REVIEW / CONCERT
SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE
Zhang Manchin (viola), Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Kazushi Ono (conductor)
Esplanade Concert Hall/Last Friday
With the viola being such an introverted sort of musical instrument, solo concertos for it are rare. William Walton's is about the best there is.
With its morose first movement, the biting satire of its second movement and the jolly festivities and quiet nostalgia of the final movement, it presents the viola in a whole range of unexpectedly dramatic and colourful poses.
Pulled out of her customary seat in the heart of the orchestra and divested of her usual anonymous black, Singapore Symphony Orchestra principal violist Zhang Manchin was thrust into the spotlight as soloist, dressed in sparkling scarlet.
Zhang played Walton's Concerto very well indeed. Her tone was luscious, her control immaculate and her playing neat, precise and committed. She seemed to have a pretty clear idea of what Walton's music was all about.
Not so Japanese conductor Kazushi Ono. He had only the vaguest notion and his lack of conviction led to a performance which never seemed to know quite where it was going or why.
If Ono had seemed bemused by Walton's Viola Concerto, he was thoroughly in his element with Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.
With an obvious flair for the dramatic, he pulled off a truly spectacular performance of this familiar old orchestral showpiece.
The Esplanade stage was groaning under the weight of a vastly enlarged SSO and although it was one of Berlioz's own stage directions that an oboe should stand off-stage to recreate the effect of a shepherd calling across a valley to an on-stage friend (a Cor Anglais), on purely logical terms this seemed a necessity - there simply was no room for anyone else on stage.
This duet was a lovely enough moment, but what came next was magnificent. One thing Singapore knows how to do is produce a good thunderstorm and the one which sent these detached wind players scurrying for cover was a classic.
Four hefty fellows manning twice as many timpani gave an impression of thunder every bit as awe-inspiring as the real thing and with a couple of bass drums to add to the mix, this was vivid stuff, which kept the audience in thrall.
Not to be outdone by Berlioz's own stage directions, Ono added some of his own, the most astonishing of which was to place two grotesquely amplified tubular bells high up in the organ gallery.
With the din they made all but overwhelming the orchestra below, you expected any moment to see Quasimodo stagger out from behind an organ pipe, clutching his ears and calling: "The Bells! The Bells!"
It might have verged on the outrageous, but I suspect Berlioz himself would have approved.
