The Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra made a triumphant return to Thailand last week after their whistle-stop tour of Europe, with three concerts in three cities in different countries, all in five days.
The concerts were in Vienna on May 18, Munich on May 20 and Paris on May 22, and were received enthusiastically by audiences at all three venues. A particular feature of the programmes was music specially composed for the orchestra by HRH Princess Sirivannavari Nariratana Rajakanya, who was present at the Paris performance.
It was certainly a shrewd move by His Majesty King Maha Vajiralongkorn to appoint his daughter Princess Sirivannavari as patron of the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra, consisting of many of the finest instrumentalists in Thailand. The Princess is devoted to changing possible misconceptions of Thai music and musicians.
Of course, the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej was an accomplished musician himself, an expert saxophonist, and composer of innumerable attractive musical pieces. HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana (the elder sister of King Bhumibol) was a great supporter of Thai musicians and Western classical music in Thailand, so Princess Sirivannavari continues the royal enthusiasm for music. She is herself an accomplished pianist and the concerts revealed to the European music-loving public that she is a very talented composer as well, with two pieces written specially for the orchestra.
The pieces are Nefreretta, a concerto for violin and orchestra, and a Fantasie Pour Piano Et Orchestre, Le Mariage De Minuit. They are both what might be described as tone poems, portraying changing moods and emotions, with swift changes in dynamics and tempi. The pieces require outstanding soloists. The German Niklas Liepe played the violin brilliantly in Nefreretta, and Titos Gouvelis, from Greece, played the piano with Rachmaninov-like virtuosity in Le Mariage De Minuit. The two compositions draw upon the Princess' visits to a Viennese museum, which displays exhibits from ancient Egypt, the history of communities along the Danube River, and ancient Greek legends. They are composed in an easily accessible style which engages the audience throughout with attractive melody and thrilling drama.
The swift changes in mood provided plenty of opportunity to show off all sections of the orchestra to brilliant effect -- even the triangle was prominent in places! And the instruments included one invented by the Princess herself, with a hand-cranked wheel spinning to produce a subtle whispering effect of a cool breeze.
In fact, the whole programme was cleverly chosen, with two of the most popular pieces of classical music starting and finishing the programme. Not only that, but the pieces had a close connection to two of the venues for the concerts. The first was Vltava by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana who was born in Litomysl, very close to the border with present-day Germany. It is a part of his symphonic cycle Ma Vlast – My Fatherland, celebrating the composer's native Bohemia.
Vltava starts in Bavaria, the German state whose capital is Munich, and is not so very far from Vienna: a canny choice for concerts in those two cities. The music evokes the course of the Danube through the Czech Republic, building from a small stream to a mighty river. The conductor Michel Tilkin drew a magnificent performance from the orchestra. Particularly remarkable were the swift changes in dynamics, with, for example, instant transitions from fortissimo to pianissimo. The woodwind provided a confident start to the piece, and the brass section were especially strong later on.
And the final item on the programme was by the greatest of Czech composers, Antonín Dvořák. His Symphony No.8 in the sunny key of G major, and by far his most cheerful, celebrates the music and people of his native country. The brass and percussion sections were particularly effective, and the cellos and double basses provided a strong foundation for the orchestra's whole sound. Dvořák uses folk melodies, but also grand, often very Brahmsian, themes played by the whole orchestra. This was especially evident in the final movement, which is reminiscent of the great theme of Brahms's First Symphony which itself has often been likened to the theme of Ode To Joy from the last movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
At the Munich concert, there were two encores. In the first, the two soloists Liepe and Gouvelis played the well-named Perpetuum Mobile, the third movement of the sonata for violin and piano by the contemporary Turkish composer Fazil Say. And in the second, the whole orchestra lovingly played the richly romantic piece Alexandra, by the Princess' grandfather King Bhumibol.
Maestro Tilkin and the wonderful members of the orchestra were outstanding ambassadors for Thai music in three of the centres of European classical music. Princess Sirivannavari must be congratulated both on her own musical talent and on her international promotion of Thai music and musicians.
