When pipa player Yu Jia travelled from Beijing to Singapore in 1997 to perform with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO), she was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar face.
Playing the gaohu on the first day of rehearsals at the Victoria Concert Hall was her old classmate from the Central Conservatory of Music, Sunny Wong Sun Tat.
The seeds of romance were planted – and continued to blossom even after Yu returned to China before starting work at the SCO. During the months when they were apart, Wong sent her love letters every day. Their affinity ran deep: their fathers, pipa master Yu Songlin and erhu master Wong On Yuen, were former schoolmates.
Yu and Wang became known as the “golden couple” of the local scene, and wed in 2002.
The duo will perform together on 14 February 2025 in an SCO concert aptly titled Destiny. The titular piece, an erhu and pipa double concerto, was written for them years ago by renowned Chinese composer Liu Xijin.
They are reprising their roles more than two decades after Destiny’s premiere in 2000. Yu, who is now SCO’s pipa principal, recalls that during rehearsals, they misread the tempo for the last few bars of the concerto’s second movement.
“Liu had indicated the tempo at 120 beats per minute, but we performed it at 180 beats per minute,” said Yu. When Liu first watched them rehearse, he felt the tempo change could become a highlight of the piece, and kept it as it is.
The couple, who wear matching outfits picked out by Yu every day, are confident that their performance in February will have the same vigour as before, but bear the mark of life experiences and skills honed through the years.
Decades on, their mutual affection has not waned. “I admire her discipline. Even as she approaches 50, she practises with (the same) rigour,” said Wong, who used to be SCO’s gaohu associate principal and is now Head of Chinese Instrumental Studies at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.
In tune with each other: Meng Jie and Qin Zijing
Yu and Wong are not the only lovebirds who started dating while at the SCO.
The orchestra’s zhongyin suona musician Meng Jie and erhu player Qin Zijing, who tied the knot in 2016, showcased their musical chemistry during the COVID-19 lockdown when they recorded themselves performing together.
Their haunting rendition of “Jiu Er”, the famous theme from Zhang Yimou’s film Red Sorghum (1987), filmed in their living room, drew praise from online viewers.
“Some people commented that they had no idea the suona could sound so beautiful,” said Meng, who has been delivering rousing performances on the instrument with the SCO for two decades.
For the couple, music and life are intertwined. They offer each other feedback on their playing, with Qin pulling out her erhu to get her point across musically.
“Most of the time, she’s the one guiding me – because she’s more highly educated,” joked Meng, in an apparent nod to Qin’s master’s degree from the Central Conservatory of Music.
Qin added that in music, as in life, she is more serious and exacting, while Meng tends to focus on “broader brush strokes”. As the more sensitive one in the relationship, she turns to musical examples to help Meng understand her better.
“I ask him, when he performs a piece of music, what kind of passion, feeling, and sensitivity does he put into it? I always tell him to treat me the way he would a musical piece,” she added.
Hitting the right notes: Derek Koh and Tan Manman
Fellow SCO couple, percussionist Derek Koh and erhu musician Tan Manman, also frequently advise each other on music, despite playing vastly different instruments.
Their discussions on how to interpret a piece of music tend to be 10 times more intense than those on other topics, joked Koh, who was the first Singaporean whom Hunan-born Tan met.
“I’m more of a debater, I’m very competitive. So when we talk about stuff like that, we will have mini arguments,” said Koh. He is also the creative director of contemporary percussion collective Morse Percussion, and gets Tan to weigh in on the music he is planning to programme.
Tan admitted: “I prefer not to talk about work when we are at home, but Derek is a music fanatic who is constantly listening or watching music videos.”
The duo have complementary personalities. Koh’s approach to performance is more “stress-free” – he does not suffer from nerves – while Tan tends to “think more”, she added.
In their free time, the couple listen to their favourite musicians – American percussion ensemble Third Coast Percussion for Koh, and erhu virtuoso Yu Hongmei for Tan.
And woe betide Koh if he disturbs Tan while she is engrossed in her music. “When she watches her erhu (music), I’m not allowed to talk – I’d get scolded,” he said with a wry smile.