Saturday, April 12, 2008

This Saturday

While having lots of things to do may not necessary ward away the low moods, I suppose doing things that I think was worthwhile may lead me nearer to something fruitful.

In the morning, I visited the Singapore Art Museum to catch the Xu Beihong in Nanyang exhibition. I will be posting an online article on the exhibition soon on Yesterday.sg, so do keep a look-out.

Afterwhich, in the afternoon, I was at the National Museum of Singapore to attend a seminar that was titled It's about routes, not roots. (Singapore 1820s - 1860s) by Iskander Mydin. I have learnt quite a few things new about Singapore of that period. One thing that I have learnt was that the Spanish dollar was the international dollar that was used during those times for trading at the Southeast Asian archipelago.

After the seminar, I spent some time in the late afternoon at the National Library of Singapore, specifically at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, to read a book on Xu Beihong.

Dinner was simple. Afterwhich, I was delightfully treated to an educational SSO Pre-concert talk by violinist, Seah Huan Yuh. Seah gave his independent yet interesting views on Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto, Op. 14. I particularly like how he analysed the composer's approach to the second movement of the violin concerto. The speaker even did a demonstration of a short section from the second movement on the violin. By the end of the talk, I felt I have had a better appreciation of the compositional ideas behind the concerto.

Seah did such a good job that I think SSO should consider engaging him once again for future SSO Pre-concert talk, especially those involving a violin concerto.

The night in some ways concluded with the SSO concert, Sweet Sorrows. The orchestra's rendition of Mahler's Fifth could be considered commendable. Afterall, I personally think that Mahler's works are challenging to play and to interpret. For myself, I suppose I would still need more exposure to be able to better appreciate the musical language of Mahler and even Barber.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi! THanks for your very generous review of my talk yesterday. I'm glad you enjoyed it! Pls come for my next one if there is. :)

oceanskies79 said...

Seah: Thank you for the review. I didn't expect that you would comment here.

Sure, I shall make time to come for the next one if there is one.

Anonymous said...

I don't normally read blogs, but I vaguely remembered you reviewing TPO concert of Shostakovich symphony about 2 years ago....? and that included my name as well :)