SSO’s Butterfly Lovers with Gil Shaham

So the semester has come to an end, that means all my young classmates have returned to their respective hometowns, to return in about 2 months time. As a parting gift to my violinist bunkmate, I decided to get him something “Made-in-Singapore”: the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s 2004 recording of the Butterfly Lovers featuring Gil Shaham (Copies are widely available in record stores in Taipei because the star just came to do a recital recently).

But after spending all that money I obviously had to borrow it back to make an MP3 copy. Now I know that its been forever since I’ve written a review (plus ST and Christopher are doing such a great job anyway) but I was so impressed by this CD that I just have to share it with Mad Scene readers.

The novelty of this recording is obviously that an ang moh, a world-famous one at that, would choose to record this Chinese piece at all (the producers are probably hoping that fans in the Western world will be encouraged to give this piece a listen), but I’m hardly the type to care about such trivialities. IMHO, one can only get so excited about the Butterfly Lovers after sitting through his nth performance, both live and recorded. But having sat in the hall during the live performance that inspired this recording, I was surprised upon re-listening at what a broad, lush and romantic interpretation this performance was.

In the opening phrases that introduced the love theme, Shaham’s sliding notes, meant to imitate the qualities of erhu playing, also sounded in effect like the solo voice of a young girl, such was the lyrical quality of his phrasing, aided by the sweet tone of his Stradavarius. Later on, the fast passages of the middle sections are no challenge for this world class soloist, so that even the most frantic parts are suffused with character and folk-song charm. In all parts of the performance, the music flowed like the verses of an aria, with phrasing that could have came from a young singing actress.

As for the orchestra, Maestro Shui and the SSO players are not afraid to milk every bit of sentimentality for all its worth. This is after-all a piece celebrated for its portrayal of the most famous lovers in Chinese culture. I remember a period where the Butterfly Lovers was on the SSO’s season every year, so their experience with this piece is never in doubt (that every string player could slide their notes in sync is just an example of their mastery of this piece), summoning up incredible breadth in the slow passages and appropriately angsty in the declamatory parts. This is one of those performances that stirs the heart and takes your breath away with its effortless virtuosity at the same time.

And then there’s the outstanding recording quality: so clear that you could hear the variety of solo instruments in perfectly clean sound (including the opening oboe theme, harp, cello and of course, Shaham’s violin), not to mention the finely layered voices within different sections of the orchestra. One downside is that you can also hear Shaham’s loud breathing rather clearly as well, but that may not be an issue if you are one of those who would like some ‘personal touches’ from the star soloist.

That this CD was made by my home orchestra in my home concert hall does give me a certain amount of pride, but this is definitely a recording worth checking out, home-made or not. If you are already a fan of this piece, I encourage you to pick up a copy on your next trip to an SSO performance.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 1:19 am and is filed under CDs/DVDs, Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “SSO’s Butterfly Lovers with Gil Shaham”
Chang Tou Liang Says:

February 11th, 2010 at 9:04 am
Great to see reviews of non-vocal stuff here!

Gil Shaham first learnt about Liang Zhu (he calls it Young Jew!) from his mother-in-law (Adele Anthony’s mother) who is Singapore Chinese but now settled in Adelaide, South Australia. So there’s a Singapore connection here, as his in-laws The Anthonys were originally from here. Alphonso Anthony (his father-in-law) also happened to be SSO Co-Leader Lynnette Seah’s most important local violin teacher.

Steven Says:

February 13th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Ah yes, I read about that in the papers back when the recording took place! Thanks for that reminder, now I’ve got something else to make my Taiwanese classmates jealous :p