The Singapore Symphony Celebrates
the Berlioz Centennial

The city's new Esplanade Concert Hall resounds with the composer's sumptuous
Messe solennelle.

by Robert Markow / Andante.com (May 2, 2003)

The initial response from most people who learned that I intended to visit Singapore was incredulity, in view of the SARS virus supposedly running rampant there. In fact, the city-state is reeling not from the virus itself but from the paranoid reaction of the rest of the world: Changi Airport had more staff on hand than passengers; five-star hotels were offering rooms at two-star prices. But Singapore's citizens are a famously resourceful, determined and disciplined lot; quarantine measures were swift and effective. The island has actually been one of the safest places in all of Asia in recent weeks.

That discipline was a hallmark of the Berlioz bicentennial concert given by the Singapore Symphony on 2 May. Lim Yau, the SSO's resident conductor, led the orchestra and a total of 230 voices in the Singapore premiere of Berlioz's Messe solennelle. Yet the good order was allied with a sense of joy in making music, resulting in a performance glowing with expressive fervor and commitment. Some scraggly violins and badly tuned horns did little to dampen the overall spirit.

It was the chorus that left the deepest impression. It seemed scarcely credible that such a large number of voices could achieve such clear enunciation, flawless balance and perfect ensemble - qualities more often associated with choral bodies one tenth the size of this one. Yet from the opening Kyrie to the "Domine, salvum fac regem" an hour later, the choir's depth and quality of sound were extraordinary. One also marveled at the singers' deportment: not one head bobbed in time to the music, not one body swayed; 230 pages turned simultaneously; the entire ensemble rose and sat as one. It was as impressive to watch as to hear.

Lim's ability to shape phrases, create dynamic contrasts and build tension was evident everywhere. The carefully controlled crescendo over the course of the second Kyrie revealed a real understanding of the score, and this was but one of many memorable moments of Lim's performance. Brass were powerful without being overwhelming in the "Resurrexit," while the woodwinds, the orchestra's strongest section, provided a play of plangent colors in the work's more intimate passages. Soprano Nancy Yuen and tenor David Quah displayed well-focused, eminently pleasing voices, though baritone Howard Quilla Croft seemed to have trouble projecting.

The concert opened with another youthful work by a 19th-century Frenchman, one that also lay forgotten until well into the 20th century: Bizet's Symphony in C. Lim led a performance marked by crisp rhythms and irresistible momentum, while oboist Rachel Walker contributed sublimely beautiful solos in the second movement.

The Singapore audience deserves to take a bow of its own. The rare experience of hearing chords disappear into the silence of a fine hall, with no extraneous noise whatsoever, was a thrill in itself. Not one beeper or mobile phone, an accoutrement of virtually every Singaporean, went off. And there was none of the noisy hacking that afflicts so many North American concert audiences. Perhaps the ubiquitous signs advising patrons with fever or cough (symptoms of SARS) to stay away paid off; perhaps the government's admonition that every citizen take his or her temperature twice a day is working: the sole miscreant who chose to hawk just before the downbeat of the second movement of the symphony received a personal rebuke from Lim, who turned and soundly castigated the fellow from the podium.

The SSO is now well into its first season in its new home, the 1,600-seat Concert Hall of Esplanade, Singapore's national performing arts center which opened to great fanfare in October 2002. Unquestionably, the orchestra is enjoying a far better acoustical environment than it did down the road in Victoria Concert Hall, a venerable old colonial building where, due largely to an exceptionally low ceiling, the sound remains obstinately on the stage and refuses to bloom. The new hall is the first acoustician Russell Johnson and his firm Artec Consultants have designed in Southeast Asia, and it is a beauty, especially to the eye. The designers chose a color pattern combining the browns and golds of tropical hardwoods with green upholstery. The effect is both restful and spacious, a sensation enhanced by one of the highest ceilings of any concert hall in the world. The seats at the back of the third tier are still only two-thirds of the way to the top of the house. The eye is inevitably drawn upward. The acoustic canopy high above and just in front of the stage also serves as a lighting fixture and as the visual focus of the entire hall.

In contrast to the visual warmth, the sound is uncommonly bright, even glaring at times. The reverberation time is long - too long, at least in this instance. Flexible acoustical elements are a Johnson hallmark; in the Esplanade's Concert Hall, various adjustments of the acoustic canopy and curtains as well as special resonating chambers built into the walls can reportedly set the reverberation time anywhere from 1.5 to six seconds. The setting used at this concert was definitely too high. In most concert venues, the poorest seats are usually under balcony overhang; on this occasion they proved to be the best, offering refuge from the uncomfortably brilliant and resonant sound.

Yet regardless of where one sits, the Concert Hall's sound is full and omnidirectional, completely filling the air space defined by the walls and ceiling. There is an almost visceral quality to the sound, a sense of aura that one gets in the great venues of Bayreuth, Boston and Vienna. Instrumental colors blend well without losing their distinctiveness (except for the timpani, which come across as muddy and boomy). With a little more fine-tuning, Singapore's new concert hall has the potential to rank among the world's finest.