In Singapore, the music of Johannes Brahms has a reputation of being somewhat of an acquired taste. Although the German Romantic’s music is performed with regularity, an all-Brahms concert is less likely to fill a house than an all-Beethoven, all-Tchaikovsky or all-Rachmaninov concert here. This has been a good time for a reassessment, with recent performances of his Ein deutsches Requiem and Double Concerto by the Singapore Symphony led by music director Hans Graf, before this latest offering. Juxtaposing the familiar with the rare, works of youth and maturity, serious and lighter Brahms, this was an ample showcase of his all-encompassing mastery.
The evening began with the Tragic Overture, conceived as a counterweight to his ebullient Academic Festival Overture. Nobody had to perish for this masterpiece to be written, the title being more equated with pathos and drama. Two stentorian chords open the work, before an unleashing of passion and emotion. Its beefy and plethoric textures came off as over-reverberant in the smaller venue of Victoria Concert Hall, but are likely better appreciated in the capacious Esplanade Concert Hall. Most of the orchestral details, however, emerged well in this full-blooded reading.
There were no such worries for Serenade no. 2 in A major, an early work far predating Brahms’ First Symphony, which utilises pared-down forces. An absence of violins mean that woodwinds and brass (pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons and French horns) rule the roost, supported by low strings (violas, cellos and basses). Typical of those wind pieces beloved in Mitteleuropa, a pastoral and congenial feel was generated through all its five movements. The central Adagio non troppo slow movement cast dark clouds for contrast, but the outer movements were mostly light-hearted, jocular and dance-like. This was capped by a joyous Rondo finale, where Roberto Alvarez’s piccolo joined the fray for a festive finish. Such a lively and energised performance could only win friends for this delightfully unpretentious piece, which only received its Singapore premiere in 2006.
Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D major was the concert’s main draw, with Japanese violinist Sayaka Shoji who was last heard here in 2021. The full orchestra returned and, judging by the opening tutti, was determined not to take any prisoners. One need not have worried as Shoji was fully up to the challenge. Her violin tone was outsized, capable of cutting through thick orchestral textures without recourse to a coarsening of sound. With near flawless intonation, this performance was a pleasure to behold, not least in lightly accompanied passages and the virtuosic Joachim first movement cadenza.
Arguably the concerto’s best melody went to Rachel Walker’s solo oboe in the slow movement, where Shoji’s part was to elaborate on its felicities. Then it was back to virtuoso mode in the boisterous Hungarian folk-influenced Rondo, which was rollicking good fun all round. Graf, in his pre-performance preamble, had pointed to Shoji taking a departure from the norm by playing in the finale a reworking of two short bars from Joachim’s personal manuscript. In bars 325 and 326, triplets were replaced by quavers, a small but audible detail. Blink and it would be missed. Vociferous applause saw Shoji return with a thickly polyphonic encore: Max Reger’s Prelude in G minor (Op.117 No.2), another impressive show of virtuosity.
