review.

Spent an enjoyable evening out with princess today, and managed to stay under budget because she didn't order a cocktail much.

Anyway, here's a long overdue review of the recent SNYO concert. I shall make this short, but in a nutshell there was nothing good about the concert. SNYO's standard has plummeted beyond my worst nightmares, and if this keeps up much longer they will need to change their name to Singapore National Amateur Orchestra.

We missed the Phoon Yiew Tien piece, but the Wieniawski concerto suffered from balance problems... yet again. SNYO needs to learn to stop putting out its entire orchestra for concertos. Davin could scarcely be heard above the immense orchestral sound, and that probably led him to saw rather harder than he needed.

The second half saw the orchestra making a lot of noise while tuning, and thus being unable to hear for themselves that the oboes were sharp, the double basses very sharp, the clarinets a bit flat and the horns a bit off from each other. The first movement of the Brahms started off with a severe want of momentum, exacerbated by the fact that the strings couldn't seem to find a common cadence. The opening of the second movement was the most interesting I'd ever heard. The piece overall suffered from messiness, which is an unforgivable curse for Brahms's symphonic works. The orchestra only regained its footing in the second half of the last movement.

Further evidence against the orchestra was revealed during the curtain call. Mr Lim had scarcely walked off the stage when the players started turning pages (a giveaway that an encore had been prepared). The encore, however, was easily the worst piece in the evening. Brahms's Hungarian Dance no. 1 is a work I am intimately familiar with, and the orchestra's stunning performance of it undoubtedly undid whatever merit they had achieved prior to that. The different sections pulled apart once, and the whole piece looked to be in danger of collapsing. Fortunately they got back together, only for the timpanist to fumble the sudden tempo change. And what's with the piano?