A Jolly Good Time

Wonderful concert last night. I was in the right mood for a bit of Debussy and the SSO sounded sensationally good to me, especially in Jeux which has always seemed to get away from me in the past. It helped that Maestro Lan Shui provided an amusing introduction to the balletic aspects of the piece complete with musical illustrations before we were given the whole. Yes, it panders to the audience a wee bit, but if you can't have a bit of fun before playing Games when can you? (See what I did there?)

Noi and I managed to attend the pre-concert talk in the library upstairs in the Esplanade, not realising that it was to be delivered by my colleague Yi Fang. I think she was a little nonplussed to spot me in the audience. To my delight it featured an interview with Ye Xiaogang, the composer of Mount Emei, which was being premiered in Singapore by the SSO. He couldn't say all that much in the 10 or so minutes Yi Fang got to ask him questions, but what he said was down to earth and intriguing at the same time in terms of biographical detail - for example, talking about his experiences as a young man in the period of the Cultural Revolution. I'd never heard of the guy before, which doesn't say much for my knowledge of contemporary music I'm afraid, but it seems he's a really big cheese on the Chinese scene, and rightly so if Mount Emei is anything to go by. Lovely to listen to, highly accessible yet in an idiom that might fairly be termed modern, with glittering parts for the soloists - a violinist and an insanely gifted lady percussionist.

I also managed to purchase a couple of CDs featuring the SSO doing the business with lots of Debussy in the concert interval. These hit the turntable this morning, making for the best of starts to a thrillingly lazy day.