Red Balloon Series: Echoes of Psycho

ECHOES OF PSYCHO 17 & 18 SEP 2021 VICTORIA CONCERT HALL JOSHUA TAN CONDUCTOR MA YUE CLARINET

MA YUE CLARINET Born in Beijing, Ma Yue obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Music from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1984, and his Artist Diploma from the Musikhochschule in Zurich, Switzerland. He was Principal Clarinetist and Assistant Conductor at the University of Alabama Symphony Orchestra from 1989 – 1990. He was also a member of the Alarida Octet and Second Clarinet with the Tuscaloosa Symphony, and freelanced with the Zurich Opera House Symphony Orchestra. In 2013, Ma Yue was selected by China Central Television as one of the Top Ten Best Wind Musicians in China. Ma Yue is currently Principal Clarinetist of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and a faculty member at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, Singapore.

JOSHUA TAN CONDUCTOR Joshua Tan was Second Prize winner of the Dimitri Mitropoulos International Competition, the first graduate to be awarded the Charles Schiff Conducting Prize at The Juilliard School and an awardee of numerous scholarships and awards. Joshua is a versatile conductor, at home with symphonic, operatic, ballet, film and multimedia works.

Highlights for 21/22 include return engagements with Hong Kong Philharmonic, debuts with the Gunma Symphony, a new opera premiere in Hong Kong amongst others. Joshua is presently Principal Conductor of the Singapore National Youth Orchestra and Director of the Asia Virtuosi.

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. sso.org.sg/about/singapore-symphony-orchestra

PROGRAMME NOTES Born in 1911, the composer-conductor Bernard Herrmann had a flying start to his career, winning prizes for his compositions as a teen and founding his own orchestra at the age of 20. As Bernard Herrmann he would end up writing music for some of the most famous classic films: Psycho, Citizen Kane, and Taxi Driver are at the top of a formidable list of credits on IMDB, though he never cared much for his Oscar win (at a mere 30 years old!), preferring to experiment with modern effects and increase the possibilities of film scoring.

He balanced this with an incredibly demanding orchestral career, bringing a lot of modern European music to American orchestras.

110 years after his birth, it is impossible to exaggerate the titanic influence Herrmann had on American music of the mid-20th century.

He started by writing music for concert performance, then for radio, and was a key figure in public musical education, using his position at Columbia to broadcast unconventional and rarely-heard music. He is most famous for his decade-long collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock.

Echoes and Souvenirs de Voyage are his last two works for chamber ensembles. Written in 1965 and ’67 respectively, he had fallen out of favour with Hollywood by that time thanks to his abrasive manner, and his second marriage had broken apart. But at this point, Hollywood and movie-scoring were so much a part of his musical language that these two works feel like music for nostalgic short films.

Herrmann’s own writing about Echoes tells of its origins in an idea for a ballet. He could not get away from the visual medium, and it shows in the music: the music surges and

swells in sections, changing in mood and tone throughout. The string quartet is a very intimate medium, with four players facing a central point; the expanded orchestration does not change this, and the repetitive rhythms and dark sound colours (including very clever use of the viola) help establish a serious, reflective mood.

Souvenirs is a rather different beast. Having moved to London and met the woman who would later become his third wife, Herrmann begins in a pastoral manner not unlike that of Vaughn Williams’s most expansive style. In fact, the first two movements of this piece arose inspired by Housman’s poetry, and the whole is tinged with British and Irish culture.

Herrmann completed the piece in 1967 but continued to tinker with adjustments until it was recorded in 1975.

The first movement is akin to a country ramble, with rolling hills and the fresh morning breeze interrupted by more turbulent music — “On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble”, writes Housman in his famous poem, and Herrmann sends the strings into turmoil on cue. The master’s hand is no less sure in the earnest cradle song that forms the second movement, with soaring violin and plaintive clarinet melodies exchanging places. The finale starts in a similar mood, with the violins imitating a gondola song, though the music goes through more dramatic scenes before finishing on a tranquil note.

Psycho is one of the all-time great horror films, and Herrmann did such stellar work on the score that Hitchcock paid him nearly double the contracted fee. Hitchcock originally intended the famous shower murder to have no music, but Herrmann managed to

A RED BALLOON SERIES CONCERT

SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PRESENTS A RED BALLOON SERIES CONCERT AT VICTORIA CONCERT HALL “ECHOES OF PSYCHO” PROGRAMMED MUSIC DESIGN POSTER

BY HANS SØRENSEN

BY BERNARD HERRMANN

BY SNAKES & LADDERS

BY SHERILYN LIM CONCERT MUSICIANS OF THE SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA MASTER CHAN YOONG-HAN

TWO NIGHTS ONLY

17 & 18 SEP 2021

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