Last Sunday I went to the highly claimed concert in this year’s Sinapore Arts Festival(SAF) programme. I say it’s highly claimed coz it’s the only serious classical music event in this year SAF, the 30th anniversary of SAF. Next week I’m going for the Play! Video Game Symphony. What a ironic, this year my SAF ends up in first two weeks. Last year I could at least go for some decent orchestras and works. Now I can only recall my musical trips to KL and expect the Oct Sun Festival to come.

 

Last evening, Dr. Tan conducted two of his new works "Paper Concerto for Paper Percussion and Orchestra" and "The Map, a Concerto for Cello, Video and Orchestra".

For the "paper concerto", what I’d like to say is: in terms of creating effects, classical music is by no mean camparable to computer or electrica music. I can’t agree this a good way to draw more audience to classical music. Instead, it may lose those old fashioned classical people like me…The paper playing did remind me some of the old memories. But more to me is like some bad manner audience playing with plastic bags during a concert..

For "Map": I’m very happy to see Dr. Tan exploring the Chinese folk music resources, as I’m from China. I love my motherland, whose the water and soil bred me up. However the way he interprets the music I can’t really appreciate. I may say it’s interesting, but not really euphonious. For mixing west with east, I still prefer the Butterfly Lovers.

 

It’s cruelly true that somebody like Tan Dun can have a work played for memory or fun. However it may not be to everyone’s taste. At least not to nobody like me’s taste.