Placing this work after the intermission was perfect, because a breather was essential after the virtuosity of Wang Jian in Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1.

It's one thing to hear the work on a compact disc, it's another to see someone perform it live. On CD, the audio balance tends to favour the soloist; live, the orchestra gets more prominence both visually and aurally, and the many moments when the soloist plays off various instruments -– almost like they were taking turns running up to challenge him -- come through with an amazing vitality.

Watching a soloist actually play the concerto, with fingers flying up and down a single string, and at one point, with a run of chords too, makes one appreciate the inhuman difficulty of the work in a way no amount of CD-listening can. And Wang Jian executed it with breathtaking mastery.

The second movement, the Moderato, was particularly memorable, its moods beautifully crafted. Opening with a lyrical tenderness, played with worry-free lightness by both soloist and orchestra, it gradually become heavier and more anxious. Then, like dark clouds blown away, it dissipated, almost disappearing into an escapist dreaminess between cello and celeste.

I love Shostakovich, with his uncompromising muscular style, and composers of his generation -- that's right, the ones who wrote "unlistenable" atonal music, full of hisses, barks, rumbles and crashes. In Chen Qi-gang, with his intricately woven Five Elements, at times sibilant, gurgling or lightly percussive, there is a worthy successor.

For the final work of the evening, what on earth made Lan Shui choose Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini? It was so out of place, being of a totally different genre. After Shostakovich and Chen, it sounded terribly unexciting, conventional and dated. I can understand that the artistic director needed a better-known, less atonal and more rousing work to round off the program, but I can think of plenty that would have made better choices than Tchaikovsky. For example, he could have selected George Gershwin's An American in Paris, or Aaron Copland's El Salon Mexico, or Prokofieff's Romeo and Juliet suite, or even a selection of Leonard Bernstein's music, including Candide, or  .... it's such a long list.

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The funny thing is, the fact that I have this to complain about, is testimony to something that Singapore can be proud of. There are not many cities in the world that can boast of an orchestra -- and a good one at that -- that is bold enough to perform relatively unknown, tuneless, late modern music, including works younger than the audience. Chen's Five Elements dates from 1998, if you noticed.

What makes a great city? My concert companion and I discussed this the rest of the evening. A lot must come from cultural vibrancy, intellectual curiosity and an openness to things new, sometimes to the point of defying convention. The world has to be represented in the city: Different cultures, food, music and ideas from the far corners of the globe, yet in a place with a memory of a past -- a past that is not only respected, but also incessantly questioned. And all these must be out there on the street and in the public square, which includes the indoor public square such as museums, theatres and concert halls.

It should also be a city that is alive around the clock; it mustn't sleep. And that's where Singapore failed.

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The concert had started at 7:30 p.m. We came out of the hall at ten minutes to ten. And the city closed shop on us. One after another, restaurants said they took their last orders at ten and they'd close at eleven. Only a handful said they close at 11:30. This on a Friday night in the area of the Esplanade Theatres, i.e. in Esplanade Mall and Marina Centre.

And this wasn't the first time. Some months back, we faced the same problem and had to taxi to River Valley Road for some "kampong chicken" in a cheap diner which thankfully stayed open to two in the morning. We must have been amusingly overdressed for that joint.

Why don't restaurants stay open till late? I'm sure it's a multi-faceted problem, from lack of demand to lack of staff, though the various facets are probably also interlinked.

Let me take lack of demand first. It seems to me that in Singapore, it is mostly teenagers and young adults who stay out late. They hang out at the cinemas, the fast-food joints and on the waterfront. Where are the older adults? Have they no interest outside of home, church, mosque and raising kids? I suspect so. Too many Singaporeans have lives that are safe and conventional. Those who do go out do so either because they have to take the family out, or because they just want to get sloshed. Open a bar with African live music (if you haven't torn your hair out getting the necessary permits) and just about nobody will come. Open a Persian restaurant (and Persian cuisine is wonderful, in case you don't know) and the typical Singaporean will turn his nose up on you.

We are a society that does not value the new and unconventional; our social life reflects this lack of curiosity. With little desire to explore the world, we don't go out much.

One of the great impediments we face is the lack of transport options after midnight. Basically, if you don't have a car, you have to pay through your nose for a taxi. I am certain this is the chief reason why restaurants have to close by 11 p.m. They need half an hour to clean up and the staff cannot afford to miss the last bus between 11:30 and midnight.

This is where our insistence that bus services must be commercially profitable runs counter to wider interests. If we believe that Singapore needs to distinguish itself as a great city in order to compete in the world, we just cannot have the city shutting down at midnight because the bus companies won't run services.

I am aware that a skeletal service does run after Friday midnight and Saturday midnight, but it is exactly that: skeletal. There are only eight routes to serve a city of 4.8 million people, and buses run at half-hour intervals.

We have long believed that investing in infrastructure yields downstream benefits that may be hard to quantify. It has a multiplier effect that we would be foolish to ignore by counting pennies. Yet, we forget that infrastructure is not just concrete and steel. Provision of basic services is also infrastructure. The failure to provide public transport through the night can only mean that this city can never be one that doesn't sleep. It can never be a great city. Businesses do not stay open because they can't get staff without prohibitive cost; customers don't come because the cost of getting home after a night out is too painful.

Whoever said Singapore is not short-sighted needs glasses.

© Yawning Bread