Youth Orchestra Performed Finlandia And Peer Grynt

The
Malaysian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra performed two of the legendary
composer’s songs among the music played in a recent concert.
    The
Malaysian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra (MPYO) recently mesmerised fans of Tan
Sri P. Ramlee when it performed two of the screen legend’s famous songs.
    In a
chamber concert at Dewan Filharmonik Petronas, KLCC, Jalan Ampang, Kuala Lumpur on May 28,
the orchestra performed Tunggu Sekejap, a romantic number from Ramlee’s
patriotic drama Sergeant Hassan, and the pop-oriented Bunyi Gitar, from
Ramlee’s hit comedy Tiga Abdul.
    Tunggu
Sekejap and Bunyi Gitar were both arranged for orchestral performance by Kuantan-born
composer Vivian Chua.
    Chua, who
learnt the piano at the Yamaha School of Music and also studied at London’s Royal College of Music, is a music teacher at the
Ann Pereau Music
School
in Petaling Jaya.
    She was
invited to arrange music for the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra’s education
and outreach department in 2001, and was subsequently commissioned in 2002 to
produce a medley of Malaysian folk songs for the BBC Symphony Orchestra of
Britain.
    The
110-member MPYO, under the leadership of principal conductor Kevin Field, also
performed Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia (Op. 26), Norwegian
composer Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 (Op. 46) and French composer
Georges Bizet’s Symphony in C and Carmen Suites.
    Finlandia
(Op. 26), which opens with a brass theme, is a stirring patriotic hymn composed
during the Russian occupation of Finland.
    Peer Gynt
Suite No. 1 (Op. 46), one of Grieg’s most famous works, is based on Henrik
Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt about a good-for-nothing country boy’s escapades before
he returned home to Norway
older and wiser.
    Carmen
Suites is based on the opera Carmen about a seductive Spanish gypsy whose
flirtations with men put her life in danger.
    The MPYO is
Malaysia’s
youngest orchestra. Launched on Jan 13, 2006, it was the brainchild of former
Petronas chairman, the late Tan Sri Azizan Zainul Abidin, who wanted to nurture
young musicians of all genres of symphonic music.

 


 


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