Wong Kah Chun is first Singaporean to conduct at classical music festival BBC Proms
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Singaporean conductor Wong Kah Chun will be the first Singaporean to conduct at the BBC Proms, London’s annual eight-week classical music festival.
PHOTO: ANGIE KREMER
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SINGAPORE – Conductor Wong Kah Chun will be the first Singaporean to conduct at the BBC Proms, London’s annual eight-week classical music festival.
As part of the season running from July 18 to Sept 13, Wong is taking up the baton for a rendition of Austrian composer Gustav Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, or Symphony No. 2 In C Minor, at the Royal Albert Hall on Aug 2.
The 38-year-old interprets the choral symphony with the 167-year-old Manchester-based symphony orchestra The Halle. Norwegian Mari Eriksmoen will sing soprano and Canadian Emily D’Angelo, the mezzo-soprano; and The Halle Choir and Halle Youth Choir will supply voices for the mixed chorus.
Wong, who has been The Halle’s principal conductor and artistic adviser
The performance marks the finale of his first full season. He is officially appointed for five.
“To walk in the footsteps of my predecessors like Sir Mark Elder and Sir John Barbirolli – who also frequently conducted The Halle at the Proms in the same role – is both humbling and inspiring,” he tells The Straits Times.
“The symphony is a deeply moving work, and even more special to bring it to the Proms with the full Halle family – our orchestra, choir and youth choir.”
The five movements of Mahler’s work, running up to 80 minutes, explore the afterlife with a view to transcendence. They are among the most popular pieces in the repertoire of orchestras.
A previous performance by The Halle conducted by Wong at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall was praised by British daily newspaper The Guardian for achieving “a keen balance between restraint and sheer muscle”.
In 2014, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra became the first Singaporean group to perform at the BBC Proms. It showcased a programme comprising a piano concerto by Chinese composer Zhou Long, a short overture by Russian composer Mikhail Glinka and Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov’s hour-long Symphony No. 2 In E Minor.
Some members of the 5,500-strong audience flew a Singapore flag. Chinese-American Lan Shui, a Singapore permanent resident who was then the orchestra’s music director, conducted despite feeling under the weather.
When he gave up the post to spend more time in Denmark with his wife and two sons in 2019, Lan, too, conducted the SSO in a performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, choosing it for its message of farewell and new beginnings.
Wong’s career took off after he won the first prize at the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in 2016. Since then, he has been appointed chief conductor to various high-profile orchestras, including Germany’s Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra and the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra.
Wong also has a personal connection to the composer. In 2016, he co-founded a global music education initiative – called Project Infinitude – with Mahler’s granddaughter Marina Mahler to expose less privileged and special-needs children to music in fun group settings.
The National Arts Council (NAC), which supported Wong’s post-graduate studies in orchestral/opera conducting at the Hanns-Eisler Musikhochschule in Berlin, lauded Wong for his latest career milestone.
NAC chief Low Eng Teong said: “We are proud to see a Singaporean talent like Wong take on the international stage. His journey has been a remarkable one, including being an NAC scholar and receiving the Young Artist Award in 2017.
“His achievements are a powerful testament of where one’s passion for the arts can lead. We hope he will continue to inspire more aspiring artists.”
BBC Proms 2025 features 86 concerts and over 3,000 musicians.
Ticket prices range from £15 (S$26) to £66. For more information, go to str.sg/xpbh
