Review of Four Concerts by Asian Bands
A Composer’s Perspective
Before I start I must explain to readers that I am not a music critic. I am a composer and lecturer in New Music, so this review is very much from the composer’s perspective. I will not say very much about interpretation or the relative merits of each band, but will concentrate on my own highly subjective view of the music. I decided to focus on four concerts featuring ensembles from Asia, as there was more unfamiliar repertoire to explore.
Republic of Korea Navy Symphonic Band
The first concert I attended was given by the Republic of Korea Navy Symphonic Band. I had just arrived in Singapore earlier that day so I hope that my review of this concert won’t be too clouded by jet lag! After an opening fanfare maybe it was my rather dazed state of mind, but the Festival Overture for Band by Chung Gil Kim didn’t seem very festive to me. The harmonic direction was rather static bordering on the minimal, and the sudden end left a feeling of incompleteness.
The next work on the programme, Caprice by Eugene Bozza, featured clear and confident trumpet playing by Ahn Hee Chau. The work was rhapsodic in character with a heavy emphasis on the whole tone scale. Beautifully-scored improvisatory passages were set against music of a more aggressively rhythmic character. I feel that this piece was well focused with a confident sense of direction, and could have lasted longer.
Watchman, Tell us of the Night by Mark Camphouse attempted to deal with the subject of child abuse, and succeeded in creating a somber sound world at times reminiscent of Aaron Copland. A chorale section brought the music perilously close to sentimentality, but some poetic writing for solo oboe and saxophone put the piece back on track.
The next piece was also by an American composer: Yi Sun Shin by Robert Smith. To me this was a work of many striking ideas that could have been developed more; here they tended to be repeated. Maybe I have an overtly traditional approach to harmony, but again I was struck by the lack of harmonic rhythm: some unsteady intonation from a cor anglais solo at one point in the piece actually added to the exoticism.
The work that left the strongest impression on me was by a Korean composer Bird, Bird, Blue Bird by Eunhye Kim. This was a theme and variations, which succeeded by its freshness of presentation of the material, and avoidance of cliché. At one point I thought I heard the ghost of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet; having said this, my ears were constantly stimulated by the ideas in this work.
Sea Fantasy by Sung Ho Ywang was charactarised by some virtuosic instrumental writing, sometimes very exposed. What intrigued me here was that the ending was not as triumphant as I was led to expect from the programme note, something a good deal more enigmatic. There was an encore: a Korean folk melody complete with wind chimes, temple blocks and rather slushy harmony.
Hong Kong Wind Philharmonic
The concert the next day featured the Hong Kong Wind Philharmonic conducted by Jerry F. Junkin. It seems fitting that the first composer that I should encounter at a WASBE conference should be Mozart, and I was not disappointed by the experience of four of the movements from the Serenade in B-Flat; the playing was refined and lyrical with some delightful improvisatory moments in the ravishing slow movement, which immediately confirmed a fantastic rapport between players and conductor.
The first new piece was Conversing with the Stars, a double horn concerto by Hong Kong composer Lo Hau Man. This work displayed clear transparent textures with prominent octaves, and the two horns shone out impressively. Perhaps the piece lacked some forward momentum; at times the music seemed stuck in one spot. I enjoyed the singing that the band had to do, and the constant repeated notes ended the work effectively.
I really enjoyed the following work: A Jazz Funeral by USA composer Christopher Coleman. Here the inspiration is New Orleans jazz, and the composer has produced a passionate and at times wild piece that captures excellently the extreme surges of emotion that can feature at a funeral. The full blooded ‘big band’ writing at times had an almost comic effect, but certainly communicated strongly.
The final new work in the concert was Great Wall Capriccio by Liu Wen-Jin. This was a concerto featuring an Ehru, a kind of Chinese violin. Whilst the soloist created some haunting and luminous sounds, the idiom of the music tended toward old fashioned Hollywood; the piece tended to meander and seemed overlong, although the singing quality of the solo instrument kept my attention for the most part.
The ensemble concluded with a rhythmically tight and exciting rendition of an arrangement of Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphoses. My one objection was the use of a string synthesizer at the start of the second movement. Surely there could be an inventive way of scoring the soft, high held note here, maybe using muted trumpets and flutes. Having said this, the arrangement for the most part worked excellently.
West Winds (Singapore)
The concert given by the Singapore ensemble West Winds featured entirely new music, and got off to an exciting start with Toccata Singapura by Adrian Hill which was sensitively conceived and rhythmically innovative. I’m afraid that the next piece simply didn’t work for me. Nyi Ronggeng by Yazeed Djamin attempted to combine the sounds of the wind band with that of a gamelan ensemble. In reality the gamelan’s simple rhythmic ostinati seemed to be tacked on to a work that stylistically reminded me of Hollywood of the 1930s. There was little attempt to combine the disparate colours of the two musical cultures: a work which does this triumphantly is Benjamin Britten’s Balinese inspired ballet score The Prince of the Pagodas. The next work also didn’t inspire me, a Euphonium Concertino by Kevin Kaska. This easy-going-sounding piece worked very well on its own terms, but I felt lacked ambition; it reminded me of some of the safer brass band repertoire that is sometimes heard in the UK. The final piece in the first half, Lao Duang Daun by Prateep Supahnrojn had the feel of a Siamese sleigh ride with some Wagnerian gestures in the brass. Again, a little harmonic modulation would have given the piece more direction.
Nothing could have been a greater contrast than what followed: Sang Nila by Singaporean composer Zechariah Goh Toh Chai. For me this work was the highlight of the conference. This was a haunting and magical work for chorus and band, featuring chanting and beguiling bell sounds. Here the influence of Gamelan music was triumphantly integrated into the musical language; the static harmonic field in this context was totally appropriate. The composer, who conducted this premiere has clearly absorbed many musical directions of the last fifty years, and the final choral passage with vowel sounds paying homage to Stockhausen’s Stimmung was most memorable. Here is a composer whose original voice deserves to be heard worldwide.
I also enjoyed the next piece featuring the chorus: Cloudburst by Eric Whitacre, which featured some fabulously seductive sounds, and perfectly captured the feeling of a potentially cataclysmic climatic event. The close of the piece involved band, chorus and all clicking their fingers to give a very convincing rain effect.
The final piece in this choral second half I found less convincing: After the Storm by Stephen Melilo. While excitingly scored, the world of John Williams, particularly Star Wars and Harry Potter, seemed to take over. Gestures and effects were repeated rather than developed.
Senzoku Gakuen College of Music Wind Ensemble
My final review is of the concert by the Senzoku Gakuen College of Music Wind Ensemble, a Japanese group. Here, I felt that the programming was an issue. The first two pieces were both very successful, but the memory of them was erased by what followed.
Salty Music by Hideaki Miura was a great curtain raiser, combining raunchy post-West Side Story big band colours with more impressionist sections and moments of epic grandeur. The world premiere of Kizuna by USA composer Frederick Speck left a strong impression. What I particularly enjoyed in this colourful work was the rhythmic freedom and avoidance of predictable ostinato patterns that can mar so many serious wind ensemble works. It was also a considerable achievement to keep the ear so stimulated with a predominantly pentatonic language.
Straight after this, half way through the first half we were then treated to a jolly march. Why here? The effect was to cloud the memory of two excellent works. I have nothing against marches, but the rest of the concert gave the impression of a long series of encores; eight desserts after an all too brief hors d’oeuvre and main course. There was one march that had a central section in three quarter time and another that featured large snake-like wooden rattles that looked as if they’d escaped from Singapore zoo.
The second half opened with an arrangement of ‘Mars’ from The Planets by Holst with some inappropriate electronic sounds and use of the string synthesizer that surely wasn’t necessary. There followed a pretty painless piece of Japanoiserie from Alfred Reed, a salty tango by Astor Piazzola with solo accordion and some more electronic noises from Naohiko Terashima, although this piece started promisingly as an attractively wrong footed bossa nova. The final Jupiter Fantasy by Yasuhide Ito was great fun, but I would have enjoyed it more after a few beers.
I’ll stop now: anybody worried about what I’ve written, please feel free to disregard it, I’m only a composer!
©2005 WASBE