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58 Tempo 58 (228) 58–78 © 2004 Cambridge University Press DOI: 10.1017/S0040298204000154 Printed in the United Kingdom Singapore, Esplanade Concert Hall: The fifth movement, ‘Coyote’, from the Stucky’s ‘Spirit Voices’ American Indian tradition, serves up another hall- mark Stucky sound, a gorgeously melancholic When Lan Shui, Music Director of the Singapore French horn solo, which functions as transition to Symphony, began the 14–15 November 2003 pair the work’s crisis point, inspired by evil Japanese of concerts with Joan Tower’s first Fanfare for the goblins who drive their victims insane. This sixth Uncommon Woman, he specifically had in mind vision features a further essential Stucky charac- who would follow: Evelyn Glennie, who entered teristic, a really tight, rhythmically thrilling wearing a black lace blouse with solid black breast- ostinato which, with its 5/4 meter, brass, and plate, black lace cape, and hot, tight, flaming red pounding cowbell, builds to a ritualistic crescendo sequined slacks with a large bare metal cross and a shattering climax. around her neck. I exclaimed, ‘Now that’s the kind As the resonance dissipates, a chorale-type of priest I’d like in my church!’ finale emerges, inspired by the Great Spirit in Except for spotlights on soloist and conductor, American Indian tradition, who is in the very air the stage was darkened to a deep red as Glennie we breathe. After Glennie gently tapped first two glided toward a set of Chinese opera gongs, tem- small gongs and then two huge tam-tams, all ple blocks, log drum, and tam-tams and shrieked, pitched from treble to bass, a fading chamber ‘Yoooo-EEEE!’ with cries interrupted by slashes at orchestra replied. It’s a pattern that decrescendos the instruments, as if raising the mythical gods of to an ethereal farewell. In fact, Glennie ended not Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand from the dead with the music itself but by standing point still, in a raucous incantation. It was what Steven hammer suspended, for 30 to 45 seconds of total Stucky describes as the cadenza opening to this 25- silence, as if all the spirits of the world have been minute, seven-movement work, which is played returned to sleep, the world is once more quiet, without breaks. and prayer in some form pervades all. While nei- The second ‘vision’ is inspired by a weeping ther Stucky nor Glennie would take the bait when Scottish wraith who haunts desolate lakes where I mentioned the religious effect of the work, her she washes the blood-stained clothes of fallen very visuals or his very titles simply won’t let them warriors. Glennie pulled a large bow against edges off the hook. of vibraphone, cymbals, and tam tams, while solo This essentially atmospheric work was assisted cello, brass, and winds drew out their haunting enormously by Glennie’s percussion technician, sounds not just left and right but back- and James Wilson, who designed a constantly chang- upstage, a three-dimensional orchestral effect that ing palette of colored lights, possible with the Shui especially relished. theatre’s state-of-the-art facilities. They were so In the third movement, Welsh elves from superbly and subtly co-ordinated with the music Queen Mab’s court produce a biting, snappy that it’s a feature they will retain in all Glennie’s Scarbo-like effect as marimba and xylophone chat- performances, facilities allowing. tered with piccolo and flute. It was the one The work – lacking, as Stucky says, any ‘argu- moment in the work where, at least in this hall, the ment’ or counterpoint – is not traditionally orchestra was under-balanced with the soloist. structured. However, one SSO staff member who The fourth vision, inspired by the Maori’s Long is not musically trained, caught the continuity that Shark (or Milky Way) who foretells the coming of threads it together. It’s as if you have to be able to day, belies Stucky’s essential orchestral palette, maintain at any one moment a consciousness of almost an avant-garde version of Ravel, essentially what has been and an awareness of what’s to come French with its delicate transparency and, above for this piece to work, as it certainly did for me. all, atmospheric. Were those muted brass off- However, in terms of effect on the audience, stage? No, they’re a pair of flutes! And you’d who could hear it only once, one well-known crit- swear, especially in the Esplanade’s highly rever- ic was caught off-guard, since, as he put it, Spirit berant, bright, practically tactile acoustics, Voices is more introspective, segmented, larger in that that hushed vibraphone was amplified, but scope, and less lyrical than other works Glennie it wasn’t. has been premièring. Next to me, a slightly spacy http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 08 Dec 2010 IP address: 194.80.32.10 59 woman in her 30s, an untrained concert-goer, grammed in advance only about 40%. didn’t applaud at all. And both nights, while the Management first schedules the annual Chinese, audience greeted Glennie enthusiastically (she’s Malay, and Indian festivals. Around them high- an audience favorite who’s even recorded with the lights in 2004 include the Hong Kong ballet orchestra for BIS), they seemed to applaud only performing The Last Emperor with choreography tepidly for the work itself. The tepidity puzzled by Canadian Wayne Ealing and music by Su Cong; me Friday night, since you could hear a pin drop in a program of new Chinese music; performances the hall, though on Saturday there was plenty of by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, the London stifled coughs and ‘clearing of the phlegm’, and Symphony, and the world première of Robert not just during that silent finale. Wilson’s La Galigo, a Southeast Asian theatre- In addition to the instruments already men- dance-music-poetry epic that will subsequently tioned, the work is scored for marimba, Burmese tour to Amsterdam, Barcelona, and New York gong, agogo, and a few pieces of metal that that City. During the other 60% of the season, look like large tractor bolts which even Stucky Esplanade management strives to lure everything couldn’t name. Two instruments were withdrawn from community groups to international artists during rehearsals, and one, which was not avail- and ensembles that give a cross-current of the per- able, Stucky dearly wishes for. He is a man who formance scene today. composes without a computer, only near a piano The Esplanade is one of the world’s few venues keyboard, and who can’t conceive of harmony that also contains a shopping mall, arts library, apart from orchestral color. While prepared for numerous restaurants, and ample space for visual advice from Glennie and Shui, Stucky said the art displayed not behind windows but in open work has needed no major surgery. Only a few spaces where people can interact with it. As mem- dynamics were tweaked, and tempos remain rela- bers of management clearly conveyed, they strives tively close to what he imagined. to make art a life style rather than a separate entity, Glennie absolutely needed to see the entire with their guiding light being that there’s no score to see how her part fit into what Stucky ‘we’ve got it right’ arrogance but rather a flexibili- intended, which is another way of saying that the ty to integrate whatever new comes along, as long orchestral score is as glittering, delicate, and sub- as it physically fits into the size and technical stantial as the soloist’s. As Stucky said, while givens of the facilities. While they program to there’s plenty of time when orchestra members attract Singaporeans and the residents of the are silent, there is no time for any of them not to Malay peninsula rather than tourists, with such an concentrate. Both Glennie and Shui felt that the open and creative attitude, visitors will find them- open space and wet (vs. dry) acoustics of the selves in one of the major cultural capitals of the Esplande’s Concert Hall were ideal because they world. allowed time for sounds to travel, amplify, meld, Gil French and linger. Stucky’s work was the last of five world pre- mières commissioned for the Singapore Symphony’s first season at the Esplanade (their London, St John’s Smith Square: season runs January through December). The David Matthews’s ‘A Vision and a Journey’ others were by Aaron Jay Kernis, Bright Sheng, Zhou Long, and Joyce Koh). The inaugural season A Vision and a Journey is David Matthews’s op. 60 – also featured the Sounds of Asia Series with works a neat coincidence, then, that the first perform- by Chen Pei-Xun, Liu Wen Jin, Phoon Yew Tien, ance of its revised version should be part of the Bernard Tan, and Chen Yi. celebrations of his sixtieth birthday. The work is By contrast, their 2004 season seems surprising- part of a series of imposing orchestral scores ly tame. There’s one world première (by John Matthews has been composing over the past two Sharpley), one concert with six Chinese com- decades, beginning with In the Dark Time in 1983 posers during Chinese New Year, a six-day Silk and continuing with Chaconne in 1985 and The Road Festival with guess who (one concert is with Music of Dawn two years later; this one followed in the orchestra), and a Chinese fortune cookie 1993, when it was premièred by Yan Pascal (Chen Gang’s Butterfly Lovers Concerto). Other 20th- Tortelier and the BBC Philharmonic, but it under- century works are standards by this point in time.