Concert review: Singapore National Youth Orchestra demonstrates growth in collaboration with Singapore Ballet
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The sight of the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, paired with Singapore Ballet dancers, showed what a major undertaking Symphony Of Dance was.
PHOTO: BERNIE NG
Mervin Beng
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Symphony Of Dance – Live With The Singapore Ballet
Singapore National Youth Orchestra – Joshua Tan (conductor)
Singapore Ballet – Janek Schergen (artistic director)
Esplanade Concert Hall
Saturday, 3pm
Almost any orchestra that plays for an opera or the ballet faces the unenviable fate of spending hours in a cramped orchestra pit, missing the visual spectacle of splendid costumes, singing and dance.
The fortunate members of the Singapore National Youth Orchestra (SNYO), however, had a unique opportunity to enjoy the sight of dancers moving to their music.
SNYO principal conductor Joshua Tan’s comments on the immensity of the project, a full concert performed live with dancers from Singapore Ballet (formerly Singapore Dance Theatre) and accompanied by the Singapore Lyric Opera Youth and Children’s Chorus, were rather superfluous.
The extended stage with a large space for dancers and the sight of the SNYO spread from edge to edge of the rear of the Esplanade Concert Hall’s expansive stage said it all. This undertaking required major effort and commitment from all involved.
Renowned choreographer George Balanchine’s 1934 Serenade, set to Tchikovsky’s well-loved Serenade For Strings, could not be a more apt piece for this collaboration.
Balanchine created it as an introduction to ballet. Giving a youth orchestra and its audience a chance to experience the ballet, with the orchestra sharing the stage with the dancers, was a brilliant idea.
Tchaikovsky’s string writing called for strong, mature playing and great emotional expressiveness.
These qualities were amply demonstrated by the SNYO’s strings. It is commonplace for youth orchestras to struggle with balance among sections. On this occasion, the three double basses played valiantly, but were outnumbered by the other string sections.
The Serenade most vividly showed the progress that Singapore Ballet has made under artistic director Janek Schergen. Some of the dancers were not yet fully warmed up on stage, but there was a purposefulness and discipline in the movement that showed off Balanchine’s inspired choreography.
Ravel’s Valses Nobles Et Sentimentales (Noble And Sentimental Waltzes) was originally written for solo piano, but the composer later orchestrated it for performance as a ballet.
Schergen has choreographed a new ballet, Emerald Blue, which featured couples waltzing in lush costumes, swirling ecstatically in a romantic setting.
The music was an orchestral showpiece, and showed how the SNYO has grown.
The world premiere of the ballet was somewhat compromised, being sandwiched between Balanchine and The Nutcracker excerpts to come. The dancers’ need to preserve some stamina for the closing work, and a sense of caution in Tan’s conducting, detracted from the work’s full potential.
The dancers were at their freest in their movement, and the orchestra was at its most comfortable in the Nutcracker Suite.
PHOTO: BERNIE NG
After a second intermission, the concert closed with four selections from the ever-popular Nutcracker Suite. The dancers were at their freest in their movement, and the orchestra was at its most comfortable. The chorus was finally heard in The Waltz Of The Snowflakes, although their presence was fleeting.
Dancers Kwok Min Yi and Satoru Agetsuma received enthusiastic applause as they pushed themselves in their pas de deux, and there was even greater appreciation for the entire cast of dancers, musicians and singers following the closing dance, The Waltz Of Flowers.
