:: The Philharmonic Orchestra

The Philharmonic Orchestra is a project initiated by Maestro Lim Yau in 1998. The orchestra comprises of young adults who have a keen and serious interest to learn, to develop, to train, and to perform, as ensemble musicians. Using insights from current research in ‘early music,’ and coupled with the orchestra’s factual existence as a chamber outfit, this orchestral project seeks to breathe new life to musical works, exploring ‘sound-worlds’ that are very much neglected by big orchestras. It does this by a constant negotiation of canonic repertoire and contemporary works. It is as such that The Philharmonic Orchestra seeks to be a platform of chamber music playing of a high standard.

The Philharmonic Orchestra opened its 2002 season with a program of Mozart’s Overture from Cosi fan tutte and Brahms’s Symphony No. 1. A project The Seasons of Vivaldi and Piazzolla in collaboration with violinist Foo Say Ming followed that September. The performance of Piazzolla-Desyatnikov’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires in that same project was a premiere in Singapore.

In 2003, The Philharmonic Orchestra undertook the challenging and exciting task of staging the Beethoven symphony cycle in collaboration with Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, based on Jonathan Del Mar’s edition. Schumann’s problematic symphonies were next on the list in 2004. The inquiry into Schubert’s symphonies (which included the Unfinished and the Great) in September 2005 marked the orchestra’s continued commitment to the inquiry into the canonic symphonic repertoire.

The orchestra has also been engaged by Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay on several occasions. In August 2003, the orchestra was featured as the “live” orchestra in Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, which is music set to the 1928 silent film, Joan of Arc. It was also the accompanying orchestra for K D Lang’s concert here in February 2005. It accompanied Omara Portuondo in November that same year.

In December 2001, the orchestra was engaged by the National Arts Council as the accompanying orchestra for the concerto section at the National Music Competition. The orchestra repeated the engagement in 2003.

The Philharmonic Orchestra is also known for its commanding standard as a pit orchestra. It has received good reviews for its work as a pit orchestra when engaged by the Singapore Dance Theatre and Singapore Lyric Opera. It has provided the music of Mozart’s Requiem (1999), Puccini’s Madame Butterfly (2003), Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty (2004), and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker (2005) for the Singapore Dance Theatre, while opera productions in which the orchestra has appeared include Verdi’s La Traviata (1998), Bizet’s Carmen (1998), Strauss Jr.’s Die Fledermaus (1999), Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana (2000), Leoncavallo’s Pagliaci (2000), Verdi’s Macbeth (2001), Puccini’s Madame Butterfly (2005), and, most recently, Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro (2006).

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