An emotional Siam Sinfonietta tribute honored Queen Sirikit through moving performances, celebrating her legacy with music, remembrance, and love.
Under its determined founder, National Artist Somtow Sucharitkul, Siam Sinfonietta has had a year of striking successes. Somtow, known around the world as a novelist and composer of operas, pioneered a new method of training young musicians and over fifteen years the Siam Sinfonietta has won first prizes in Vienna, three times in Carnegie, Disney Hall in California, has played in dozens of the world’s best known halls, and was featured in major films like the Oscar nominated Tár.
This July they were featured in a concert in memory of the late Queen Sirikit of Thailand, who passed away last year. She was a much loved figure who with her elegance, urbanity and compassion helped put Thailand into the international consciousness. As a teenager, she studied to be a concert pianist in Paris, where she met the future King Bhumibol. The subsequent fairytale romance has made her an icon of Thailand in the twentieth century. Her portrait on the cover of TIME magazine in 1966 is considered an iconic piece of global royal history.
Thailand’s Cultural Center was packed with both music fans and with those who had been personally close to the queen, such as actress and Singha heiress Piyapas Bhirombhakdi, whom the queen personally selected to play Suriyothai, ancient Thailand’s celebrated warrior queen, in a epic movie of the same name.
Also present as well were Queen Sirikit’s granddaughter, Ploypailin, a concert pianist in her own right, and the Queen’s great grandson Leo, also a budding concert pianist. A year before, as an 11 year old, Leo played a Mozart concerto in the same hall under the baton of Maestro Somtow.
Great-daughter of Queen Sirikit, Ploypailin Jensen, congratulates Somtow at the memorial concert.
The programming choices for the event reflected the concept that it should be a “romantic” evening. Popular classical pieces included the Romeo and Juliet Overture and the Adagio from Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony. The conductor warned the audience to “get out your handkerchiefs” before playing the Rachmaninov, but there were other tearful moments, including the opening when Somtow invited the entire audience to join in singing the Thai Royal Anthem in memory of the late Queen Mother.
Added features were two songs in popular style by Somtow, the award winning Doorway in the Dark as sung by Thai film star Witwisit “Pchy” Hiranyawongkul and I am the Dawn, originally composed for World Youth Sports Day sung by 14 year old Punnika Mahuemuang.
The highlights were two major works by Somtow. One was the Queen Sirikit Piano Concerto, originally commissioned by HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana as a 72nd birthday gift for the late Queen and first performed in a private event with only 72 guests. Two decades later, Thai conductor and pianist and former child prodigy Trisdee na Patalung tossed off the work with gusto, bringing out its big romantic tunes as well as its intimate moments.
The other was the world premiere of the composer’s Love Songs for a Queen, a cycle of songs setting poems by Baudelaire, Byron, and Sunthorn Phu, sung by Belgian Thai soprano Nadlada Thamtanakom. Delicately sensuous, intricately orchestrated, these are the very definition of art song. The Byron setting had the added bonus of a ravishing cello solo, played at the premiere by Ekachai Maskulrat.
Trisdee na Patalung performs with the Siam Sinfonietta at the Queen Sirikit Memorial Concert.
This wasn’t the most fiendishly virtuoso outing of the Siam Sinfonietta this year. That would have to have been its double bill of The Rite of Spring with Mahler’s Fourth Symphony a few months ago. Nor was it the most globally significant. That was perhaps the Thailand premiere of Gorecki’s Third Symphony played to commemorate the Holocaust. But of all the Sinfonietta’s concerts this season it had the most emotional effect on its audience.
The Sinfonietta has been deluged with messages and emails.
“Only a stone would not have been moved by last night’s concert,” wrote one viewer.
“Truly beautiful and deeply moving,” said another, “it reflected your genuine dedication to creating something truly special in honour of our beloved Queen Sirikit.”
After the one year mourning period that Thai culture designates for the most highly respected members of society, H.M. the late Queen Mother will receive her official farewell in a lavish cremation ceremony in October.
