VCH Presents CELLISSO

CELLISSO 22 October 2017 Victoria Concert Hall

(Left to right: Ng Pei-Sian, Yu Jing, Guo Hao, Zhao Yu Er, Peter Wilson, Wu Dai Dai, Chan Wei Shing, Wang Yan, Song Woon Teng and Wang Zihao) Photo credit: Lertkiat Chongjirajitra

CELLISSO Jeong Ae Ree, soprano*

Ng Pei-Sian, cello Yu Jing, cello Guo Hao, cello Peter Wilson, cello Chan Wei Shing, cello

Trevor Wilson

Five Perambulations 15’00

Arvo Pärt

Fratres 9’00

Carl Vine

Inner World 12’30

INTERMISSION 20’00

Giovanni Sollima

Violoncelles, Vibrez! 10’30

Heitor Villa-Lobos

Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1, W246 16’00

Song Woon Teng, cello Wang Yan, cello Wang Zihao, cello Wu Dai Dai, cello Zhao Yu Er, cello

1. Introduction 2. Preludio Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, W389-391 9’00* 1. Aria: Cantilena 2. Dança

Go green. Digital programme booklets are available on www.sso.org.sg.

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

NG P E I - SI A N cello

Ng Pei-Sian was the Commonwealth Musician of the Year in 2007, and winner of the Gold Medal and First Prize at the 55th Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition held in London. He has performed concertos with major Australian symphony orchestras, Malaysian Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Estonian National Symphony and Oulu Symphony, among others.

Born in Sydney in 1984, he began studies in Adelaide with Barbara Yelland and later with Janis Laurs at the Elder Conservatorium of Music before winning the Elder Overseas Scholarship to study under Ralph Kirshbaum at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, where he was awarded the RNCM Gold Medal.

In 2014, he performed Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Variations with the Orchestra of the Music Makers under Chan Tze Law and Elgar’s Cello Concerto with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra under Arvo Volmer as part of the 2014 Adelaide International Cello Festival. Ng Pei-Sian is currently Principal Cellist of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and faculty member at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music. He performs on a 1764 Giovanni Antonio Marchi cello, Bologna.

Y U JING cello

Yu Jing was born in Sichuan, China and started playing the cello from the age of 8. After studying at the Shanghai Conservatory, she departed for further studies at the Berlin University of Fine Arts in Germany with Markus Nyikos and graduated with honours in 1991. She was Principal Cellist with the Radio Youth Orchestra (Berlin) and was a member of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Yu Jing was a Prize Winner in the First National Cello Competition and participated in masterclasses with Maurius Gendron, Anner Bylsma, Ottomar Borwitzky and Werner Thomas-Mifune.

G U O H AO cello

Currently the Third Chair of the SSO cello section, Guo Hao’s teachers include his brother, Guo Qu, as well as Yu Ming-Qing and Alexander Baillie. He is a graduate of the College of Arts in Bremen, Germany and Central Conservatory in Beijing, China. As soloist he has appeared with the Staatstheater Oldenburg, the Theater Nordhausen/Loh-Orchester Sondershausen and the Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra. He has performed in the Marktoberdorf International Music Festival in Germany.

Guo Hao was Principal Cellist with the China Youth Symphony Orchestra, Guest Principal Cellist with the Staatstheater Oldenburg, and used to be a member of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. He has participated in masterclasses with Anner Bylsma, Wolfgang Boettcher, Boris Pergamenschikow and George Faust. He plays on the Matteo Goffriller of 1699 on generous loan from the Rin Collection.

C H A N W E I SHING cello

Chan Wei Shing was born into a musical family and started playing the piano at the age of eight and the cello at the age of ten. In 1985 he won First Prize in two categories of the National Music Competition – the Cello Open and Chamber Music. In 1988 he studied with Angelika May at the University of Music in Vienna and subsequently with Rudolf Leopold in Graz, Austria. In 1996 he was awarded the Master’s Degree of Arts major in Cello Performance.

S ONG WOON T E NG cello

Song Woon Teng was born in Singapore and began his cello studies under the tutelage of H. Ilano, the former Associate Principal of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. In 1989 Song won First Prize in the Cello Open Category at the Seventh National Music Competition. Thereafter, with a National Arts Council Bursary, he left Singapore to study at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington under Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi. There he received both his Bachelor and Masters degrees in Music. Since his return, Woon Teng has been active in the chamber music scene as well as teaching.

WA NG YA N cello

Born in Beijing, Wang Yan began her cello studies at the age of nine and graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in 1985. Upon graduation she auditioned successfully for the position of Principal Cello with the China Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra. Wang Yan has been with the Singapore Symphony since 1993.

P E T E R W IL S ON cello

Born in North Yorkshire, England, Peter started the cello at the age of seven.

He later went on to study with Anna Shuttleworth at the Royal College of Music and received lessons from Alexander Baillie and Amanda Truelove.

Peter was awarded a First for his final recital performance and went on to study a PGDip at the RCM, supported by a Leverhulme postgraduate studentship, with Leonid Gorokhov as his teacher. During his time at the RCM, Peter won the Anna Shuttleworth Competition for Unaccompanied Cello and was presented with the Leo Stern award. He has played in masterclasses given by Steven Isserlis and William Pleeth.

Peter has worked with many orchestras, including trials in Britain and those abroad. He has worked regularly with the RTÉ (Raidió Teilifís Éireann) National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and the Longborough Festival opera orchestra in England on productions of Tristan and Isolde and Rigoletto.

WA NG ZIH AO cello

Born in Jilin, China, Wang Zihao started to play the cello at the age of four. At 13 he was admitted to the Middle School of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where he studied with Na Mula. With his outstanding accomplishments, he won the outstanding professional award at the conservatory.

Wang was Principal Cellist of the China Youth Symphony Orchestra. For three consecutive years, he was admitted to the Morningside Music Bridge International Academy in Canada, where he won the First Prize in the Concerto Competition and Etude Competition with a published CD recording. As a result he was invited to perform with the Symphony Orchestra of Gdansk in Poland.

Wang recently graduated from Singapore’s Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music where he studied under Qin Li-Wei and won the First Prize of the Concerto Competition. He plays on an 1896 Muller Joseph on generous loan from the Rin Collection.

W U DA I DA I cello

A promising young cellist, Wu Dai Dai was raised in a musical family, starting the cello from the age of seven with her mother. In 2001, she was enrolled into the Middle School of Xi’an Conservatory of Music. In 2007, she was enrolled into the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore, to study in the Cello Studio of Qin Li-Wei with a full scholarship.

As a soloist, Dai Dai has given many performances in China, North America and Australia and Europe. She has worked with orchestras such as Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra; Xi’an Conservatory of Music Symphony Orchestra; Adelaide Chamber Orchestra and Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra.

She has also won many prizes including 2nd prize at the 21st Gisbonre International Music Competition in New Zealand; the 1st prize at the Conservatory Concerto Competition in Singapore and awarded the Royal Over-Seas League Singapore Music Scholarship in 2009.

ZH AO Y U E R cello

In preparation for her career as cellist with the SSO, Zhao Yu Er has travelled as far away as the United States. Her journey began in Shanghai, China, where she began studies on the cello at the age of eight. Within three years Yu Er was enrolled at the Central Conservatory in Beijing.

After completing her Bachelor’s degree in 1984, she joined the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. A year passed before she ventured to America on a full scholarship to Northern Illinois University. Private teacher Marc Johnson helped provide the inspiration for Zhao Yu Er until she received her Masters Degree in 1987. Soon after she returned to Asia to join the SSO in 1988.

JEONG A E R E E soprano

Soprano Jeong Ae Ree has enjoyed considerable success as a performer and singing teacher since arriving in Singapore in 1997. Upon obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree and then a Master’s Degree in Music Performance, she furthered her studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria.

Well-known as a recitalist and orchestra soloist, her performances have been critically acclaimed by The Straits Times, which described her as a “dynamo with an intimacy and flexibility of tone, coupled with loads of personality”.

Ae Ree has also been a very successful teacher. Her students’ numerous achievements include first prizes at international music competitions, with many of them furthering their voice studies at prestigious international music schools. Ae Ree is currently the Artistic Director of New Opera Singapore, a company she founded in 2011 to create a platform for local singers to showcase their talents in professional productions.

T REVOR WIL SON (B. 1947 ) Five Perambulations ^ 15’00 Ng Pei-Sian, Yu Jing, Guo Hao and Peter Wilson These are pieces which are melodic and direct. They do not explore the extremes of the cello’s upper range, demanding double stops, harmonics or bravura passages but rather create a sonorous, charming four-part texture which on occasions becomes a little more agitated in mood.

Each of the five movements has a faint flavour of a particular country, representing a sort of short musical stroll, returning, at the end, to the point of departure. Perambulation 1 suggests The Strand in London with its pinstripe-suited rhythms and harmonies. Perambulation 2 is a jazzy walk round some blocks in New Orleans, USA, whilst Perambulation 3 is a Venetian Barcarolle (so no walking!). Perambulation 4 has the taste of Andalusian flamenco music, with typical rubato flourishes from the first cello, and the final movement is a perambulation around the streets of old Prague (and includes a brief quotation from the greatest Czech cello concerto!).

ARVO PÄRT (B. 1935) Fratres 9’00 Ng Pei-Sian, Yu Jing, Guo Hao and Peter Wilson Midway through his composing career, Arvo Pärt suddenly went into “creative exile” for eight years, and emerged in 1976, combining Gregorian chant and harmonic simplicity into a new style, tintinnabuli (“little bells”). The Estonian composer explained, “I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me. I work with very few elements — with one voice, with two voices.

I build with the most primitive materials — with the triad [three-note chord], with one specific tonality. The three notes of the triad are like bells. And that is why I call it tintinnabulation.” Unlike the American minimalists, Pärt’s music is heavily influenced by mystic spirituality, and this has proven to resonate with both musicians and audiences, with Pärt being one of the most performed living composers today.

Pärt wrote Fratres (“Brethren” or “Brothers”) in 1977, made up of a chant with three voices and a drone. This chant repeats throughout, descending in pitch but becoming louder, until the middle of the piece, after which it grows softer again, creating an atmosphere of mesmerising beauty. The piece was first performed by the Estonian early music ensemble, Hortus musicus. There was no particular instrumentation specified for it and Fratres now exists in numerous different arrangements. As Pärt remarked, “Music must exist of itself… two, three notes… the essence must be there, independent of the instruments.”

C A R L VI N E (B. 1954) Inner World 12’30 Soloist: Ng Pei-Sian Australian composer Carl Vine has written seven symphonies and eleven concertos, as well as chamber music and many piano pieces which are performed worldwide. He currently lectures at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Commissioned by 2MBS-FM Radio in Sydney, Australia and with financial assistance from the Performing Arts Board of the Australian Council, Inner World was written in 1994, and is dedicated to his friend, the cellist David Pereira.

The solo cello is accompanied by a tape which, in Vine’s words, “dissects, crystalises, modifies and re-arranges” the performer’s sound, resulting in the cello transcending itself, “not only [being] an instrument of natural materials, but also an enveloping shroud of sound – a hall of mirrors in which artifice and reality collide.” It begins with a cadenza-like passage, after which this inner world becomes more intricate, though remaining lyrical and grounded in tonality, before an ecstatic finale crowns the work.

G I OVANNI SOL L IMA (B. 19 6 2 ) Violoncelles, Vibrez! 10’30 Soloists: Wang Zihao, Wu Dai Dai Chan Wei Shing, Guo Hao, Song Woon Teng, Wang Yan, Peter Wilson and Zhao Yu Er Composer-Cellist Giovanni Sollima’s reputation for the unorthodox precedes him. From performing on an ice-cello in an igloo-theatre, to mixing both western and eastern acoustic instruments with electronic sounds in his compositions, he has built a reputation for combining distinct sounds in his compositions.

Dedicated to Mario Brunello, Sollima’s classmate at the Salzburg Mozarteum, Violoncelles, Vibrez! (“Cellos, Vibrate!”), was written in 1993, and named as a tribute to their late cello teacher, Antonio Janigro’s, instructions. The critic and journalist Angelo Foletto described the piece as having “a melody moistened with thousands of magic echoes… a fantastic theme from an almost intimidating fascination,” in reference to the countless repetitions from which Sollima spins his melodies. Originally written for two solo cellos and string orchestra, Sollima arranged the piece for eight cellos in 1999 for a special concert held in Janigro’s memory.

HE ITOR VI LL A -LOBOS (1887–195 9 ) Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1, W246 16’00 1. Introduction 2. Preludio The Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos was also an ethno-musicologist, collecting and documenting folk music from around Brazil. Between 1930 and 1945, he wrote a series of pieces titled Bachianas Brasileiras, linking the works of J. S. Bach – a “mediator among all races” – with native Brazilian music. Villa-Lobos gave the movements within each Bachianas “suite” composite titles – with the first part evoking Bach’s Baroque instrumental suites and the second part suggesting a Brazilian perspective.

In these works, ornate European Baroque techniques are brewed with Brazilian musical idioms.

The first of the Bachianas Brasileiras was written in 1930 for eight cellos. The first two movements are performed today. The Introduction, a fast song-poem from north east Brazil, combines a jaunty call and response with a driving, toccata rhythm. The Preludio draws on a Brazilian sentimental love song and evokes the slow movements of Bach’s concertos.

Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, W389-391 9’00 1. Aria: Cantilena 2. Dança Soprano: Jeong Ae Ree The fifth, and most popular of the Bachianas Brasileiras, is also written for eight cellos, with the addition of a soprano. In the Aria: Cantilena, the soprano vocalises (without words), weaving in and out of the cello ensemble, reminiscent of the long and freely spun melodies of Bach’s slow movements.

The more dramatic central section sets a poem by the Brazilian soprano-poet Ruth Valadares Corréa (who also sang at the premiere of this work), about the moon’s gentle embellishment of the “dreamlike and beautiful” eventide (evening).

The sparkling Dança is said to evoke the improvised poetry contests of north east Brazil, and sets a poem by Manuel Bandeira, in which the poet addresses a variety of Brazilian birds.

Programme notes by Trevor Wilson^ and Christopher Cheong

26 October 2017 7.30pm I Victoria Concert Hall A renowned international organist popular for her sold-out silent film programmes, Dorothy Papadakos brings the Phantom of the Opera film’s raw terror to justice on the magnificent organ with an imaginatively improvised score that is sure to frighten even the Concert Hall’s resident Phantom.

We invite you to dress in your best Halloween costume!

Film screening of the 1929 Phantom of the Opera silent film - “The 1929 silent horror film classic THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA starring Lon Chaney, the Man of a Thousand Faces”

Tickets: $20 Concessions: $15 I Family of 4 package: 20%

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UPCOMING EVENTS

GOLD 50: THE KING’S SINGERS 23 February 2018, 7.30pm

THE KING’S SINGERS WITH THE SINGAPORE SYMPHONY CHILDREN’S CHOIR 24 February 2018, 7.30pm

LA VOIX HUMAINE 12 May 2018, 7.30pm 13 May 2018, 4pm

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