2ND PERFORMER'S VOICE SYMPOSIUM: Lee Pei Ming on George Crumb / The Spiritual Journey of John Sharpley

 

LEE PEI MING ON GEORGE CRUMB

Sunday afternoon was the only day I could attend any of the sessions at the 2nd Performer's Voice Symposium, I did so as some of the talks were given by my musical fraternity friends or about their lives, and also for my own curiosity. Lee Pei Ming, who lectures at the Conservatory, is one of two Singaporeans who perform the music of American composer George Crumb (born 1929). The other one is, of course, Margaret Leng Tan. She had given the Singapore premiere of Crumb's Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik (A Little Midnight Music) in 2006 at the Singapore International Piano Festival. From my memory, it was a very absorbing performance as she had worked on the work with the composer himself, besides being a virtuosic pianist herself. In this session, she talked about Crumb, the work and some performance aspects.

The first page of A Little Midnight Music.

Although the work did not require a prepared piano, Pei Ming still needed to strum, scratch and strike the insides of the piano for the required sound effects.

The work is a meditation on Thelonious Monk's 'Round Midnight, and included quotes from Debussy, Wagner and Richard Strauss. She demonstrated some of these with the help of Thomas Hecht, who depressed the lower keys for her.

THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY OF JOHN SHARPLEY

The second talk I attended was given by Texas-born pianist Elyane Lassaude, now based in Australia, who spoke on the life and works of the American-Singaporean composer-pianist cum educator John Sharpley. She and John had known each other since young, and she had keenly followed his illustrious composing career over the years and was touched by the spirituality of his music. John is a renaissance man among musicians, and his music reflects his wide knowledge and experience of philosophy, literature and Asian cultures and religions. Yet he retains a quintessential American aesthete and all-encompassing outlook in his output. A number of pivotal works were cited, excerpts of which were heard. As it was impossible to have covered everything within 45 minutes, perhaps a separate symposium be held to discuss his music in greater detail sometime in the future. 

People who attended included students, teachers, performers, composers and writers.  

To round up the session, Elyane Laussade performed John Sharpley's Singapore Blues, a work reminiscent of Copland and Barber, but with a Malay-flavoured twist towards the end.

Hearty cheers from the composer (extreme left) himself.

BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTO NO.4 / Orchestra of the Music Makers / Review

BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTO NO.4

Orchestra of the Music Makers

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory

Sunday (28 October 2012)

 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 October 2012 with the title "An enjoyable musical experiment".

It all started with the idea of an experiment; a young orchestra working with an experienced professor and concert pianist in a repertoire work in which the novice players had never previously encountered. With only one prior rehearsal, and one public discussion in front of symposium delegates, a concert performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto was ready to go.

All this suggests sure-fire recipes of an impending disaster, but reality was kinder. Before the performance began, the Queensland-based piano pedagogue Stephen Emmerson briefly elucidated on the interpretation of the work’s second movement. Although it is Beethoven’s shortest concerto movement, it is also his most evocative.

 

The stark music was a representation of Orpheus taming the Furies on his passage to the Underworld, with singing that soothed the wounded breast. It was with this notion in mind that instructed the concerto’s opening bars, unusually played by solo piano. Emmerson entered with a rolled G major chord, a liberty taken that seems to replicate notes played on a lyre, and his brief solo was taken at a deliberate and leisurely pace.

Then the strings quietly registered in a remote B major, possibly one of Beethoven’s boldest and most inspired gambits. This sense of apparent disorientation catches the ear, but soon the orchestra settled comfortably into what is regarded his interpretatively most challenging concerto.

Unlike the Third or Fifth Concertos, the Fourth has a relatively un-showy piano part that is so well integrated with the orchestra and doubly difficult to pull off. In places, Emmerson struggled and stumbled, but the pace of the work never faltered, the orchestra expertly kept on track by conductor Chan Tze Law’s direction.

 

Comparisons will be made with The Philharmonic Orchestra’s recent Beethoven cycle, and it has to be said that Lim Yan’s technique was far more secure than this rough and ready account. Like Lim, Emmerson played his own very well written cadenzas for the outer movements. The first movement cadenza worked on decorative figures and subsidiary themes idiomatically while the finale’s was brief, cogent and attention grabbing.

Remarkable also was the seating arrangement, which had the pianist facing both conductor and audience, and surrounded by woodwinds. Given one or two to a part, the winds were in effect secondary soloists, and were accorded that distinction. They acquitted themselves well, contributing to the overall successes of the performance.

Admission was free to this Performer’s Voice Symposium concert, but the audience was in no way made to feel like guinea pigs in this musical trial. They, this listener and the young musicians mostly enjoyed themselves, suffering no side effects along the way.   

 

THE PERFORMER'S VOICE / COLIN CURRIE (Percussion) and JOE BURGSTALLER (trumpet) / Review

THE PERFORMER’S VOICE

Colin Currie (Percussion)

Joe Burgstaller (Trumpet)

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory

Saturday (27 October 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 October 2012 with the title "Pitch-perfect percussions".

The Second Performer’s Voice Symposium at the Conservatory has sprung forth some unusual concerts and this evening’s tandem of percussion and trumpet recitals was the most wide-ranging of all. The Scotsman Colin Currie is possibly the world’s most famous solo percussionist after his compatriot Scotswoman Dame Evelyn Glennie, and is no less prodigious.

Given that percussion is history’s oldest group of musical instruments, its sound is universal and the first three works in Currie’s recital – by Elliott Carter (USA), Per Norgard (Denmark) and Toshio Hosokawa (Japan) – seemed to coalesce as one. Beginning with the mellow marimba, he soon worked his way to the brighter vibraphone and a bewildering array of unpitched percussion awaited.

His rapid-fire responses on the mallets made for an acrobatic display of adroitness which built up to massive crescendo. Returning to the marimba for Hosokawa’s Reminiscences, the low registers droned and rumbled, and one sitting close enough would have experienced the vibrations in harmony with its reassuring tones.  

Currie closed with British composer Dave Maric’s Trilogy, an eclectic three-part work of disparate inspirations with sampled percussion and amplification augmenting the live performance. The second movement Pelogy skilfully employed the Javanese pelog scale without actually sounding like a gamelan, while the eccentric minimalistic beat of Tamboo rounded off an exhilarating display of all-round virtuosity.

American trumpeter Joe Burgstaller helmed the second recital, and opened with Rafael Mendez’s arrangement of Monterde’s Virgin of the Macarena, a stunning showpiece where the technique of circular breathing to maintain implausibly long passages was employed. A former member of the legendary Canadian Brass, he relived its trademark humour as he played and spoke.

For Astor Piazzolla’s tango Oblivion, he was joined by a brass quartet formed by members from the Singapore Symphony and Malaysian Philharmonic. For once, this popular number rang out with an elegiac quality as it should, much like the Afro-American spiritual Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child, which soulfully sang the blues.

A highlight was the World Premiere (above) of Malaysian-American composer Su Lian Tan’s Ming, an evocation of Chinese brush-painted landscapes, its placid waters, gnarled trees, rugged mountains and soaring birds. Partnered by pianist Low Shao Suan, this atmospheric score ambled from impressionistic half-lights to a Messiaen-like timeless calm. Burgstaller’s part used the mute liberally, to tamper the bluesy timbre before going full voice on a song.  

For sheer variety, a Vivaldi-Bach concerto, Duke Ellington’s Echoes of Harlem and an encore where the audience provided a drone (surprisingly in tune!) to Burgstaller’s soliloquy completed the evening’s fine entertainment. 

THE MUSIC OF PICTURES / SCARLATTI-CAGE / T'ang Quartet and Melvyn Tan / Review

THE MUSIC OF PICTURES / SCARLATTI-CAGE

T’ang Quartet / Melvyn Tan

2^nd Performer’s Voice Symposium

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory

Friday (26 October 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 October 2012 with the title "Music with Picasso's beady eyes gazing from behind". [Seriously, I do not know who comes up with such ridiculous titles to these reviews. Certainly it wasn't me.]

Concerts and recitals are part and parcel of the Performer’s Voice Symposium, organised by the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, which delves into various perspectives of a musician and performer’s art of expression. Quite academically and prosaically, these have been referred to as Plenary Performances, but that did not prevent a fairly large turnout to witness two separate recitals by the T’ang Quartet and pianist Melvyn Tan.

The T’angs are no strangers to contemporary music and inter-disciplinary collaborations. Projected images of Pablo Picasso paintings accompanied the quartet’s performance of living American composer Ned Rorem’s Fourth String Quartet (1994). Comprising ten short movements, each dwelled on the iconic Spanish artist’s pictures, from driving ostinatos (Minotaur), tender cantabiles (Child Holding A Dove), to fast fleeting arabesques (Three Nudes).

OK, so Picasso has those beady eyes. And so what?

Their playing, incisive and vividly projected as always, would have characterised each piece sufficiently well, but the added visual dimension helped cement the multiple stimuli to the senses. For example, in the movement titled Self Portrait, Leslie Tan’s declamatory cello solo – intense yet inward-looking – took on a harder edge with Picasso’s beady eyes peering on from behind.

The quartet then played Baudime Jam’s contemporary accompaniment to the Buster Keaton 1921 silent movie The Haunted House, a slapstick comedy that had the audience mostly in stitches. The music was suitably light-hearted, played in sync throughout, with occasional in-jokes like the quote from Chopin’s Funeral March for the scene with men dressed as skeletons.

The specifications of John Cage's prepared piano for his Sonatas and Interludes.

After the interval, Melvyn Tan took to the stage with an unusual juxtaposition of Domenico Scarlatti and John Cage Sonatas. Although Scarlatti’s sonatas were originally written for the harpsichord, the piano with its sustaining pedal rendered each with a bell-like resonance and a whole plethora of new sonic textures. Tan was also unabashed in making them sound romantic and modern.

The 16 Sonatas and 4 Interludes (1946-48) by Cage were inspired by the East and scored for the prepared piano, a normal grand piano augmented with screws, wedges, plastic sheets and rubber erasers inserted between strings to transform the timbres completely. The result was a gamelan-like percussive sonority redolent of bells, gongs and drums in addition to the piano’s original sound.

Barely rising beyond pianissimo, Tan’s command of the keyboard, now a one-man-band, was a tour de force of control and restraint. Each sonata took on a life of its own, rhythmic and hypnotic in part, but always absorbing. Sonatas XIV and XV were choreographed with a balletic grace, every ping and thud from the instrument registering like dance-steps in forward motion. All that was missing were the ballerinas. The applause was long and sustained. The late John Cage, born exactly 100 years ago, must be smiling somewhere.

The insides of a prepared piano. Note the screws, rubber wedges, plastic sheets and an eraser (extreme right)!

THE JOY OF PIANO / Review

THE JOY OF PIANO

ExxonMobil Campus Concerts

University Cultural Centre

Tuesday to Thursday (23-25 October 2012)

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 27 October 2012 with the title "Bask in a breathtaking piano landscape". 

The Joy of Piano, Singapore’s only free international piano festival, brought together three talented young pianists in challenging recital programmes that could rival the established Singapore International Piano Festival. They were united by having won top prizes at the Hong Kong International Piano Competition, organised by The Chopin Society of Hong Kong, as well as other major awards.

 

In the Russian Ilya Rashkovskiy, who opened the festival, one found an interpreter par excellence of Russian repertoire in the mould of legends Richter and Gilels. In Prokofiev’s Eighth Sonata, he negotiated a treacherous tightrope between bittersweet melancholy and lacerating violence with a cool steely resolve. In commanding control throughout, he also yielded poetry from Rachmaninov’s clangourous Second Sonata through its dense thickets of notes.

Breathtaking virtuosity aside, lyricism was breathed into Schubert’s desolate Impromptu in C minor and seemingly hackneyed Chopin began to resound anew. The Second Ballade and “Heroic” Polonaise could often be reduced to a mass of loud clichés, but the passion Rashkovskiy instilled into these warhorses both inspired and invigorated. His seamless legato singing line in the Nocturne in D flat major (Op.27 No.2) was also one to die for. 

 

Wednesday evening saw an equally trenchant response from Hong Kong’s Colleen Lee, an epitome of feminine grace whose lithe stature belied a big sound and enormous reserves. There was whimsy and fantasy to Schumann’s little Arabeske, while world-weariness coloured the Fantasy in C major, with a share of wrong notes in the treacherous second movement as if to prove the point.

Her overall vision and conception was never in doubt, volatile and excitable in Chopin’s Second Scherzo and displaying a kaleidoscopic range of moods and colours for the 24 short Préludes of Op.28. The journey was eventful and highly personal, one that revolved around the “Raindrop” Prélude, where time stood still for a full five minutes. The coruscating final number in D minor was the perfect a jolt to the senses, delivered with stunning panache.

 

On the final night, Italian Giuseppe Andaloro played what must have been the most unusual recital thought possible. Completely eschewing classical and romantic repertoire, baroque and 20^th century music held sway. In Frescobaldi’s Partita on La Follia, harpsichord-like ornamentations on the Steinway grand astonished as well as delighted, while his view of the Bach-Busoni Chaconne traversed dynamic extremes, from tinkles of a music box to thunderous organ sonorities. 

The keyboard wizardry continued in the contemporary works, where impressionistic hues of Messiaen’s Préludes sat easily with the bald dissonances of Bartok’s Suite Op.14 and syncopations of Stravinsky’s Tango and Ligeti’s Two Capriccios. Four of Kapustin’s free-wheeling Études, played with a fearless disregard of their complexities, brought down the house. The capacity audience, rewarded with two further encores, was clearly captivated and basking in the joy of outsized pianism

The Joy of Piano is part of the ExxonMobil Campus Concerts Series and was generously sponsored by The Chopin Society of Hong Kong. All photographs courtesy of NUS Centre for the Arts.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, October 2012)

SOLER Keyboard Sonatas Nos.1-15

MARTINA FILJAK, Piano

Naxos 8.572515 / ****1/2

For those who enjoy playing or listening to Domenico Scarlatti’s 555 or so keyboard sonatas, there are some 150 sonatas by the Spaniard Padre Antonio Soler (1729-1783) to keep them occupied. Soler joined the priesthood and like his Italian mentor was devoted to teaching the scions of royalty. The prince Don Gabriel was dedicatee of many keyboard sonatas, which follow Scarlatti’s single-movement, two-part form with repeats. These were likely to have been composed in homage, and bear many striking similarities with Scarlatti’s more celebrated examples.

The sonatas traverse a variety of emotions and moods, while being marvellous exercises in nimble and virtuosic playing. Listen to Sonatas No.2, No.6 and No.9 for those busy, guitar-like figurations with rapidly repeated notes, contrasted with the more moody ruminations of No.5, No.8 and No.11. Sonata No.4 delights in percussive military band effects, while No.12 and No.13 go for big-boned orchestral sonorities. Croatian pianist Martina Filjak, winner of the Maria Canals (Barcelona) and Cleveland International Piano Competitions, plays the first 15 sonatas based on the publication and cataloguing system by Padre Samuel Rubio. The readings lack nothing of the humour and vitality that make these attractive pieces a pleasure to behold.

THE GERSHWIN COLLECTION

Decca 478 2687 (7 CDs) / ****

That George Gershwin (1898-1937) was the most important cross-over composer of the 20^th century is without question. This budget box-set presents his major works in the form of original concert versions as well as arrangements, with a fair share of hits and misses. Why, for example, include a bowdlerised edition of Rhapsody in Blue for two pianos and orchestra instead of the original?

Although Katia and Marielle Labeque are undoubtedly glamourous, this performance with the Cleveland Orchestra directed by Riccardo Chailly comes across as top heavy and over-fussy. The Labecques also accompany an all-too-operatic Barbara Hendricks in a selection of songs including the rarity Anyone Seen Joe, from Blue Monday, Gershwin’s first stab at  the opera genre. The latter contains the same music as his early Lullaby For Strings, also performed here. 

Gershwin’s show music takes the form of several Overtures to his musicals (Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler), and Broadway songs idiomatically delivered by Patti Austin, Gregory Hines and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra led by John Mauceri. This set’s true triumph is the 1975 production of the folk opera Porgy and Bess conducted by Lorin Maazel, arguably its best recording ever. The titular roles feature the incomparable Willard White and Leona Mitchell with an all-Afro-American supporting cast. A synopsis is included but not the full libretto. This still represents a bargain at under $40 at HMV. 

BEAUTIFUL SUNDAY: A SYMPHONIC DANCE SPECTACULAR / Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra / Review

BEAUTIFUL SUNDAY:

A SYMPHONIC DANCE SPECTACULAR

Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday Afternoon (21 October 2012)

After a rain-soaked Sunday morning when torrential storms lashed most of the island, it was a relief to see the clouds clear and a glimmer of sunshine greeting the afternoon that was to be a Beautiful Sunday. This is the title of Esplanade’s free series of Sunday afternoon concerts that showcases Singapore’s non-professional and community musical groups. The featured group today was the Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra (BHSO), Singapore’s only community orchestra, led by its newly appointed Music Director Adrian Tan.

It was not so beautiful trying to get into the hall, with a very long queue snaking through the Esplanade foyer before one actually finds the seats. All the stalls, Circles One and Two seats had been filled, and one has to be satisfied sitting near the ceiling of the 1600-capacity Esplanade Concert Hall in Circle Three. But what a view it affords, and the sound is pretty decent too.

A spectacular view of Esplanade Concert Hall from Circle Three.

The BHSO is often seen as the Cinderalla of local orchestras, not known for precision playing or sumptuous sound, but rather for its enthusiasm and can-do attitude. However within the reverberant acoustics and vast expanse of Esplanade this afternoon, it now sounds like a princess among orchestras. Credit goes to young conductor Tan who has injected a certain immediacy and revitalised spirit into its playing, opening with Johann Strauss the Younger’s bubbly Die Fledermaus Overture. Taken at the right speed, the music sparkles like champagne and there was never a hint of strain in this fizzy curtain-raiser.

The orchestra also looks a great deal more youthful, and this was only matched by a very enthused audience that comprised mostly families with young children. Amazingly this was a very attentive group of listeners which applauded vociferously and appropriately, and not in between movements from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. The Trepak was brought off with vigour, and the three flutes shone in the Dance of the Reeds, before rounding off with a rousing Dance of the Flowers.   

Two young soloists also joined the orchestra in concertante works. 12-year-old violinist Wu Shuang (above in red) was a most confident soloist in the final movement of Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole. She projected very well and could be clearly heard all the way up in Circle Three, while her intonating and articulation was spot on. Someone double her age would have been more than proud with her showing. Somewhat older was Siew Yi Li who performed the solo in Carlos Gardel’s Por una cabeza. His stylish insouciance lent the sultry music its much needed sexiness, and he was joined by piano and accordion for this number (below). In between the orchestra filled in with Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance, played with much verve.

To close, BHSO let down its collective hair for a medley of Duke Ellington tunes. A drumset provided the rocking beat, and the orchestra was beginning to sound like the Boston Pops. Solo trumpet and oboe stood out in their melodies, and the deep Southern drawl coaxed by the clarinet gave much atmosphere to the closing It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing). This orchestra certainly had that swing for this music, and it was refreshing to see how it switched modes from classical to jazz comfortably, as if with a flick of the baton.

The encore was Offenbach’s high-kicking Cancan from Orpheus in the Underworld, to which the audience spontaneously clapped along without any coaxing. Clearly it was in the same groove as the orchestra, and I could not tell which was enjoying itself more. Young conductor Adrian Tan has begun his Phase One in rejuvenating this orchestra; one cannot wait to see how Phase Two turns out.

The friendly folk of BHSO, catching a drink at Harry's post-concert. To conductor Adrian Tan's left is the visiting Russian pianist Ilya Rashkovskiy, a future soloist with the orchestra. 

SSO Concert: LYNN HARRELL / Review

 

 

LYNN HARRELL
Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (19 October 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 October 2012 with the title "Strings shine in a feast for the senses".

The title of this concert, bearing the name of the great American cellist, gave a clue to only part of the whole story. String Fantasies might have been a more apt title, because besides the obvious main-event of Harrell’s involvement, the concert was a showcase of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s much praised and vaunted strings.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, one of the great all-string repertoire works. Here the ensemble was split into three groups: a quartet of soloists led by concertmaster Alexander Souptel and violist Zhang Manchin, a large body of strings, and nine players seated high up on risers. The idea was to create a cathedral-like sonority with choruses of strings playing off each other in an antiphonal manner.

The chant-like unison of the main theme drawn from The English Hymnal came with much homogeneity, and the other voices soon blended in seamlessly. From muted sotto voce building up to a wave-like fortissimo, this multi-layered masterpiece was worked to magical and spine-tingling effect.

SSO woodwinds were not ignored, as they too shone in Brahms’s Second Serenade in A major, a curious youthful work that omitted violins completely. Low strings mostly played accompaniment to the fine solos and ensemble work with flautist Jin Ta and oboist Pan Yun being the chief protagonists. It was also interesting to note the young Brahms’s early stab at symphonic writing, and how he organically worked on its simple themes within the five movements.  

The second half saw Lynn Harrell make his second appearance in Singapore as soloist. Now in his late sixties, sporting a silver mane and Hemingway-like beard, he cut an imposing figure in Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote, an extended symphonic poem with a significant cello obbligato part. Written in the form of ten continuous variations, there was much scope for fantasy and imagination in its programmatic layout.

Harrell’s commanding sound and vivid characterisation of Cervantes’s eccentric knight errant had the perfect foil in violist Zhang Manchin’s platitude-spewing Sancho Panza, and this seemingly unlikely tandem was played to the hilt. All this could have been negated but for the excellent ensemble offered by Shui Lan’s orchestra and direction, which was crucial in the musical story-telling. From battling windmills, bleating herds of sheep to imaginary flights of fancy, this outing aided by Marc Rochester’s eventful programme notes was a veritable feast for the senses.

Lynn Harrell is united with young Singaporean cellist Loke Hoe Kit who was the top cellist in the Lynn Harrell Concerto Competition organised by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra several years ago.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, October 2012)

SAINT-SAENS Carnival of the Animals

BRITTEN Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra

Singapore Symphony / SHUI LAN / ****1/2

It is good to see the Singapore Symphony Orchestra begin to record popular works with outreach and music education in mind. These two warhorses of young people’s concerts receive solid and sincere performances with a Singaporean twist that are equal to the best in the catalogue. Twin pianists Low Shao Ying and Shao Suan have become the republic’s specialists in the Carnival, having performed it on countless occasions over the years. In The Swan, SSO principal cellist Ng Pei Sian does the honours with utmost grace and aplomb.

The added attractions are narrations by well-known personalities from the local musical scene. William Ledbetter, popular emcee and host for The Philharmonic Orchestra and re:mix concerts, narrates his own well-chosen verses for the Saint-Saëns. The tandem of Andrew Lim and Koh Chieng Mun (Symphony 92.4 FM’s The Morning Show, Under One Roof) present Angelena Lim’s script of the Britten Guide with their usual chemistry and enthusiasm. Both are pitched at the upper primary school level and avoid technical jargon and musicalese. Sold at $12 during SSO concerts, these make thoughtful gifts for the young and young at heart.   

JASCHA HEIFETZ

Fabula Classica 2224 / ****

Was Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) the greatest violinist of the 20^th century? On the evidence of this selection, the Lithuania-born naturalised American makes very strong claims. Both recordings of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (with the London Philharmonic conducted by John Barbirolli) and Cesar Franck Sonata in A major (partnered on piano by Arthur Rubinstein) date from 1937, and reveal a fluid and near-effortless technique. Often criticised by his detractors as cold and clinical, these accusations are nowhere to be found. More often, he sounds warm, totally lyrical and in tune with the spirit of the music.

He takes certain liberties, even as far as to rewriting passages of the Tchaikovsky to make himself more brilliant. The only caveats are the crude edits and distortions of speed encountered in the remastering process. Four bonus tracks come from his prodigious teenaged years, virtuoso fodder including Sarasate’s Gypsy Airs and Zapateado, Bazzini’s Dance of the Goblins and Wieniawski’s Scherzo-Tarantella. The playing fully confirms the excitement and trepidation his first appearances aroused, when it was suggested that all other violinists might as well break their violins across their knees. This is mandatory listening for serious students and lovers of the violin alike.

GLIMPSES OF HONG KONG October 2012 / Morning, Noon and Night I

My bi-annual pilgrimage to Hong Kong usually takes place in February or October, specifically to attend the Hong Kong Arts Festival (now that the Singapore Arts Festival is fast going nowhere) and The Joy of Music Festival (there's nothing like it in Singapore). Since I missed the boat in February, my October sojourn comes with a vengeance. Camera happy, as always, here are some of my glimpses of Hong Kong during my short five day stay.

Here are some views from the fourth floor breakfast hall of the YMCA Salisbury Hotel where I stayed. Beside the fabled Peninsula Hotel, it has the best view of the Hong King Cultural Centre (right), Space Museum and Art Museum (left) and some skyscrapers of Hong Kong island across the harbour.

A panoramic view of the Southwestern tip of Kowloon peninsula.

 

Across the harbour in Hong Kong island is Central, where the commercial and banking district is located.  

The International Financial Centre (IFC) Tower in Central used to be Hong Kong's tallest building. Now it is second only to another building located in West Kowloon, which is just visible in the lower right corner of the photo on the right. 

Hong Kong City Hall is a drab looking low-rise building which does not appear in these pages. However here are some views outside. Interesting looking park benches on the road that is built on reclaimed land where Blake Pier used to be. The coat of arms of the Royal Hong Kong Regiment at the gate that leads to the memorial gardens just outside City Hall. It reads Nulli secundus in oriente (Second To None in the Orient). The regiment was founded in 1854 and disbanded in 1995, just before Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese. Its a pleasant surprise that the People's Liberation Army has not attempted to obliterate this part of Hong Kong colonial history.

Outside of the Legislative Council Building stands the Cenotaph, which commemorates the dead from both World Wars.

Its Sunday morning, and Hong Kong's cosplay enthusiasts have come out in full force to participate in the Central Rat Race. Wonder who won the big cheese?