

DOUBLE BASS

ELECTRIC BASS

Guennadi Mouzyka Principal Karen Yeo Fixed Chair Olga Alexandrova Jacek Mirucki

Guennadi Mouzyka

SAMPLER Joel Nah^ Clarence Lee^

*With deep appreciation to the Rin Collection for their generous loan of string instruments. ^Musician on temporary contract Musicians listed alphabetically by family name rotate their seats on a per programme basis.

REICH IN 60 MINUTES Minimalism is a late 20th century movement that rose in reaction to the complex intellectualism of modern art.

It’s tempting to say that minimalism = “simple”. But that would be simplistic. To understand minimalism, compare it to traditional music that attempts to evoke a feeling, story or complete a symphonic purpose. Minimalism sidesteps these and asks us to focus on a specific, often singular musical process, as if studying the concept. That by reducing the score to a musical essay on, say, rhythm or harmony, we are invited to concentrate on just this one idea.

Photo: luke stackpoole

STEVE REICH (b. 1936) Steve Reich is without doubt one of America’s greatest composers, and certainly, her greatest living one. Although closely associated with the minimalist movement, his music encompasses a wide range of structures, harmonies and rhythms from across Western and non-Western music. His sound world immediately evokes the hypnotic pulse, wide wonder and incessant buzz of modernity today. He created music out of spoken word and rhythm before rap existed.

His treatment of rhythm is the apotheosis of pattern in music. In his “Phase Music”, Reich explored the idea of a repeating musical phrase on two or more instruments, gradually going out of phase, transforming from echo into complex reverberating layers, before shifting back into unison. The concept is simple, the result is spellbinding, and the exercise is symphonic.

PULSE Pulse (2015) 2 flutes, 2 clarinets piano electric bass 4 violins, 2 violas

World Premiere: 1 Nov 2016, New York

Premiered as part of his 80th birthday celebrations at the Carnegie Hall, New York, on 1 Nov 2016, Reich’s Pulse begins with a shimmering melody on strings, flutes and clarinets – luminous and searching in quality. Before long, a rhythmic pattern begins on the piano, soon taken up by electric bass, creating a hypnotic – and frankly quite tranquil – pulse. Above this throbbing, the melody makes its point over a gleaming 16-minute arc. The insistent melody is woven at times in canon (different instruments starting at different times), at times together, at times in imitation, resulting in interweaving patterns and oscillating lines that radiate and coalesce like a kaleidoscope.

Pulse’s premiere recording on the Nonesuch label was released on 2 Feb 2018, and tonight’s performance is its Singapore premiere.

CITY LIFE City Life (1995)

As the name suggests, City Life encapsulates the buzz and hum, lights and signs, horns and engines, and the noise and voice of the urban mechano-cultural cityscape.

2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets

Just as electricity transformed the city, electronics have changed the possibilities of sound in music. Using the sampling keyboard (essentially, an electronic keyboard loaded with selected recorded sounds), Reich uses a plethora of city sounds as part of the orchestra in City Life: speech, car horns, door slams, air brakes, subway chimes, a pile driver, car alarms, heartbeats, boat horns, buoys, fire and police sirens – many recorded by Reich himself in New York.

2 pianos, 2 samplers (synthesizers), 2 vibraphones snare drum, cymbals, gong, bass drum 2 violins, viola, cello, double bass

all instruments amplified except percussion

The five movements, named after a sample used in each, are:

World Premiere:

Check it out Pile driver/alarms It’s been a honeymoon—can’t take no mo’ Heartbeats/boats and buoys Heavy smoke

7 Mar 1995, Lorraine, France

The first, third and fifth movements use speech samples, while the second and fourth employ the sound samples as rhythmic devices. Speech is played as instrument, and instrument is voiced as speech. The last movement, “Heavy Smoke”, uses snippets of field communications from the New York Fire Department during the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center:

"Heavy smoke" "stand by, stand by" "it’s full ‘a smoke" "full a’ smoke" "urgent" etc.

"Guns, knives or weapons on ya’?'"

"Wha’ were ya’ doin’?"

Photo: patrick hendry

"Be careful," "where you go" "careful" "stand by, stand by" "careful" "stand by" Z

Programme Notes (Reich) by Chia Han-Leon

BÉLA BARTÓK (1881 – 1945) MUSIC FOR STRINGS, PERCUSSION AND CELESTA (1936) 1.

2.

3.

4.

Andante tranquillo Allegro Adagio Allegro molto

Bartók was particularly fascinated with folk music and mathematics. He recorded traditional folk tunes sung by rural folk, and incorporated them into many formal compositions. He also made use of the mathematical concepts of symmetry, the golden ratio and Fibonacci series.

Photo: jonathan pease

We see these fascinations in this piece, in which folk tunes, rhythms and dances are present throughout. The first movement is divided according to the golden ratio – 89 bars in length, the climax is at bar 55 – while the harmonic shifts move symmetrically. More overtly, the opening xylophone passage of the third movement is a rhythmic representation of the Fibonacci sequence. Musical and mathematical concepts combine seamlessly to create a perfectly poised masterpiece.

Bartók – Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta Timpani, bass drum, 2 cymbals, side drums (one with snares off), tam-tam, xylophone Harp, piano, celesta strings

World Premiere: 21 Jan 1937, Basel, Switzerland

Unconventionally scored, this piece also requires the strings to be divided equally and arranged on either side of the percussion instruments, celesta, harp and piano, which literally take centre stage.

A fugue encapsulates the first movement with calculated symmetry. Dominated by strings, the music intensifies as it spirals far away from its tonal centre of A. The celesta enters, shimmering, as the music gently undulates back to its point of origin.

The piano and timpani kick off the vigorously driving second movement, as ideas bounce across the stage stereophonically from one string section to another. Strings are plucked percussively before their bows return to bring this brawny dance to a swift conclusion.

The xylophone casts a theatrical spell as it ushers in the Adagio. Timpani glissandos (continuous slides between notes) and instrumental effects feature prominently as Bartók conjures murky images in this music of the night.

The timpani launches the finale, and strummed chords lead to a dynamic fiddle-led folk dance. Bartók parodies a Charlie Chaplin song from the movie Modern Times, on the piano. It is later brought back, rushing forward hysterically, before the opening dance strides in for one final spin.

Programme Note (Bartók) by Christopher Cheong

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