Mallets, Voices and Moonlight

"Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight..."

Dylan Thomas' poem furiously defies death's darkness in the face of a light-filled life. Tonight's concert takes us through varying portrayals of light— at times speckled between trees, at others bursting with the dawn, or glowing through the moon. The music takes us on a journey from sunset to sunrise, offering different composers' and cultures' perspectives of light in all its forms.

Filipino composer Francisco Feliciano's (1941–2014) To The Unnamed Light opens this programme with its aleatoric shimmers. Its text is a fragment of Rabindranath Tagore's poem, Fireflies. A single voice moves stoically over a drone, before refracting into countless colours.

Next, Zoltán Kodály's (1882–1967) serene choral composition Esti dal (Evening song) sets the scene at twilight, just before the sun disappears below the horizon. It is a prayer for safety and a good night's rest. In it, a Hungarian folk tune is reinvented in each verse with new harmonies and rhythmic play. Drawing inspiration from another folk tradition, the next piece is in the style of a folk dance from Buenos Aires called la huella. It is La Peregrinación (The Pilgrimage) by Argentinian composer Ariel Ramírez (1921–2010). It describes the harsh passage taken by Mary and Joseph, leading up to the birth of Christ. Its whirling, looped accompaniment gives the effect of the huella's elegant turns, whilst metaphorically evoking the sun and moon cyclically passing overhead.

Nighttime falls. The moonlit atmosphere is captured in Benny Corda's Bubuy Bulan, a Sundanese song from the 1950s arranged by choral director Eudenice Palaruan. Set in a minor pentatonic, the melody is reminiscent of Sundanese gamelan tunes and has an air of mystery.

Following this is the iconic Clair de lune ("Moonlight") from Claude Debussy's (1852–1920) Suite bergamasque. Delicate chords skim the piano, like moonlight glittering across water. The music grows richer, with planing harmonies and rivulets of broken chords drawing fuller sounds from piano. The moon grows resplendent, reaching its fullest and brightest, before dimming again. In its soft glow, Robert Schumann's (1810–1856) Die Lotosblume ("The Lotus Flower") begins. The song depicts a lotus blooming in the stillness of night. Taken from his 1840 cycle Myrthen (Myrtles), the text is by German poet Heinrich Heine. "The moon is her (the lotus') lover," reveals Heine, "and he wakes her with his light." The song is set on a bed of gently rippling chords, upon which the melody floats.

For a moment, we are suspended between dusk and dawn. Evoking this sustained, meditative atmosphere is Arvo Pärt's (b.1935) Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror), which rises and dips in an unending series of reflections. Finally, dawn breaks. We hear the trembles of Gabriel Fauré's (1845–1924) Après un rêve ("After a dream"). Juxtaposing triplets in the soloist line with steady quavers in the piano, Fauré captures the swirling haze between sleep and consciousness, dreams and reality. The text by Romaine Bussine describes the despair of waking from a dream about reuniting with a lost loved one. The singer begs, "return radiant one, return mysterious night!" The world awakens, and reveries are lost to sunrise.

As we step into the morning light, we hear Evelyn Glennie's (b. 1965) A Little Prayer for solo marimba. Profoundly deaf since her childhood, Glennie learned to listen by feeling vibrations through floors and speakers, and frequently performs barefoot. According to her, A Little Prayer began as an exercise in creating "smooth, legato lines" with mallet percussion. Her vision was undoubtedly achieved, the marimba creating a soft hum that sustains throughout the piece.

They say it is always darkest before the dawn. The sun shines brightest with Eudenice Palaruan's (b. 1968) Hope, written during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The text is inspired by another song, "On Eagle's Wings," carrying the message of renewed strength in the coming dawn. The composer applied fragmented melody suspensions, creating new harmonies, which evoke a sense of layers of light. (Adapted from notes by the composer.)

We conclude the way we began, with Feliciano's To The Unnamed Light. Its reprisal refreshes the central theme of the concert, inviting us to consider the many ways we may see light, and the multitudes of what it can represent.

Programme notes by Wong Yong En

Singapore Symphony Chorus

Tenors
Jean-Michel Bardin
Chong Wei Sheng
Ivan De Jesus
Jonathan Halliwell
Adrian Lim
Samuel Pažický
Rac Roldan
Ben Wong

Basses
Ang Jian Zhong
Arthur Davis
Andy Jatmiko
Paul Kitamura
Justin Lee
Yen Phang
Teo Siak Hian
Michael Walsh
Wong Yang Kai^

^Choral Associate

Singapore Symphony Youth Choir

Tenors
Hann Lyang
Oscar Ociepka
Stanley Yuan Chenye

Basses
Leonard Buescher
Chai Chiang Kai
Matthew Chiang
Loy Sheng Rui
Liu Felix
Tan Hee