“Aimez-vous Brahms?” If so, then the Singapore Symphony is the orchestra for you. Lan Shui, celebrating 20 years as the orchestra’s music director, is at the helm for a Brahms symphony cycle spread across the first half of its season, marking the 120th anniversary of the composer’s death. The SSO season includes core classical favourites, starry soloists and forays into lesser-played repertoire for the musically curious.
Johannes Brahms was so overawed by Beethoven’s legacy as a symphonist that he didn’t complete his First Symphony until he was 43. The self-critical composer laboured over the work for years only for the conductor Hans von Bülow to dub the work “Beethoven’s Tenth” thanks to its character and the similarity between the main theme of Brahms’ finale and the famous ‘Ode to Joy’ in Beethoven’s Ninth. If Beethoven was even an indirect inspiration behind the First Symphony, the Second in sunny D major has more in character with Schubert, its finale full of bonhomie. The Third is the shortest symphony of the four, and unusual in ending on a note of quiet introspection. Its third movement has an autumnal quality, full of yearning. The influential music critic Eduard Hanslick claimed that the Third was “artistically the most nearly perfect” of the four, although many would argue for the Fourth. Brahms’ final symphony was premiered in Meiningen in 1885, with the composer himself conducting. It opens in serene fashion with a great musical sigh before gradually unfolding and gaining momentum – heart on sleeve stuff for a composer sometimes accused of being emotionally pent up. For his finale, Brahms uses a passacaglia form – a set of variations over a recurring bass theme – to build a powerful, defiant finale.
It is not just the symphonies that have been programmed, but some of Brahms’ choral music too – the Song of the Fates and the Song of Destiny. There is also a performance later in the season of Brahms’ evergreen Violin Concerto in D major, with its joyous, gypsy-style finale, which will be performed by Alina Ibragimova. To help get the most from your Brahms fix, SSO Associate conductor Jason Lai introduces a Discovering Music exploration of the Fourth Symphony, entitled Go Fourth with Brahms!
Lan Shui has announced that he will be stepping down as music director in 2019. During his tenure, the reputation of the SSO has grown internationally, partly through its touring work and partly through a series of fine recordings, particularly of Russian repertoire. Lan Shui includes rarities by Liadov and Scriabin in July and is at the helm for a Russian gala at the end of the season which includes Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 1 in G minor, subtitled ‘Winter Daydreams’ and Leonidas Kavakos performing Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto.