Tan Dun • Farewell My Concubine

SSO subscription concert

Tan Dun • Farewell My Concubine 20 APR 2017 THU | ESPLANADE concert hall Performing Home of the SSO

LAN SHUI Music Director

20 APR 2017 | THU

Tan Dun • Farewell My Concubine Singapore Symphony Orchestra Tan Dun, conductor

BÉLA BARTÓK Dance Suite 17’00 1. Moderato — Ritornello (Allegretto) 2. Allegro molto — Ritornello (Tranquillo) 3. Allegro vivace 4. Molto tranquillo — Ritornello (Lento) 5. Comodo 6. Finale (Allegro) TAN DUN Concerto for piano and Peking opera soprano: Farewell My Concubine 28’00 Ralph van Raat, piano Xiao Di, Peking opera soprano Intermission 20’00

TAN DUN Passacaglia: Secret of Wind and Birds (for cellphones and orchestra) 12’00 BÉLA BARTÓK The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19: Suite

20’00

Post-Concert Symphony Chat Esplanade Concert Hall, stalls level

Concert duration: 1 hr 55 mins Let’s go green. Digital programme booklets are available on www.sso.org.sg.

Scan the QR code in the foyer to view a copy.

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 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 makes its performing home at the 1,800-seat state-of-the-art Esplanade Concert Hall. More intimate works and all outreach and community performances take place at the 673-seat Victoria Concert Hall, the home of the SSO. The orchestra performs 100 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.

This has been a core of the SSO's programming philosophy from the very beginning under Choo Hoey, who was Music Director from 1979 to 1996.

Since Lan Shui assumed the position of Music Director in 1997, 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 five-city tour of Germany and Prague also included the SSO’s return to the Berlin Philharmonie after six years.

In 2014 the SSO’s debut at the 120th BBC Proms in London received critical acclaim in the major UK newspapers The Guardian and Telegraph. The SSO has also performed in China on multiple occasions.

Notable SSO releases under BIS include a Rachmaninov series, a Debussy disc, Seascapes featuring sea-themed music by Debussy, Frank Bridge, Glazunov and Zhou Long, and the first-ever cycle of Tcherepnin’s piano concertos and symphonies. The SSO has also collaborated with such great artists as Lorin Maazel, Charles Dutoit, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lang Lang, Yo-Yo Ma, Leonidas Kavakos and Gil Shaham.

“The brilliantly chiselled strings unite in moderate tempos to produce a brilliant, virtuoso and sensuous sound performance from this outstanding orchestra.”

Der Neue Merker

Tan Dun

conductor

The world-renowned artist and UNESCO Global Goodwill Ambassador Tan Dun, has made an indelible mark on the world’s music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music, multimedia performance, and Eastern and Western traditions. A winner of today’s most prestigious honours including the Grammy Award, Oscar/Academy Award, Grawemeyer Award, Bach Prize, Shostakovich Award and most recently Italy’s Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement, Tan Dun’s music has been played throughout the world by leading orchestras, opera houses, international festivals, and on the radio and television. This past year, Tan Dun conducted the grand opening celebration of Disneyland Shanghai which was broadcast to a record-breaking audience of 65 million people worldwide.

As a conductor of innovative programmes around the world, Tan Dun has led the China Tours of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra. His upcoming season includes leading the NDR Radiophilharmonie in a five-city tour in Germany, as well as engagements with the London Symphony Orchestra and at the Venice Biennale. As Honorary Artistic Director of the China National Symphony Orchestra, Tan Dun will conduct its upcoming United States tour. Tan Dun has led the world’s most esteemed orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Münchner Philharmoniker, Santa Cecilia Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Tan Dun has previously served as Chair of Carnegie Hall’s China Committee, Creative Chair of the 2014 Philadelphia Orchestra China Tour, Associate Composer/Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony, and Artistic Director of the Water Crossing Fire Festival held at the Barbican Centre. He has also served as Cultural Ambassador to the World for World EXPO Shanghai. www.tandun.com

Ralph van Raat

piano

Pianist and musicologist Ralph van Raat appears as a recitalist throughout Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the United States. He takes special interest in contemporary classical music. Many of his concerts have been broadcasted by Dutch as well as foreign radio and television networks.

Ralph van Raat performs regularly as a soloist with leading orchestras including the London Sinfonietta, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Radio Symphony Orchestra of Frankfurt, Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Dortmunder Philharmoniker. He has also performed at important music festivals worldwide.

Ralph van Raat has an exclusive contract with the international label Naxos.

Many releases have received top ratings and have been ranked as some of the bestselling Naxos albums worldwide. In 2009, an Artist Portrait CD-box was released, which included his complete recordings for Naxos. Many composers have dedicated their solo compositions and piano concertos to van Raat. He has also worked closely with many composers on the interpretation of their piano works, such as John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Gavin Bryars, Jonathan Harvey, Tan Dun, György Kurtág, Magnus Lindberg, Arvo Pärt, Frederic Rzewski and Sir John Tavener.

Van Raat teaches contemporary piano music interpretation at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. He regularly conducts masterclasses, lectures and workshops at the conservatories of Tirana, Nizhny Novgorod, Kiev, the Ligeti Academy of the ASKO/Schönberg Ensemble as well as for many foundations and universities.

Van Raat studied piano with Ton Hartsuiker and Willem Brons at the Conservatory of Amsterdam as well as musicology at the University of Amsterdam. He is a Steinway Artist. For more information, visit www.ralphvanraat.com

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Xiao Di

Peking opera soprano

World-renowned actress Xiao Di, originally from Liaoning in Shenyang Province, is a Professor at Shenyang Normal University, Chairman of the prestigious Mei Lanfang Art Institute, Head of the Liaoning Peking Opera Experimental Theatre, and third generation successor of the Mei style of Peking opera.

Xiao Di has won an impressive number of awards throughout her career such as the Arts Talent Award from the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China, Liaoning Province Rose Award, the Gold Award at the Peking Opera Festival, and the Outstanding Performance Award for her superb performance at the CCTV Opera TV Contest. Her two albums Xiao Di’s Mei School Vocal Album and Mu Guiying Command were released in 2005 and 2010 respectively, to great acclaim.

Her impressive repertoire of performances includes Phoenix Nest, Silang Visits his Mother, Farewell My Concubine, Yuzhoufeng, and Hongzongliema. She has also extended her repertoire to contemporary arts and has collaborated with composer/conductor Tan Dun on his orchestral theatre work, The Gate.

She has also collaborated with director Jianping Duan, Yansong Wang in their theatre works.

Mei Baojiu, the current leader of the Mei Lanfang Peking Opera troupe and the ninth son of the legendary Peking opera artist Mei Lanfang, praised Xiao Di for “her remarkable and beautiful appearance, sweet voice, and dignified temperament. [She] can be regarded as an inheritor of Mei school.”

SSO Musicians Lan Shui

Jason Lai

Joshua Tan

Choo Hoey

Okko Kamu

Lim Yau

MUSIC DIRECTOR

ASSOCIATE CONDUCTOR

ASSOCIATE CONDUCTOR

CONDUCTOR EMERITUS

PRINCIPAL GUEST CONDUCTOR

Choral Director

FIRST VIOLIN Igor Yuzefovich° Concertmaster Lynnette Seah Co-Concertmaster Kong Zhao Hui* Associate Concertmaster Chan Yoong-Han Fixed Chair Cao Can* Chen Da Wei Duan Yu Ling Foo Say Ming Gu Wen Li Jin Li Cindy Lee Lim Shue Churn^ Sui Jing Jing Karen Tan William Tan Wei Zhe

Shui Bing Tan Wee-Hsin Tong Yi Ping Janice Tsai^ Yang Shi Li

CELLO Ng Pei-Sian Principal Yu Jing Associate Principal Guo Hao Fixed Chair Chan Wei Shing Ding Xiao Feng^ Song Woon Teng Wang Yan Wang Zihao* Peter Wilson Wu Dai Dai Zhao Yu Er

SECOND VIOLIN Michael Loh Associate Principal Hai-Won Kwok Fixed Chair Nikolai Koval* Priscilla Neo Chikako Sasaki* Margit Saur Shao Tao Tao Ikuko Takahashi^ Lillian Wang Wu Man Yun* Xu Jue Yi* Ye Lin* Yeo Teow Meng Yin Shu Zhan* Zhang Si Jing*

DOUBLE BASS Guennadi Mouzyka Principal Yang Zheng Yi Associate Principal Karen Yeo Fixed Chair Olga Alexandrova Naohisa Furusawa^ Ma Li Ming^ Jacek Mirucki Wang Xu

FLUTE Jin Ta Principal Evgueni Brokmiller Associate Principal Roberto Alvarez Miao Shanshan

VIOLA

PICCOLO

Zhang Manchin Principal Guan Qi Associate Principal Gu Bing Jie* Fixed Chair Ho Ying Ying^ Marietta Ku Lim Chun^ Luo Biao Julia Park^

Roberto Alvarez Assistant Principal

OBOE Rachel Walker Principal Pan Yun Associate Principal Carolyn Hollier Elaine Yeo

COR ANGLAIS

TROMBONE

Elaine Yeo Associate Principal

Allen Meek Principal Damian Patti Associate Principal Samuel Armstrong

CLARINET Ma Yue Principal Li Xin Associate Principal Liu Yoko Tang Xiao Ping

BASS CLARINET

BASS TROMBONE Wang Wei Assistant Principal

TUBA Hidehiro Fujita Principal

Tang Xiao Ping Assistant Principal

BASSOON Zhang Jin Min Principal Liu Chang Associate Principal Christoph Wichert Zhao Ying Xue

CONTRA BASSOON Zhao Ying Xue Assistant Principal

HORN Han Chang Chou Principal Gao Jian Associate Principal Jamie Hersch Associate Principal Marc-Antoine Robillard Associate Principal Kartik Alan Jairamin Hoang Van Hoc^ Li Qing Feng**

TRUMPET

TIMPANI Christian Schiøler Principal Jonathan Fox Associate Principal

PERCUSSION Jonathan Fox Principal Mark Suter Associate Principal Mark De Souza Lim Meng Keh Zhu Zheng Yi

HARP Gulnara Mashurova Principal Huang Yu Hsin^

PIANO Shane Thio^ Principal

CELESTE Aya Sakou^

Jon Paul Dante Principal David Smith Associate Principal Lertkiat Chongjirajitra^ Sergey Tyuteykin

* With deep appreciation to the Rin Collection for their generous loan of string instruments. ° Igor Yuzefovich plays an instrument generously loaned by Mr & Mrs G K Goh ^ Musician on temporary contract ** Member of the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra

Musicians listed alphabetically by family name rotate their seats on a per programme basis.

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Principal Cello

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The 1979 Fund is a campaign for contribution to the SSO Endowment Fund.

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U P COM ING CONCERT S

28 APRIL 17 | FRI, 7.30pm esplanade Concert Hall

SSO Gala: Masaaki Suzuki Conducts Mozart Masaaki Suzuki conductor Marie Arnet soprano James Hall countertenor Alan Bennett tenor Callum Thorpe bass Singapore Symphony Chorus The Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Singapore Lim Yau choral director Expect purity and sublime spirituality as Masaaki Suzuki, founder of Bach Collegium Japan, brings glorious insights to Mozart’s final masterpiece, the Requiem in D minor. Suzuki prefaces this with the beloved G minor Symphony, which exudes astonishing grace and grief.

MOZART Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K.550 MOZART Requiem in D minor, K.626

Pre-concert Talk 6.30pm-7pm I library@esplanade

VICTORIA Concert Hall

SSO Gala: Beethoven Violin Concerto • Crusell Sinfonia Concertante Lan Shui conductor Frank Peter Zimmermann violin Ma Yue clarinet Han Chang Chou horn Zhang Jin Min bassoon SSO brings its spectacular season to a close with Beethoven’s crown jewel, the Violin Concerto in D major performed in the capable hands of Frank Peter Zimmermann, and the delightful triple concerto by Finnish-Swedish composer Bernhard Crusell featuring old friends Ma Yue, Han Chang Chou and Zhang Jin Min, who will step down as Principal Bassoon after this season. The concert opens with music by Singaporean composer Jeremiah Li. ”Gorgeously ripe tone, easy swagger and intoxicating range of colour“ – Gramophone on Frank Peter Zimmermann

JEREMIAH LI Senbonzakura Gossamer Shrouds the Tal (commissioned by the SSO)

CRUSELL Sinfonia concertante in B-flat major, Op. 3 BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61

Pre-concert Talk 6.30pm-7pm I VCH Music Studio @ L3 Post-Concert Symphony Chat Sat, 20 May 2017 I Victoria Concert Hall, stalls level

U P COM ING CONCERT S

19 & 20 May 17 | FRI & SAT, 7.30pm

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BÉLA BARTÓK (1881-1945)

Dance Suite

17’00

Bartók wrote his Dance Suite in 1923 on commission from the city of Budapest, which was celebrating its Golden Jubilee that year. (The twin cities of Buda and Pest, facing each other across the Danube, were united in 1873.) Hungary’s three foremost composers were asked to write a work for the commemorative concert held on 19 November. Ernö von Dohnányi’s Solemn Overture opened the concert and Zoltán Kodály contributed a magnificent choral work, Psalmus Hungaricus. But it was Bartók’s Dance Suite, performed by the Budapest Philharmonic and conducted by Dohnányi, which made the strongest impression on the audience. It was also the work, more so than any other, that went on to spread Bartók’s name abroad.

The suite is laid out in rondo form: six contrasting sections, played without breaks between (with one exception), are linked by a ritornello (recurring theme). Although the music is pervaded with the aura and tang of “authentic” folk idioms, there is not one theme in the work that Bartók did not compose himself. The rhythms are complex, intriguing and often of irregular patterns.

Alien and strange some of the sounds may be to our ears, yet the Dance Suite is immediately accessible music, full of vigorous rhythms, attractive melodies and colourful orchestration. Scales are borrowed from various sources alien to “western” ears, as are some of the harmonic patterns.

Bartók himself noted that the first dance, and to some extent the fourth as well, have an Arabic character; the second dance and the ritornello theme are Hungarian; No. 3 combines the influence of Hungarian, Romanian and Arabic music; and the theme of the fifth dance is “so primitive that one can speak only of a primitive peasant character, and any classification according to nationality must be abandoned” (Bartók). The five dances are followed by a finale which recapitulates the material of the preceding dances.

Programme note by Robert Markow

TAN DUN

Concerto for piano and Peking opera soprano: Farewell My Concubine 28’00 When the movie Farewell my Concubine, directed by one of the most famous Chinese film directors Chen Kaige, received the Best Film nomination at the Academy Awards and won Best Film at the Cannes Film Festival, the world outside China was introduced to and enthralled by the art of Peking opera – many for the first time. The latest offering from world-renowned Chinese composer/conductor Tan Dun, Concerto for piano and Peking opera soprano ”Farewell my Concubine“ (2016) explores the musical dialogue between the piano and the Peking opera soprano, according to this beloved legend of the classical Peking opera story. A truly 21st century interdisciplinary work, it combines a heroic and lyrical piano solo with exquisite Peking opera singing/ acting/martial arts, dancing and a dramatic symphony orchestra, to reimagine the “double concerto” where ancient myth meets modern symphonic drama.

Even though it is a single-movement work, the piece has five deeply connected sections: (1) Surrounded by the Enemies; (2) A Clear Moon; (3) A Drink while Consort Yu Sings; (4) The Piano Sword Dance and (5) Farewell My Concubine.

When asked about his decision to personify the piano as ”The King“ in this work’s dramatic dialogue, Tan Dun revealed: “I believe the piano is the most well-known instrument in the world, and certainly the “king” of classical instruments, while Peking opera is the most beloved opera genre in China.

The dialogue between the two art forms – classical representatives of Western music and Chinese theatre – offered me fascinating options in exploring their artistic and philosophical significance. My choice in this pairing is full of cultural significations and has many layers, including my personal journey as a Peking opera fiddle player and conductor in my early years”.

The piece was originally commissioned and written for pianist Yuja Wang.

TAN DUN

Passacaglia: Secret of Wind and Birds (for cellphones and orchestra) 12’00 This brand-new piece, commissioned by Carnegie Hall specifically for NYOUSA, takes inspiration from both old and new, natural and manmade. Inspired by the thinking of Da Vinci and mankind’s ongoing endeavor to understand the world around us, the music draws on forms and methods from East and West, ancient and modern, and incorporates birdsong as well as sounds digitally recorded and played on smartphones.

In Tan Dun’s words: What is the secret of nature? Maybe only the wind and birds know…

When Carnegie Hall and the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America asked me to write a new piece, I immediately thought to create and share the wonder of nature and a dream of the future. In the beginning, when human beings were first inventing music, we always looked for a way to talk to nature, to communicate with the birds and wind.

Looking at ancient examples of Chinese music, there are so many compositions that imitate the sounds of nature and, specifically, birds. With this in mind, I decided to start by using six ancient Chinese instruments, the guqin, suona, erhu, pipa, dizi, and sheng, to record bird sounds that I had composed.

I formatted the recording to be playable on cellphones, turning the devices into instruments and creating a poetic forest of digital birds. The symphony orchestra is frequently expanding with the inclusion of new instruments; I thought the cellphone, carrying my digital bird sounds, might be a wonderful new instrument reflecting our life and spirit today.

It has always been a burning passion of mine to decode the countless patterns of the sounds and colours found in nature. Leonardo da Vinci once said, “In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water.” I immediately decided to take this idea of waves and

water as a mirror to discover the motions of the wind and birds. In fact, the way birds fly, the way the wind blows, the way waves ripple ‌ everything in nature has already provided me with answers. With melody, rhythm, and colour, I structured the sounds in a passacaglia. A passacaglia is, to me, made of complex variations and hidden repetitions. In this piece, I play with structure, colour, harmony, melody, and texture through orchestration in eight-bar patterns. Thus, the piece begins with the sounds of ancient Chinese instruments played on cellphones, creating a chorus of digital birds and moving tradition into the future.

Through nine evolving repetitions of eight-bar patterns, the piece builds to a climax that is suddenly interrupted by the orchestra members chanting. This chanting reflects ancient myth and the beauty of nature. As it builds, it weaves finger snapping, whistling, and foot stamping into a powerful orchestral hiphop energy. By the end, the winds, strings, brass, and percussion together cry out as one giant bird. To me, this last sound is that of the phoenix, the dream of a future world.

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BÉLA BARTÓK

The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19: Suite

20’00

Bartók began work on his third and final stage work (following Bluebeard’s Castle and The Wooden Prince) in August of 1917. He completed the first version in May of 1919, and heavily revised the score in 1924. Not until 27 November 1926 was the Mandarin finally produced on stage, not in Bartók’s native Hungary but in Cologne. Predictably enough, something of a scandal ensued in this conservative city, and further performances there were banned.

A watered-down and vastly altered version was prepared for Budapest, but when Bartók saw the travesty he protested so strongly that the production was cancelled. The Miraculous Mandarin was never given in Hungary in Bartók’s lifetime.

In 1927, Bartók prepared a suite from the 30-minute score; this is the music most often heard in the concert hall and on recordings. It is not an assemblage of short numbers usually found in a suite, but rather a single extended fragment, in this case the first two-thirds of the score (with two brief cuts) plus a concert ending. The prelude depicts the noisy, frenzied world of a modern metropolis. In a shabby room on a back street, three tramps appear. They force a girl to entice men into her room so they can be mugged and robbed. Three victims in turn are lured in by the girl’s “Decoy Game” or “Song of Seduction,” played each time by the solo clarinet. The third visitor is the Mandarin, whose approach is signaled in the orchestra by a lurching, sinister, pseudo-oriental theme in the brass. The orchestra explodes fortissimo in a thousand colours as the door opens to reveal the strange, impressive, horrific figure standing in the doorway. The girl begins to dance, slowly, to a halting waltz tune. When she goes to embrace the mandarin, he trembles in great excitement. She tries to escape his sudden feverish attraction to her, and the great chase scene begins to a viciously articulated, erratic theme in the violas over a heavy, pounding accompaniment. The orchestral writing is of utmost virtuosity, rhythmic ferocity and textural complexity, sweeping the listener along in its inexorable drive.

Programme note by Robert Markow

Lim Yan Plays Beethoven

Programme Ludwig van Beethoven

Coriolan Overture, op. 62 Ludwig van Beethoven

Piano Concerto no. 1, op. 15 Antonín Dvořák

Serenade for Wind Instruments, op. 44 re:Sound continues its Beethoven journey with leading Singaporean pianist Lim Yan as soloist in the Piano Concerto no. 1, written in the style of Mozart and Haydn, but already showing Beethoven's unique character. This is paired with the stormy Coriolan Overture, inspired by Heinrich Joseph von Collin's tragedy of the same name.

The wind players of re:Sound have a special place on the programme with Czech composer Antonín Dvořák's Serenade for Winds, a delightfully Bohemian work that is a worthy equal to the composer's more commonly performed Serenade for Strings.

resoundcollective.org

Date: Time: Venue: Soloist: Leader:

26 April 2017, Wednesday 8:15pm Victoria Concert Hall Lim Yan (piano) Seah Huan Yuh

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