Han-Na Chang scores with three Viennese “Bs” in Singapore: Beethoven, Berg and Brahms

There was a distinctly Viennese theme to the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s concert led by cellist-turned-conductor Han-Na Chang, which traversed the two Viennese Schools with Brahms as an interregnum. Opening the evening was Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, with the first bars taken at a deliberate pace, as if to emphasise the chords’ extreme gravity. The brass held together very well, ushering in an Allegro where lushness of the strings matched the musical intensity as Goethe’s eponymous hero blazed his way to a heroic sacrifice.

I craved Anton Webern’s Passacaglia or his orchestration of Bach’s Ricercare from A Musical Offering to have preceded Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto. That would have lent a touch of symmetry besides being too much of a good thing. Despite displaying the Romantic “friendly face” of the Second Viennese School, Berg’s atonal masterpiece is still a tough nut to crack. Composed in 1935, his final completed work was moved by the premature death of Manon Gropius, the free-spirited 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius.

Dedicated “To the Memory of an Angel”, Manon’s seemingly carefree innocence and tragic loss was channelled through Leila Josefowicz, whose clear and incisive tones seared through thickets of dissonance. Possessing a singular vision that led from its gentle swaying opening and moments of whimsy (in a Ländler dance), through tragedy and violent upheaval to ultimate solace, this was her guiding one through a musical equivalent of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief. It was a reading that gripped one’s attention from the outset and never let up for a moment.

The orchestra was sensitive throughout, luxuriating in the lush scoring and only letting loose for the tumultuous climaxes. The tone row whose final four notes coalesce into Bach’s Es ist genug, the chorale from Cantata no. 60, with solo violin and woodwinds in an intimate exchange, provided the work’s most sublime minutes. The music does not end but, as the original words “Ich fahr ins Himmelhaus” go, ascend to heaven. Berg himself would not live to see its premiere, dying of sepsis from an insect bite by year’s end. Bach reappeared in the form of Josefowicz’s encore, the Largo from his C major Sonata (BWV1005).

Brahms’ Fourth Symphony completed the programme. As an influence on the Second Viennese School, even the first movement’s theme (B-G-E-C-A-F#-D#-B et cetera) resembles a not-quite tone row. As a link with the past, it looks back to the Gigue from Bach’s Sixth Partita, as chromatic as the Baroque could ever get. From the SSO and Chang, conducting from memory, the performance was a slow boil, especially the first two movements. From the moderate pace taken in the opening Allegro non troppo and and the slow movement’s Andante moderato, one would not have guessed how the reading would organically build up to shattering emotional heights. This was the surprise that distinguished a clear-headed and cogent performance.

The brakes then came off for the Scherzo’s Allegro giocoso, with the ringing triangle providing a spine-tingling edge to proceedings. The finale’s Passacaglia, clearly Brahms’ fond tribute to tradition while looking ahead to the future, had an inexorable feel about it. The tempo was brisker, with an urgency infused through its 30 short variations. Commentators have described this movement as a tragedy, but this performance had the triumph of mastery of form written all over it.