City Chinese Orchestra

Web Composer:
Wong Chin Loon
E-mail:
chinloon@pacific.net.sg
Updated:
28 Jun 1997
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Review on Youth Chinese Orchestra of Young Musician Society of Singapore Concert 2 Mar 1997 I am impressed by Chen Zewang’s Forest Fantasia. It is a brave attempt in putting all the notes together all on his own. It is not easy for him to get to perform on stage that day with the Youth Chinese Orchestra of Young Musician Society of Singapore. For this, I congratulate him, and I had never seen him so happy that day. It is very creative, although his ideas are not totally original, and as Ma Sheng Long, the conductor from Shanghai Traditional Music Troupe, who had helped him in arranging the orchestra, had said: his art of composing music needs time to mature. It is his own music, whether it is good or bad in the eyes for professionals, it is a music out from his heart! People who play their own music, feel strongly about them, for they know the meaning of it best. Writing music and writing novel is the same, you must have the touch and feeling first, and then you have the strong urge to share that kind of feeling with your friends and the public, so strong to the extent that you go through all the torment in getting your own creation into the world. After creation, what is left is waiting for the results that you had intended, or had anticipated. People might not understand your music. People may criticised heavily. Or people might be inspired to do a music. However, these are not important, the seeds of nurturing local composer is being sowed, and we just have to wait for them to grow. Or course Chen Zewang is by no means the first local composer, the more senior composer, Yang Peixian, and the equally junior composer, Su Handa had attempted to do. They received criticisms also, which I feel personally that these criticisms are also not professional. Again, the standards of composing music must grow with the standard of criticism. I hope that in the near future, we have improvements in both areas.

The trend of organising a Music Concert like this, is that motivations are falling and the effort put in in preparing the concert is falling also. It is not a good sign. This concert is not very well prepared. Hong Dingliang, a well-known Dizi Soloist in Singapore, had not performed to our expectation. And the fact that making him presenting two solos, seems like a no choice situation where Dingliang had to fill up a significant duration of the concert. Xie Meiling’s Yangqin Solo, The Symphonic Poem of Taiwan Straits, sounds ok under the conduction of her senior Jiawei. However, in most part of the music, the sound of the Yangqin is dampened by the accompanied music. It is a nice music, and Yangqin has no choice and has to stand out in its melody!

I am looking forward to a better concert from the Youth Orchestra, and hope that the motivation to present a good concert never die!