Before we begin, I'd just like to ask - rhetorically - where was the audience? Ten minutes from 8.15 and there were probably more people on stage than in the stalls. By the time the music began, there couldn't have been more than two hundred people in the hall from stalls to circle. You know, in some parts of the world, people have been known to lose their jobs for such a fiasco.

If anything, it can't be that the repertoire is too esoteric - not the likes of Rimsky-Korsakov, Weber and Respighi! - and certainly not when one recalls the good old days when Messiaen and Górecki played to full houses. Tonight, I think we can say, has been the nadir in a season so far of lukewarm audiences and unless management feels that there isn't a problem, we could very well be witnessing local classical music go down the tubes.

IT IS a little-known fact that JoAnn Falletta is as adept in performing on classical guitar, lute, madolin, cello and piano as she conducts. Benjamin Chee met her backstage to find out more about this musical polymath. STARTING OUT AS A CONDUCTOR I started learning music when I was about seven, but it wasn't until I was ten or eleven that I decided to be a conductor. I was going to concerts, watching the conductors, and wanted to be part of it, controling the music-making. I guess I was a bit naive then, not knowing how difficult it would be to break into a male-dominated field. It wasn't until I was seventeen that I realized that there were almost no female conductors (laughs) - but it was probably easier to get started in the US, where women are more accepted in many different fields. (Photo from Buffalo PO Website) HER TEACHERS I was very lucky to get a lot of support in this respect, having studied at Mannes and Juilliard. When I first started, there was a lot of skepticism but eventually we got over it. I learnt a lot from my teachers: Sixten Ehrling - he was Swedish - and Jorge Mester. I also studied from Leonard Bernstein, who came in from time to time when I was at Juilliard. My parents were not musicians, but they were supportive. BEING A FEMALE CONDUCTOR Well, you have to get results by persuasion, and you have to be strong. You can't lose your temper, otherwise you'd appear to be out of control. (laughs) But generally musicians are responsive, even though sometimes you get a bit of resistance at first. HER CONDUCTING CAREER Right now I'm musical director of two symphony orchestras, Buffalo (Philharmonic) and Virginia Symphony. They aren't that far apart, although you'd still have to fly. I was Associate Conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra for three years. Normally now I spend about 10 weeks on the road guest conducting. HER RECORDINGS We have done quite a number of unusual repertoire - we have a CD of music by women composers, for example. In a field where there are already so many recordings, you don't want to do something that someone else has already done - not unless you really have something new to say about it. In January, we just recorded three composers with the Buffalo (Philharmonic) for the Naxos label, for their American Composers series: music by Frederick Converse, Morton Gould and (Charles) Griffes. HER HOBBIES You know, music takes up so much of my time that I don't really do anything else. I like to read, and my job lets me travel - although I wouldn't travel for vacation in my spare time. I spend so much time flying around that when I'm free, I like to stay put and relax. COMING TO CONDUCT THE SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA I'm not sure if you know this, but over in the US, people have said a lot of good things about the SSO. It might be from the recordings, but the orchestra has a very good reputation there. Your musical director, Lan Shui, also conducts a lot and is very highly regarded in the US. WHAT SHE WOULD HAVE DONE IF SHE WERE NOT IN MUSIC I don't know - I've always wanted to do music so much that I've never thought about doing anything else. Perhaps something to do with languages; I've always been very fascinated by various languages.

Not that this appeared to affect the quality of music-making on the night. JoAnn Falletta is the goods, drawing responsive playing from the orchestra in a mixed-bag of showcase pieces. Conducting with broad, paint-like strokes of the baton and full-body-language sashaying on the podium, she was a pleasure to watch: a master craftsman (ditto) at work, eliciting a joyful noise from the musicians.

The Rimsky-Korsakov Russian Easter Overture, with its go-stop go-stop passages, received a warmly idiomatic reading. The brasses were brilliant, the strings lyrical and the percussion in top form. The diminuitive audience surely knew they were in for a wonderful treat, judging from the four curtain calls they accorded Falletta just from this curtain-raiser.

The SSO's Principal Bassoonist Zhang Jin Min performed Weber's Bassoon Concerto from score, with intelligent phrasing and astute rubato, even if occasionally it bordered on the agogic and threatened to disrupt the momentum of the music.

What was perhaps lacking was a touch of empathy - playing the notes from A to Z is one thing, but doing it with poetry and élan is well another. The last movement, for example, did not find the bassoon wittily skipping along as much as going for an autumnal saunter in the woods, albeit in beautifully crafted phrases.

Falletta and the orchestra provided excellent accompaniment, but in the last, it would have been nice if the soloist had stamped a bit more of character into the work.

Giuseppe Martucci's Notturno, a dusky tone-painting of subtle orchestral palettes and sublime harmonies, was the aesthetic highlight of the evening - notwithstanding the coming Sturm und Drang of the Respighi - and I for one am grateful that Maestro Falletta included this in her programme.

Rarely has the orchestra played with such ardour and relish in such a maudlin soundscape, and for that full marks to the conductor.

Respighi's Church Windows is another neglected, if bombastic, showpiece for orchestra - succinct and intense vignettes of four ecclesiastical subjects. The Flight into Egypt was beautifully rendered, as was the Matins of St Claire with its hypnotic instrumental chirascura.

Keen-minded concertgoers may remember the last time Church Windows was performed (May 1992), in a season which also included Milhaud's La Création du Monde , Rachmaninov's The Bells and Berg's Violin Concerto To the Memory of an Angel. Indeed, in the capable hands of Maestro Falletta - herself of distant Italianate ancestry - Church Windows takes on a luminous quality, full of both drama and subtleties in the musical storytelling.

Exhibiting her ability to evoke and encompass a great diversity of mood and atmosphere, Falletta's conjuration of Saint Michael Archangel was nothing short of spectacular, with brasses as sharp as the veritable lance in Saint Michael's hand. The battle did not reach the highest volume of fortissimo which the orchestra was capable of - this was cleverly saved for the benediction at the end of Saint Gregory the Great to send the audience home on a musical high.

A significant omission in the programme notes was the failure to explain the narratives behind each of the movements: audiences would have better appreciated, I feel, an explanation of The Flight into Egypt as the tranquil procession of a caravan going into a starry night, or Saint Michael Archangel as the great battle in Heaven between angels of light and dark. Instead, we are told with relish that, for example, "The key centre remains on F-sharp with a modal shift (from Aeolian to Ionian back to Aeolian)". I pity the concertgoers who do not have a degree in music, for this seems to be the level for which these notes were written.

As usual, they misspelt names in the programme book again - in fact, a whole ton of them this time. The most obvious ones would be "Gluseppe Martucci" and "Ottorino Resphigi" (pronounced Res-piggy, not Res-phee-jee). They also goofed the year of Respighi's birth - 1879, not 1870. Even Maestro Falletta is not spared, but at this point I shall leave the mangling of her first name in the programme book as an exercise, along with the other typos, to preserve the joy of surprise and discovery for interested parties.

Conclusions? Superb product, but extremely, extremely shoddy packaging and even worse sales. I'm not sure whether the people who produce the programme book weekly feel that what they do is unimportant and therefore can be slipshod about it, for the substandard product that appears certainly suggests that such is the attitude. I'm also not sure how many alarm bells go off in the manager's office when the orchestra plays to a near-empty hall but if it were me, I know I'd go beserk. I can't even begin to imagine how the musicians must feel.

For the sake of cultivating the music audience in Singapore, I hope someone important somewhere wakes up and does something soon. Musically, the SSO is on the right path to becoming a world-class orchestra, but this would be a hollow achievement if the concert hall remains empty and the programme book remains of a quality that ought not to have seen the light of day.

WILLIAM BEH is currently in the committee deciphering the relationship between bassoons and church windows (or Easter). With any postmodern luck, we should get a witty answer pretty soon.

If you wish to Add a Comment to this review, please post your comments to classical@inkpot.com.

Last Concert Reviewed | Next Concert Reviewed

Return to the Classical Index!... or Visit the Inkvault archives!

All original texts are copyrighted. Please seek permission from the Classical Editor
if you wish to reproduce/quote Inkpot material.