On the 011212, we
were invited to attend an orchestral concert by Permata Seni Muzik by the theme
‘See To Believe, Hear To Believe’ in the auditorium of Ministry of Information,
Communications and Culture. I have a collection of memories with this building,
a place where we spent ample time on this project. I was near to tears having
hard time to visualize and imagine the architectural design of the roof trusses
before they are proceeded into calculation and design stage during my
internship. I remembered vividly that our senior project designer mentioned it
to me that scaling the architectural plan is akin to scaling a figure model.
That moment, I was wishing that the boss who is an avid figure collector and scale model enthusiast could
take over my job for me instead :P. As much as I grumble about it, I am
obviously (still) missing my uni-hood :)
Back to the concert, audiences are expected to arrive at 1930hr followed by the upper echelons at 1950hr. But, we managed to get into the auditorium only at 2015hr and performance has started off with the second performance on Cercerto Grosso No.2 in D Major (Antonio Vivaldi). It was then followed by Sinfonia No.2 in D 1st Movement (Felix Mandelssohn Bartholdy), Concerto for two violins 1st Movement (Johann Sebastian Bach), Concerto in A Minor for two violins (Antonio Vivaldi) and finally Concerto for 4 violins in B Minor No.10 1st Movement (Antonio Vivaldi) for western classical music.
There was an intermission of 20 minutes before they proceeded with Malaysian pop songs. Among the songs played were medley songs by Malaysian legendary star, Tan Sri P. Ramlee entitled Azizah and Sua Sue Kemuning. Besides that, recent Malay medley pop songs such as Bila Aku Sudah Tiada, Cinta Muka Buku and Pokok by various artists. Sabah medley songs were not forgotten either. Audiences were entertained by Tinggi-tinggi Gunung Kinabalu, Jambatan Tamparuli and Tanak Kampung. Most of the songs under this category are unfamiliar to me and what I liked about this concert was that apart from the repertoire program list distributed to us, slideshows were prepared for each song to provide some introductory information and background pertaining the songs at each interval. It was indeed a good exposure for us to extend our appreciation towards fine music and very creative local artistes whom we may not know or have never heard off before this.
Thereafter, Nour El Syams meaning light of the sun;
a popular Arabic song made its grand entrance. This song was reputed as a blockbuster
success and has became one of the biggest selling albums in the Middle East.
Ensued were western popular songs by Lagy Gaga and Grease Medley. Save the best
for the last, which also happened to be a song title but has nothing to do with
the orchestral performance simply implied my feeling. I have been secretly
anticipating and patiently waited till the last category which comprised of popular
musical film’s theme songs from some of my childhood all-time favorite; The King and I (I Whistle a happy tune, The March
of The Siamese children, getting to Know You & Shall We Dance), Alladin
(Arabian Nights, A Whole New World & Friend Like Me) and Baby Elephant Walk,
a very cheerful music from the movie Hatari.
Before wrapping up
the orchestral team infixed three songs which were not listed in their repertoire
earlier, namely; Momma Mia, I have a
dream and Dancing Queen, very much to everyone’s delight. Audiences were clapping along in glee and started to
sing along. The night was wrapped up the performance with souvenir-giving
session as a gesture of gratitude for the presence of VIP/VVIPs and
prize-giving for the well performed players. We called it a day around 2200hr.
