OVERALL NOISE RATING: 5 (Apart from the coughing and the musicians' page-turning, the unthinkable happened... a handphone went off on stage.)

The Noise Rating Index is a partially-objective measurement of pager and handphone blasts, 9pm and 10pm watch beeps, coughing-during-the-pianissimo-bits, intra-audience conversation and other mind-bogglingly inept noises emitted in the concert hall during actual performance of music. It is measured on a scale of 0 to 5, in increasing annoyance.

Let's face it: the catchy Three Tenors monicker is the most successful venture in the history of classical recording, and everyone it seems has jumped on the bandwagon. That the Singapore Symphonia Co. Ltd is doing it twice in four years, in this instance, hardly comes as a surprise.

Actually, it can be a good thing: new audiences are exposed to the artistry of the human voice, a lot of publicity is generated and it can also serve as a lucrative fund-raiser instead of a performance struggling to break even at the box office. (Fans of Decca's Entartete Musik series, for example, have the original Three Tenors from Italia 1990 to thank for the company's financial werewithal to invest in non-mainstream and unprofitable repertoire.)

Even more importantly, using trained classical musicians to bring good music to the masses prevents the dumbing down, in standards as well as in repertoire, which tends to plague the classical circuit these days. There is room for pop crossovers and interdisciplinary collaborations, of course, but in the rush to woo new audiences, one should also be mindful about the potential debasement of the uninitiated audience's appreciation of a noble art.

But enough of the sermon and on to the concert. For starters, it was not a full house - something of a rarity for associate conductor Bart Folse these days - but perhaps the "fund-raising" prices were the decisive reason. The programme was pretty conventional: a first-half of classical arias and a second-half of musical and folk songs, rounding off with the same Italianate ditties so famously immortalized by you-know-who.

The evening opened with Glinka's Russlan and Ludmilla Overture, with the orchestra making a lush and vibrant - not to mention loud - timbre. Any suggestion of dynamics went right out with the thumping timpani beats, although the fastidiously neat strings and woodwinds bode well for the remainder of the concert. The other overture in the first half, from Rossini's La Cerenetola, had a different quality to it, though: the sustained crescendo was pulled off very well - both times. About the only gripe is that perhaps a shorter musical interlude could have been chosen.

All three tenors took to the stage to present the first aria, Lehar's "Dein ist mein ganzes Hertz", taking delivering couplets in turn as well as in unison. Hao Zhou, in the role of spokesman, introduced the music and spoke to the audience in an attempt to build rapport and tone down the formality of the occasion - not really the most difficult thing, given the nature of the programme.

Unfortunately, Hao was also the softest - if most vocally agile - of the three, and in the loud passages, the orchestra quite easily drowned him out. At the conclusion of "Di quella pira" towards the end of the first-half, in fact, all three soloists were totally wiped out by the instruments. Hao also sounded strained on the high notes, sometimes hitting the note from underneath, but to his credit, his showmanship carried him through.

His companions Wei Li and Zhang Ya Lin both had deeper timbres: Wei's phrasing was always natural and impeccable, but Zhang had a tendency to rasp on his sibillants. Otherwise, all three tenors sang with great bravura and character - Wei Li's richly impassioned "E Lucevan e stelle" being one of the highlights of the evening - bringing yet out another quality to the types of music the orchestra plays. Singing techniques aside, there were times when the orchestra was not quite in sync with the soloists, which was a pity because for the most part, Folse drew a convincing and capable accompaniment from the orchestra.

For example, in the first half, the soloists entered a bar late in one of the arias; in the second half, in "Love Changes Everything", the orchestra (especially the drum set) was not ready to wait for the soloist's fermata at the conclusion of the song and ended up "dragging" the soloist after the music track.

But perhaps all these pitfalls pale in comparison to the musician's handphone that first went off towards the end of "La fleur que tu m'avais jetee", and continued to ring during the applause and again prior to the start of the next item, "Una furtiva lagrima". Handphones can be surprisingly loud with the proper acoustics, and there were most certainly no more humorous quips from Folse this time. I do wonder what the soloists must have thought of our orchestra.

The programme book, as befitted the occasion, was printed up in full A4 size and contained bilingual concert information - clearly, this event was aimed at more than the regular crowd. The translations make for interesting reading, although some words and phrases were given their literal renditions, leading to some oddities- how does one accurately render "Zdenek Macal" in Chinese, after all ? There were other small mistakes (as usual) - Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors (Viking, 1991) states that Lloyd Webber is not, in fact, hyphenated - which, in all fairness, only nitpicky reviewers would have noticed.

At the end of everything, the crowd did get their money's worth of entertainment, if only because of the hype and gloss rubbed off from the Three Chinese Tenors billing. Performance-wise, it was not the most technically accomplished perfomance from soloists and orchestra (remember the above argument about crossovers leading to the "debasement of a noble art") and especially not that bit with the handphone.

I know the soloists and orchestra have been rehearsing the programme to within an inch of its life all week, but maybe it still wasn't enough to see the demanding programme through. As for the other problem, well, it certainly puts to rest the idea that classical music and high culture is the panacea for our social ills.

William Beh reckons that Three Tenors is definitely catchier than Two Fifteens or Five Sixes.

Click to Return to the Concert Index!... or Visit the Inkvault archives!

760: 21.8.2000 ©William Beh

Explore the Flying Inkpot