20th-century music without tears from Hans Graf and the Singapore Symphony

Fresh from its highly-acclaimed three-city concert tour of Australia, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Artistic Director Hans Graf, performed a most intriguing 20th-century programme which highlighted its various sections to maximal effect. The first half belonged to the brass, opening with the band favourite, the Fanfare from Paul Dukas’ 1912 ballet La Peri. The eleven players were united in perfect voice for this rousing three-minute masterpiece, also revelling in its harmonic shifts, unsurprising from the composer of The Sorceror’s Apprentice. 

Lasting for a couple of minutes longer was the local premiere of Samuel Barber’s Mutations from Bach (1968), which subjected the Lutheran chorale Christe, du lamm Gottes (Christ, you Lamb of God) to gradual transformations. First heard was an earlier harmonisation by Joachim Decker and later Bach’s own from his cantata, BWV23. Seamlessly shifting through several other Bach chorales and a recitative (illuminated by French horn), the music, performed here with utmost care and discipline, closed decorously with the Decker, just as it began. 

Paul Hindemith’s Konzertmusik for piano, brass and two harps (1930) qualifies to be the oddest of his five rather odd (and oddly-titled) piano concertos. In four movements lasting almost a half hour, its contrapuntal excesses could prove too much of a good thing – either as thick as molasses or as dry as dust. Thankfully, reality showed the German to be a master at balancing varying sound textures. The low and deeply sonorous timbres of brass would be offset by the scintillating pianism of Albert Tiu and the ethereal harps of Gulnara Mashurova and Charity Kiew. 

One might approach the first two movements like some extended Prelude and Fugue. The piano and harps function like a unit, occupying the light treble registers, the former sometimes sharing melodic lines with the brass. The piano’s long solo fugue in the second movement gets rudely greeted by brass interjections, and the scampering fun begins, with brass taking over the fugal subject in earnest. Only piano and harps feature in the slow movement’s Variations, its spectral nocturnal atmosphere providing much breathing space before the finale’s syncopated romp, jazzy in parts but winding down to soft brass chorales (thus echoing the Barber) before a subdued end. 

The encore that followed came neither from Tiu nor the harpists but SSO’s splendid brass. Graf’s sublime transcription of the closing chorus, “Il est bon, l’enfant, il est sage” from Ravel’s opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges, with the Child’s final contrite plea of “Maman!” the perfect close. 

Rodion Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite (1967) after Bizet’s opera, scored for strings and a battery of percussion, had all the familiar tunes yet sounded unfamiliar. Jumbling up the original sequence of melodies, chopping and slicing popular numbers, this was like viewing an old friend through a series of distorting mirrors and prisms. At least the Habanera was recognisable, with tubular bells heard over a drone that resembled the beginning of Richard Rodgers’ Carousel Waltz. All this emphasised the tragedy that was the perfidious cigarette-toting gypsy from Seville. 

The astonishing Scene was original, without Bizet’s music but a sequence of repeated ostinatos, while the Bolero ventured out of Carmen into L’Arlesienne, with its Farandole heard instead... oops, wrong work but a salute to fallen women all the same. Then there was the Torero with the melody expunged but the accompaniment retained. The work’s anarchic nature was well served by responsive and alert string playing and five very busy percussionists. Here was 20th-century music, freshly minted, without the tears.