WALLFLOWER by Inch Chua / Some random thoughts

I bought a thumbdrive (with downloaded songs)

and two badges. You could say I'm a fan.

WALLFLOWER
INCH CHUA and The Metric System
Esplanade Recital Studio
Friday (30 July 2010)

After attending thousands of classical concerts over the past thirty years, I have just done the unthinkable.

I have just attended my first ever rock concert. OK, this is not a review as I know next to nothing about rock music, but here are just some observations and random thoughts I made in the past hour. By the way, I have known Inch Chua (aka Chua Yun Juan) since she was a little girl. Most young people I have known, such as Abigail Sin and Tang Tee Khoon, usually turn out to become classical soloists. But this one, is now… gasp… a rock star!

Here they are:

The audience that attended this rock concert was slightly older than the one at this evening’s SSO concert.

The audience is equally well behaved as the SSO audience.

Inch Chua is still a little girl, but could pass as an older sister of Selina Tang (the violinist).

Her voice sounds a little like Madonna’s, but what do I know about Madonna?

Besides singing, she can also play the guitar, piano and ukelele. Name me one classical musician who can do the same.

Rock music is not all bad for you. Some of them have interesting harmonic progressions.

I strained to hear four letter words, but failed to spot any. There is no mosh pit in Esplanade Recital Studio.

Not all rock music is loud. Much of Mahler and Shostakovich is far louder.

All the songs she sings are about the same length as Schubert’s Lieder. There’s also one dedicated to those whose hearts have been broken (a perpetual Schubertian theme, if any). The song Wallflower can’t be far different from Trockne Blumen, can it?

Some of these songs may be transcribed for piano, like what Christopher O’Riley did for Radiohead.

Inch Chua composed all of these songs herself. She is damned talented.

She is the fifth woman composer in Singapore I know of. The first four are Joyce Koh, Low Shao Ying, Low Shao Suan and Adeline Wong.

The only song she sang that wasn’t composer by her was a "cover". That’s popspeak for “transcription”.

Inch Chua’s other band is called Allura. The boys are presently attending National Service.

This will not be the last rock concert I will attend (I hope!).

Backstage at Victoria Concert Hall, 25.VII.2010

The combined choirs: Singapore Symphony Chorus,

Singapore Bible College Chorale & Philharmonic Chamber Choir

get last minute pointers before the concert.

Master of the House,

VCH Stage Manager, Hamid bin Ansari Marican,

better known as MARICAN.

The two Maestri confer:

Lim Yau & Lan Shui.

The Shui family.
Maestro Lan Shui and his son,
Matthias Shui Ning.
Denizens of the Vic,
Tan Chan Boon (ex-Singapore Youth Orchestra)
PianoManiac (ex-Singapore Symphony Chorus
& ex-Singapore Symphony Orchestra Board)

We'll be back in 3 years!

VICTORIA CONCERT HALL Gala Closing Concert / Review

VICTORIA CONCERT HALL

Gala Closing Concert
Victoria Concert Hall
Sunday (25 July 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 27 July 2010.

Three years might sound like a short time, but the anticipated duration of Victoria Concert Hall being closed for extensive renovations seemed like an eternity for many who performed and attended its Gala Closing Concert.

For musicians like violinist Lynnette Seah, cellist Leslie Tan (T’ang Quartet) and conductor Lim Soon Lee (Singapore National Youth Orchestra), the 105-year-old hall was synonymous with passionate music-making and fond memories. For decades, they honed their craft and practically lived their lives within its hallowed portals. They waxed lyrical about the Vic’s intimate spaces, quaint charm and friendly atmosphere, contrasted with the modern, cold and impersonal Esplanade.

If walls and columns could speak, they would tell stories of legends who have graced its stage – Benjamin Britten, Claudio Arrau, Mstislav Rostropovich, Itzhak Perlman, Sergiu Celibidache, Sir Neville Marriner and our own musical pioneers Goh Soon Tioe, Paul Abisheganaden and Choo Hoey (all above), for example.

For the young ones who performed, the Singapore Symphony Children’s Choir (above) and Singapore National Youth Orchestra, the significance might take time to sink in. The angelic voices that sang The Sound Of Music and instrumentalists who polished off Vaughan Williams’ The Wasps Overture represented a bright future for music in Singapore.

Some names inseparably linked with the Hall returned. Long-time curator of its Klais Organ Margaret Chen opened the proceedings by literally creeping out from the woodwork to perform Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. There were some missed notes but nobody cared. Cultural Medallion winner Lynnette Seah, SSO’s ever-present member since 1979, laid on her famous vibrato in Massenet’s Meditation from Thaïs and Elgar’s Salut d’Amour, accompanied by SSO Principal Harpist Gulnara Mashurova (above).

Singapore’s internationally renowned chamber group, the T’ang Quartet (above, with violist Han Oh replacing Lionel Tan), offered a movement of Haydn and Barber’s Adagio in its original quartet guise. In the latter, they resisted the temptation to go weepy and sentimental. This was after all a farewell, not a funeral.

The Singapore National Youth Orchestra,

led by Lim Soon Lee, take a bow.

The big closing number belonged to Shui Lan and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, backed by its combined choir (above), in Tchaikovsky’s festive 1812 Overture. Instead of the usual cellos, Lim Yau’s choir opened with God Preserve Thy People sung a capella in Russian. This set the stage for the epic halt of Napoleon’s Grande Armée at Borodino and a place in history books. Instead of cannons, the hall rained yellow balloons, and the audience stood one last time for Majulah Singapura, in Kelly Tang’s Elgarian orchestration.

Three years cannot come soon enough, and the Gala Opening Concert in 2013 will be keenly awaited.

A standing ovation for Victoria Concert Hall!

WHAT DO THESE MUSICAL LEGENDS HAVE IN COMMON?

BENJAMIN BRITTEN, CLAUDIO ARRAU,

MSTISLAV ROSTROPOVICH, ITZHAK PERLMAN,

SERGIU CELIBIDACHE, SIR NEVILLE MARRINER,

GOH SOON TIOE, PAUL SELVARAJ ABISHEGANADEN

& CHOO HOEY.

Q: WHAT DO THESE MUSICAL LEGENDS HAVE IN COMMON?

A: THEY HAVE ALL PERFORMED AT

SINGAPORE'S VICTORIA CONCERT HALL.

Please see tomorrow's review of the

Victoria Concert Hall Gala Closing Concert.

SOUNDS OF MASTER / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

SOUNDS OF MASTER
Singapore Chinese Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Saturday (24 July 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 July 2010.

The “master” in this awkwardly-titled concert was indisputably the 71-year-old pianist Liu Shikun. A living legend among Chinese musicians, Liu was runner-up to Van Cliburn at the 1958 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition. Unlike the glamourous American, Liu is still performing and very much on top of his game.

The two concertos he performed were cut from the same canvas that produced the infamous but wildly popular (among the Chinese) Yellow River Concerto. Wang Chang Yuan’s Battling The Typhoon was originally scored for guzheng, but transcribed by Liu as a virtuoso piano vehicle. In its orchestral guise, the single movement of flying arpeggios, stampeding octaves and lyrical moments resembled a shanghaied Warsaw Concerto on steroids.

Liu upped the ante in the Youth Piano Concerto (1958), a melodious pastiche cobbled up by Liu and his four-member committee, possibly modeled on the Soviet Kabalevsky’s 1954 work of the same title. Obviously crafted for proletariat tastes and the lowest common denominator, its wafer thin material belied a performance of swashbuckling and grandstanding bravura.

And how the audience roared its approval, amply rewarded with the finale of the Yellow River Concerto (in a solo version) and the final apotheosis from the Youth Concerto as encores. Liu, Communist cadre turned capitalist entrepreneur (judging by the number of piano schools he owns and runs in China), had come good post-Cultural Revolution.

The other works on the programme conducted by SCO Music Director Yeh Tsung (left) also merited attention. Chang Ping’s Orchestra Concerto was an excellent overture, exploiting colours of Chinese instrumental groups while buzzing like Smetana’s Bartered Bride Overture. Wang Dan Hong’s Colourful Jiang Nan, effectively a concerto grosso for erhu, dizi and pipa, was in reality a musical postcard. The three soloists from the SCO played sensitively and with much tonal beauty.

The most interesting pieces were Liu Chang Yuan’s Variations Of Emotion and Guo Wen Jing’s Riyue Mountain. In the former, Han Lei’s exquisite guan solo was subject to an inventive set of orchestral variations, working its way from very slow to very fast before making a welcome return. The latter was an evocative symphonic poem, replete with modern dissonances, suggesting that the composer was familiar with Shostakovich’s passacaglias.

This well-attended concert proved, if anything, that contemporary Chinese music had more to offer beyond a gigantic song and dance.

MOZART'S THE MAGIC FLUTE / Singapore Lyric Opera / Review

MOZART’S THE MAGIC FLUTE
Singapore Lyric Opera
Esplanade Theatre
Friday (23 July 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 July 2010.

The Singapore Lyric Opera’s new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) attempted to transplant its original setting from Egypt of antiquity to the tropical climes of Southeast Asia. As a visual spectacle, there was much to recommend, from Nicholas Li’s simple but effective stage settings to stunning costumes by Phylia Poh, which were zanily eclectic.

Where in Southeast Asia were we? Anywhere between Bali, Malacca, Angkor, Bangkok or the South Pacific it seems. The storyline of good versus evil concocted by Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder was so universal as to be yet another variation in the epic Ramayana, one well exploited by director Justin Way.

Many in the principal cast of La Boheme, SLO’s last production, made a welcome return. Kota Murakami’s Tamino and Nancy Yuen’s Pamina were largely credible in roles younger than their natural ages, eliciting a good chemistry together, even if the latter struggled with intonation in her aria Ach, ich fühl’s.

Papageno with his new found love Papagena.

Because the production’s Singspiel form alternated German musical numbers with English dialogue, some singers – notably the Korean Song Kee Chang as Papageno - were let down by their English pronunciation. The Singaporeans, such as Yee Ee Ping (as an imperious 1st Lady among three) and Martin Ng (a much-too-young and rather stiff Sarastro), were impeccable in their received pronunciation. All this made for an uneasy mix with differing language abilities, one inevitable with an all-Asian cast singing for an English speaking audience.

Tai Hsiao Chun's Queen of the Night

Another problem was the disparity of ages. Tai Hsiao Chun’s Queen of the Night appeared younger than her daughter Pamina. The diminutive Taiwanese also did not look the part until she whipped off her showpiece coloratura Die Hölle Racht with much aplomb.

A gay Monostatos trying to look lecherous.

It was the comic element that drove the opera along, preventing it from sagging in its length. Song’s irrepressible Papageno and Lemuel dela Cruz’s bumbling and gay Monostatos were hammy to the hilt. More than a few smiles were raised by the three cherubic Genii, sung by Laura Rogers, Ong Jean Wei and Azura Farid from the SLO Children’s Choir. The choir scenes, although brief, contributed positively to the sense of occasion.

The three Genii with Papageno.

Conductor Alice Farnham brought out the best from the SLO Orchestra, with its well-timed Masonic fanfares from the woodwinds and brass, and excellent flautist Wang Tong in the titular role. Almost twenty years after its first production, coincidentally The Magic Flute but at the now-closed Kallang Theatre, the Singapore Lyric Opera has created a legacy much to be proud of.

The sun rises on the final scene.

Mozart's The Magic Flute / Programme Notes

Condensed into a single page, my programme notes for the Singapore Lyric Opera's production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). Would have liked to have included the director's input into his production, but this is how it is when time is in short supply (as always).

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, July 2010)

CHOPIN 21 Nocturnes

YUNDI, Piano

EMI Classics 6083912 (2CDs)

****

The Nocturnes of Frederic Chopin represent the French-Polish pianist-composer at his most personal and expressive. Taking the simple genre of a “night piece” created by the Irishman John Field, he transformed these into exquisite miniature tone poems. Most of these open in tranquillity but some take on darker and more turbulent overtones. Arguably the greatest of these is the tragic C minor Nocturne (Op.48 No.1) with its rapturous chords and tumultuous octave passages. Others revel in Chopin’s love for bel canto singing, none better realised in the seamless D flat major Nocturne (Op.27 No.2). Despite his recent onstage travails, Chinese pianist Yundi (who has now dropped his surname Li) is still quintessentially a Chopinist at heart. He finds beauty in these pages and his fingers do not fail him. The two discs are priced as one.

RESPIGHI Church Windows

Brazilian Impressions

Buffalo Philharmonic / JOANN FALLETTA

Naxos 8.557711

****1/2

The Italian Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) is best known for his sumptuous orchestral canvases, typified by his Roman Trilogy. Vetrate Di Chiesa (Church Windows) of 1925 follows in this grandiose tradition, an orchestration of his Three Preludes On Gregorian Melodies (originally for piano solo). The second movement St Michael The Archangel explosively depicts the shock and awe of an almighty celestial battle between good and evil. Brazilian Impressions evocatively paint scenes of a tropical rainforest, venomous snakes at the Butatan institute (the ominous Die Irae is quoted) and a Copland-esque Song And Dance. Alongside these exotic musical picture postcards, Rossiniana – a suite of Rossini’s dances - sounds staid by comparison. Lady conductor JoAnn Falletta, who conducted the Singapore premiere of Church Windows, directs these less familiar scores as if they were great classics.

SONGS OF TRAVEL / Vocal Recital by Daniel Fong / Review

SONGS OF TRAVEL

Daniel Fong, Baritone

with Shane Thio, Piano

Young Musicians Society

Saturday (17 July 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 July 2010.

The English art song has been inextricably linked with the land’s pastoral tradition, none better epitomised by the figure of Ralph Vaughan Williams. This was the focus of young Singaporean baritone Daniel Fong’s song recital, which provided an hour or so of simple pleasures.

A voice student at London’s Royal Academy of Music, Fong has a personable stage demeanor that readily draws the listener into his world. Once enraptured, he keeps one peeled by a pleasing tone that is robust, yet ringing brightly like a tenor in the higher registers.

For the nine Songs of Travel by Vaughan Williams (left), his musical journey portraying an itinerant who begins on a defiant high but ends in quiet resignation was a heart-rending one. While not quite reaching the same depths of desolation as Schubert’s Winterreise, this cycle nonetheless was a worthy showcase for Fong’s wide emotional range.

Youth and Love provided for a passionate outburst, contrasted with the dark introspection of In Dreams. A palpable world-weariness sets in Whither Must I Wander? before the “farewell to hope” (from words by Robert Louis Stevenson) in the final song that left little to the imagination. Fong and the ever-sensitive pianist Shane Thio (both artists below) held sway despite the numerous extra-musical distractions, including latecomers, din from the Waterloo Street cultural neighbourhood and distant pre-National Day Parade fireworks.

A short second half yielded five songs, including two Shakespearean settings by Gerald Finzi. From the cycle Let Us Garlands Bring, Come Away, Death (Twelfth Night) was delivered with a touching melancholy, while Who is Sylvia? (Two Gentlemen of Verona) relived the same ebullience and humour as Schubert’s popular version.

Songs of love gained and lost went to the heart of the evening’s inspiration. Michael Head’s Limehouse Reach was an uncomplicated sea song, naïve in its sentiments, before closing with the brief but beautiful Roger Quilter Music, When Soft Voices Die. The single encore, O Waly, Waly (The Water is Wide) from Benjamin Britten’s folksong arrangements was Fong’s icing on the cake. More will be heard from this fine baritone in the years to come.

SSO Concert: Mahler Festival: Tragic Symphony / Concert

MAHLER FESTIVAL:

THE TRAGIC SYMPHONY

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (16 July 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 July 2010.

In October this year, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra will perform in London for the first time in almost 20 years. The soloist for that concert will be the acclaimed British pianist Stephen Hough, and their performance this evening of Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto was a trial run for that Royal Festival Hall date.

For a work lasting barely 20 minutes, Hough (left) milked the dizzying showpiece for all its worth. Going beyond its stampeding octaves and filigreed prestidigitation, his account was one of unfailing grace and understated elegance. Far from the Victorian prissiness one almost expects, it pulsated with rude health yet teased with a wealth of delectable touches and tantalising rubato.

From this ever-resourceful pianist, one delights in the unexpected and his encore was no exception. Opening and closing with the chordal sequence that heralds Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, Hough’s own transcription of the popular Russian song Moscow Evenings was pure cheek, topped with a shot of vodka.

It was all serious stuff for the concert’s latter half. Detractors of Gustav Mahler will cite his Sixth Symphony as the most hysterical and self-pitying of the lot. That is only part of the story, an almost autobiographical one of a great life ruthlessly cut down at its prime. SSO Music Director Lan Shui (left) helmed a memorable performance that recognised the tragedy, yet acknowledged the fears and celebrated the triumphs. The funeral marches in the first and last movements were fast, and tautly guided. These were no solemn processions of final repose, instead trajectories hurtling inexorably towards a certain doom. The scoring is raucous, even precious and vulgar at parts. Unusual sonorities abounded, from dangling cowbells, prophetic sledgehammer blows to that unearthly pairing of blaring tuba and twanging harp for the cataclysmic finale.

The final half hour of hopes raised and cruelly dashed ranks among Mahler’s greatest utterances. While the orchestra might have benefited from extra rehearsals to round off the flaws and raw bits, there was no denying the energy, heart and care for detail invested in this performance. For Shui, this marked a personal completion of Mahler’s eleven symphonies with the SSO, a rewarding journey that stakes the claim that we have a bona fide and convincing Mahler orchestra in our midst.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, July 2010)

TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concertos

STEPHEN HOUGH, Piano

Minnesota Orchestra / Osmo Vänskä

Hyperion 67711/2 (2CDs)

*****

In this new cycle of Tchaikovsky’s four piano concertos, British pianist Stephen Hough adopts a “brave new world” approach. The familiar warhorse First Concerto is taken at close to breakneck speed, clocking in at 32 minutes (most take around 35). While some look for maestoso (majesty) in the 1st movement’s big tune, Hough’s eschews sentimentality and cannot be accused of self-indulgence or protractedness. The Second Concerto, maligned simply because it isn’t the First, positively benefits for this lean muscularity. This set offers three versions of the lovely 2nd movement (almost a triple concerto with substantial violin and cello solos) – Tchaikovsky’s original, Alexander Siloti’s ruthlessly truncated edition and Hough’s idealised vision.

A fascinating listen, especially with a CD player’s programming button. The 2-movement Concert Fantasia and single-movement Third Concerto also receive excellent performances, and Hough adds two of his song transcriptions. The audience in these “live” performances accords very enthusiastic applause after each concerto, and deservedly so.

A SYMPHONIC JOURNEY by Singapore National Youth Orchestra / Review

A SYMPHONIC JOURNEY

Singapore National Youth Orchestra

Darrell Ang, Conductor

Esplanade Concert Hall

Tuesday (13 July 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 July 2010.

The past week has been a veritable showcase of young Singaporean musicians at their best. Now it was left to the Singapore National Youth Orchestra (SNYO), grandfather of local youth groups with roots going back to the 1960s, to prove what a class act it still is.

Ears were immediately piqued in Vaughan Williams’ Overture to The Wasps, where its opening “buzzing sequence” swarmed with a true sting in its tail. The strings responded with great immediacy, drawing much incisiveness and a homogeneous unity. The big pastoral hymn tune was delivered with much warmth, as was the music’s undisguised humour.

Kudos go to whoever programmed a concerto for the orchestra’s least visible instrument. American Lowell Lieberman’s Concerto for Piccolo (1996) was the unlikely vehicle for 18-year-old Jasper Goh Chien Teng’s (left) astounding show of virtuosity. Written in the Romantic idiom, the concerto superficially resembled Barber’s Violin Concerto, with two slow movements rounded off with a rip-roaring finale.

The high-pitched piccolo, darling of marching bands, has a bittersweet yet poignant timbre that Goh brought out with beguiling beauty. In the 2nd movement, it blended seamlessly with the flutes, and for a minute of aural magic, accompanied by the piquant vibraphone. All this set the tone for the madcap freewheeling that closed the work, with cheeky quotes from Mozart, Beethoven and John Philip Sousa sucked into a swirling vortex.

The concert’s main event was Jean Sibelius’ heroic Second Symphony. Here guest conductor Darrell Ang (left), who conducted the entire concert from memory, led a very tight ship from start to finish. Coaxing a tautly urgent performance, the playing seemed on a razor’s edge throughout. The strings exuded a gorgeous glow, complemented by rock-sturdy but sometimes brash brass, with slightly less confident woodwinds making up the numbers.

However the miracle of this performance was its flexibility, which morphed from velvet to granite within a matter of seconds, and the sheer sense of inexorability heading towards the final climax. The ensemble lived dangerously, and for moments in the finale, almost coming apart at the seams. Taking risks is what being young is all about. You are certain of being forgiven, while becoming better for the experience. The encore, Sibelius’ Andante Festivo for strings, was pure pleasure. Has anybody heard the SNYO play better than this?

DEVIANTS DEFIANT by re:mix / Review

DEVIANTS DEFIANT

re:mix

Foo Say Ming, Violin & Leader

Esplanade Recital Studio

Monday (12 July 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 July 2010.

According to its bio, the crack local all-strings chamber outfit re:mix “makes no demarcation between classical music and popular culture”. Its latest concert brought this credo to a new extreme by coupling 1970s Taiwanese film music with that of Viennese modernist Arnold Schoenberg.

Piqued by this seeming mix of chalk and cheese? Do not be, as sexual sublimation and psychological upheaval unite the storylines of both works, acknowledged to be classics in their own fields.

Li Tai Xiang’s easy-going music for Huan Yan (Your Smiling Face) belies a taboo plot on illicit pregnancy and abortion, while Schoenberg’s angst-ridden Verklaerte Nacht (Transfigured Night) relates Richard Dehmel’s poem of sexual transgression and ultimate forgiveness.

The former was arranged by locally-based young composer Chen Zhangyi in a form of a three movement suite, which treaded fine lines between kitsch, pastiche and high art. This was perhaps deliberate, with bass solo and grouped cellos opening with Walking In The Rain in a manner of Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras.

Over pizzicato strings, leader Foo Say Ming’s (left) solo violin glided stylishly and silkily in the engaging Olive Tree. In the final movement, Your Smiling Face, the Preludium from Bach’s Violin Partita No.3 was slyly woven into the counterpoint, while strings sang out Mantovani-like in a curtain of svelte sonority.

Schoenberg’s notorious string sextet of 1899, performed in its 1917 arrangement for string orchestra, presented re:mix one of its biggest challenges to date. The mystery-shrouded beginning sounded prosaic and tentative, but this gradually blossomed into a fulsome bloom that soon enveloped the recital studio.

The pacing of this 30-minute long programme-dictated work was no easy task, but re:mix generated genuine tension through its roller-coaster journey of overwrought emotions and final catharsis. The tonally ambiguous idiom, clearly inspired by Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, heightened the already volatile atmosphere of uncertainty.

Dehmel’s text, translated into English, was projected onto a screen for the audience’s benefit, but that was superfluous and distracting. William Ledbetter’s preamble about the virtue of forgiveness (and nothing about deviants being defiant, yet another eye-catching but supercilious title) was brief but helpful. Sometimes, it is best to allow music to speak for itself. The performances by re:mix were surely good enough for that.

MAHLER 2: RESURRECTION by The Orchestra of the Music Makers / Review

MAHLER 2: RESURRECTION
Singapore & Queensland Festival Choruses
Orchestra of the Music Makers

Chan Tze Law, Conductor
Esplanade Concert Hall
Saturday (10 July 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 12 July 2010.

The Youth Olympic Games may be a month away, but the euphoric flush of youth has arrived, vociferously delivered by 350 young musicians and singers at the Esplanade. Never has there been a greater display of musical audacity, shored up by stoutest of hearts and truest of intentions.

Putting things into perspective, it took the Singapore Symphony Orchestra 15 years before giving the Singapore premiere of Gustav Mahler’s monumental Second Symphony in 1994. Two years was all that was needed for the Orchestra of Music Makers (OMM) and its guiding light Chan Tze Law to pull off that same Olympian feat, and with some to spare.

Max Bruch’s First Violin Concerto opened the concert, with young Singaporean See Ian Ike, soon headed for Philadelphia’s famed Curtis Institute, as soloist. Innate confidence, warmth and purity of tone, with unfailing musicality distinguished his playing, running the full gamut of this popular showpiece. A natural and unforced virtuosity, as opposed to making a meal of vacuous gestures, was why this young man stood out. His rock-steady showing will forever put into the shade the recent travesty in the same work by “superstar” Sarah Chang, ice maiden of heartless pyrotechnics.

Fireworks lit up Marina Bay during the intermission, but sparks of a different kind soon ignited in Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. When stirring tremolos and low strings forcefully opened accounts, it was apparent this was to be a reading of no half-measures. Mahler once proclaimed that “the symphony must embrace everything”, and so OMM plumbed the depths and scaled the peaks.

While the funereal first movement could have benefited from a tauter rein, the force of intent was palpable. The tragedy was for real. Massive climaxes rocked the foundations while excellent solos from flautist Cheryl Lim and concertmaster Edward Tan set the tone for instrumental finery to come.

The leisurely Ländler lilt of the slow movement unfolded with gentle insouciance, contrasted with a manic streak in the Scherzo, adapted from one of Mahler’s more surreal songs. The brief fourth movement showcased mezzo-soprano Rebecca Chellappah’s reassuring tones in Urlicht (Primal Light), a nascent calm before the cataclysmic finale.

The latter provided the tour de force of the evening, a hell-for-leather ride that skirted the abyss before the final choral apotheosis. Brass, on and off the stage, worked overtime and brilliantly. The 220-strong chorus’ collective whisper was rapt and mysterious, blending beautifully with soprano Jeong Ae Ree’s ethereal melismata. When they took to their feet for the valedictory proclamation of “Auferstehen” (Resurrection), it was to spine-tingling effect.

Tonight they have conquered the world. Goodness only knows what our sonic youth will accomplish in ten years’ time.

Maestro Chan Tze Law faces the critics (from L):

Marc Rochester (UK), Robert Markow (Canada),

Satoru Takaku (Japan) & PianoManiac.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, July 2010)

MAHLER Symphony No.1 “Titan”
Orchestra of the Music Makers

CHAN TZE LAW, Conductor
OMM Live!

****1/2

This is a “live” recording from a concert by the Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) in January 2010. For a youth orchestra (average age of players between 19 and 20) that is only a year and a half into its existence, the results are astounding. In Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony, a typically virtuosic orchestral calling card, the performance is strong in all departments. From its quiet rapt opening with the awakening of spring, through country dances and a funeral march, to the blazingly triumphant finale, there is a palpable sense of occasion and commitment in the playing throughout.

Guided by Chan Tze Law’s ultra-keen vision, homogeneous unity in string passages, lovingly crafted woodwind solos and a brass section any orchestra should be proud of were distinct hallmarks. While one does not expect absolute perfection, and there is rawness in the recorded sound, but that is besides the point. What Singaporean youngsters can achieve when they put their minds to it is the essence that makes this enterprise a totally rewarding experience.

This CD is available at OMM’s concerts, with all proceeds going to ChildAid.

STEVEN STUCKY Orchestral Works
Singapore Symphony Orchestra

SHUI LAN, Conductor
BIS CD-1622

****1/2

The American Steven Stucky (born 1949) is the longstanding Consulting Composer for New Music of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. His Second Concerto for Orchestra (2003) was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in music, a brilliantly conceived work which eschews outright atonalism, but emphasises structure, tonal colour and dynamic drive. Exotic and piquantly flavoured textures and propulsive pace recall the Third Symphony and Concerto For Orchestra by the Polish master Witold Lutoslawski, on whom Stucky is an authority.

Spirit Voices (2002-3) showcases percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie in a 7-part concertante piece depicting star deities and spectral spirits from different world cultures. Injecting her own inimitable brand of exuberance, the vividly recorded performance complements the five colour-filled movements of Pinturas de Tamayo (Paintings of Tamayo, 1995), described as Stucky’s own Pictures At An Exhibition. These eventful 75 minutes amply illustrate the encouraging direction modern music is taking today.