Saturday 25 November 2000 Victoria Concert Hall	MASTERS SERIES Haydn and the Creatures of Prometheus
	Anton WEBERN (1883-1945) Five Pieces for Orchestra, op.10 Franz Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809) Cello Concerto in C major, Hob.VIIb:1 Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) Ballet Music: The Creatures of Prometheus, op 43. Truls MØRK cello SHUI Lan conductor

NOISE RATING INDEX: 2 (Relatively quiet audience but buzzing watches heard everywhere on the new hour).

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.

Attending the pre- concert talk on Saturday gave me greater insight into the music considering that I had gone the previous day and did not know what to make of the first piece.

Anton Webern’s music somehow does not appeal to me. In fact on the first night, the music totally bewildered me. The whole piece is broken into 5 parts lasting 5 minutes. The 1st piece is marked "Primal Urge (Very peaceful and tender)" - but was nothing that I had envisioned.

To me the whole piece seemed like a series of dissonant matchings snd partnerships between instruments, for example with xylophone matched against clarinet, or the use of the distant horns against the backdrop of drums, the effect which sounded so extraordinarily different. The introduction of two seldom-seen guitars was quite a sight. I’m sure I heard a tuba matching this with the screeching sound of the lone violin and solo cello - all made the short work hard to comprehend.

What was intriguing to me was to find that the fourth piece, "Memory ( flowing extremely peaceful)", which lasted barely one minute, was actually featured in the movie Exorcist.

On hindsight I think the producers of the film could not have picked a better piece to describe demonic possession although the title Memory seemed rather inappropriate - but perhaps on hindsight it could well have been really appropriate. There was nothing that I took home with me - or maybe that was the point Webern was trying to make. This piece is described to have been trimmed off of its excesses. What I found interesting was the use of bells which sounded like distant church bells - this particular sound caught my eye and ear as its use brought sudden distant relief in a setting of chaos.

The sudden ending which is totally abrupt left the audience in a total quandary. I for one was not sure what to do, whether to clap or wait for something else unexpected to happen. Such is the experience of concertizing.

The SSO artistic committee seemed to have spread out the top performers at the end of the season, with the likes of Hilary Hahn , Truls Mørk and Stephen Hough all one week apart.

Truls Mørk has garnered great fame in Europe and the Asia Pacific region in recent times and is an exclusive recording artiste for the Virgin label. The Norwegian cellist comes with credentials hard to match, having won the Tchaikovsky competition (1982), the Naumberg Competition in New York (1986) and received the Unesco Prize at the European Radio Union Competition in Bratislava (1983). I heard snippets of his Elgar disc and was astonished at the tone he produced. Well, the answer to this has got to be to his Domenico Montagnana cello of 1723, with its deep soulful sound.

This is one cellist who is going to be featured more and more prominently and will be sought after greatly . His rendition of Haydn from the opening bars demonstrated a player both seasoned on the concert circuit as well as a musician who is both engaging as a performer to his audience and also to himself. His introspective look into the Adagio took the audience to a different plane. His musicality and musicianship was demonstrated by his understanding of the score, with all the (late-)Baroque antics through his wide array of technical skills.

I particularly liked his long bowstrokes across single notes. There was always this consistency and thought put into anything he did. I bought his disc of Shostakovich cello concertos and strongly believe that he will do justice to the composer. His ability to get down to the deep recesses of his cello and his ability to project that sound across the hall has to be greatly praised.

Leader Souptel led the string section from the onset of the concerto and his rapport with Mørk was evident as they shared eye contact in areas where a certain sense of togetherness was needed. Truls Mørk’s colours are amazingly wide variety of color from pianissimo to fortissimo was clearly demonstrated, far beyond expectations for a concerto which though requiring technical facilities but does not ask put the kind of pressure associated with the Elgar or Dvorak.

One thing that was greatly disappointing was that the concert hall was only half full. Years ago I had the pleasure of hearing Mischa Maisky play Saint-Saëns’ cello concerto to a dismal half-full hall -and yet he is a prominent Tchaikovsky winner who records for a major recording label. I really wonder what criteria do Singaporeans choose when they decide to go and see a concert considering that The Straits Times had run a full length article on Truls Mørk for the less informed. Well for those who decided to give this concert a try I am sure they weren’t disappointed. During the concert night, all 90 copies of his variousrecordings on CD were sold out, with people making enquires to purchase more.

The performance of Beethoven's Creatures of Prometheus ballet music was somewhat of a disappointment. A work seldom played, the only part that caught much of the imagination of the music was the Overture and the ending which bears some resemblance to the Eroica Symphony. There were parts where the SSO seemed a bit disjointed and dry. The cellos were in better form and the brilliant solo by our sub-lead did justice to the Adagio section. Shui Lan got the orchestra off to a robust start but seemed to have fizzled out in many of the later sections, which was a bit disappointing. The SSO seemed a bit lethargic in some of the movements, yet exciting in the odd movement here and there which made the work sound rather uneven and haphazard. Both nights displayed this same pattern, unfortunately.

Johann D'Souza works in a laboratory of a different sort with Firewalls, VPNs and virtual reality bosses.

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803: 29.11.2000 © Johann D'Souza, Benjamin Chee

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