SUBITO CON FORZA!
Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute
Esplanade Concert Hall
Saturday (19 April 2024)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 April 2025 with the title "Graduating students from Yong Siew Toh Conservatory triumph with Rachmaninoff's Second".
It is the end of an academic year, and the Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute led by principal conductor Jason Lai performed its last concert before the students take their exams and finally get to graduate. For an emotional close to the season, a more apt programme would have been hard to find.
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| Photo: Jellal Koay |
subito con forza (2020) by contemporary Korean composer Unsuk Chin (born 1961) opened the evening. Translated from Italian as suddenly with force, the 5-minute work was a tribute to Ludwig von Beethoven. The first bars quoted the beginning of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, two strident chords which become a leitmotif and a crash of percussion.
Through scurrying string figurations, there are sudden loud interjections typical of the German’s tempestuous nature. Reminders of the Leonore Overtures flash across and repetitions of the Fate motif (from the Fifth Symphony) are heard on horns and trumpets, and without warning the music segues into Beethoven’s very familiar Egmont Overture.
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| Chakrit Khanonvej (Thailand) played the demanding piano part in this work. |
Force of personality defined both composer and his heroic Goethe subject, Count Egmont of the Netherlands who defied the conquering Spanish to the death. The young orchestra played this passionate music as if their lives (and grades) depended on it, generating a rich sonority and nervous tension that did not flag for a single moment.
A very short first half lasting not more than a quarter of an hour was followed after the intermission by Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony in E minor (Op.27), which clocked in a few minutes short of an hour. Despite its expansiveness, this performance was never allowed to lag. Conductor Lai kept a tight rein, and from the moment low strings announced its lugubrious opening, one instinctively knew this was going to be special.
The homogeneity and full-bodied hum of strings made for pleasurable listening. Avoidance of excessive portamenti (slides), which coloured much of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s CD recording, also prevented the music from sliding into cloying sentimentalism.
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| Photo: Jellal Koay |
The high voltage sustained in the lengthy opening movement continued into the Scherzo, with a variant of the Dies Irae theme (often quoted by Rachmaninoff in many works) bristling with energy. The ante was further upped in the furious fugato, where a debt to mentor Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s manic lashings out was paid in full.
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| Edgar Rodriguez (Venezuela) was the concertmaster in this very fine performance. |
And who was not waiting for the romantic strains of the Adagio, the melody of which became a pop song (Eric Carmen’s Never Gonna Fall In Love Again)? Ma Yi-Ting’s solo clarinet was the star in this languid wallow, providing a well-deserved respite from the earlier exertions.
For the fast swirling tarantella rhythm of the finale, it was as if all on stage had been equipped extra battery packs. Playing at such high speeds entailed risks, but there was no gain without that extra effort, and this collective spirit won the day.
This orchestra has performed the Rachmaninoff Second three times, previously in 2009 and 2017, but this evening’s was undoubtedly the best one of all.
