Mischa Maisky still a live wire on his Singapore return

The year 1986 was a special one for the young Singapore Symphony Orchestra. For a fledgling outfit, it was gaining in confidence and beginning to invite big name soloists for marquee concerto performances. Enter cellist Mischa Maisky, with his wild black, curly locks, irrepressible personality and a high profile recording contract. “Love me, love my cello,” shouted The Straits Times preview, and Maisky went on to sweep the Victoria Concert Hall audience away with Saint-Saëns’ First Cello Concerto. 

It seems that 37 years has done little to change this artist. His flowing mane is now fully silver but the demeanour of “Let me show you what I do, the way I do!” remains wholly intact and totally kicking. It was Saint-Saëns' First on the cards again, but it was the turn of a new generation of music-lovers to experience that full flush of Maisky, and his famed big tone. The concerto’s 19 precious minutes seemed all too brief, but he made every moment count. His fiery entry sizzled with the high voltage of a live wire, one which never stopped sparking. In a concerto without a true slow movement, the central Allegretto con moto provided some kind of respite, but it was the orchestra traipsing lightly in close repartee with Maisky that kept the conversation hyper-alert and totally engaging. 

Credit goes to the orchestra under South Korean conductor Han-Na Chang, herself a virtuoso cellist in her earlier career. If there were any conductor sympathetic to a cello soloist, that would be her. Not that Maisky needed any concession, as he blazed away in the finale, which also included three short, slower sections to emote, the cello’s full-throated voice again coming to the fore. The enraptured young audience was rewarded with three encores, Maisky’s own arrangement of Lensky’s aria from Eugene Onegin, accompanied by orchestra, and solo Bach, the Preludes from Suites No.1 and 2. 

Although this gala concert was built around Maisky, the orchestra still had much to offer. The evening opened with Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, expanded from its original scoring for 13 instrumentalists to 47 players. This allowed for a greater bandwidth for the Singapore strings to shine, and a rich sonority was generated from the stillness of its quiet lullaby-like opening. The entry of woodwinds was sensitively handled, especially the oboe solo, but it soon got congested and blustery, with the trumpet’s few bars unfortunately submerged beneath the throng. 

The concert’s second half was devoted Mozart’s Symphony no. 41 in C major, “Jupiter”, after the ruler of Roman gods. Its regal opening movement, heralded by well punched-out chords, flexed muscles and exercised unabashed vibrato. Under Chang’s sure-headed direction, this was how we used to hear this music before the rise of the period instruments movement. The slow movement oozed operatic grace, but not without exhibiting tension and mild dissonance as it unfolded. The Minuet and Trio were suitably animated, and the valedictory finale piled on the volume. The fugal culmination in Mozart’s greatest symphonic finale, splendidly negotiated by the orchestra, showed he knew his Bach and Handel well. Could that have been topped that had he lived beyond 1791? That has to be one of musical history’s abiding mysteries.