SSO CONCERT:THE BEAUTY OF THE BAROQUE II / Review

THE BEAUTY OF THE BAROQUE II

Singapore Symphony Orchestra Chamber Series

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (28 April 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 April 2013 with the title "Charmed by early music".

It is always refreshing to witness the Singapore Symphony Orchestra performing early music conceived on a small scale. Several weeks ago, Christopher Hogwood conducted the orchestra in a sparkling evening of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn built around a Turkish theme. The revelation was that the orchestra of modern instruments, not usually accustomed to period performance practice, could adapt so well to the idiom.

The pair of baroque concerts led by violinist Peter Hanson (left), who has decades of experience working in “authentic” instrumental groups, would be equally absorbing. The orchestra was split into two separate small ensembles, each playing a different programme. A mix of popular and lesser known works also minimised the curse of the familiar.

Sunday afternoon opened with two concerti grosso, the predominant form for baroque ensembles that was later supplanted by the symphony. Arcangelo Corelli (right), the violin virtuoso that he was, ensured that the solo violinists Hanson, Lynnette Seah and cellist Ng Pei Sian were kept busy in his Concerto Grosso in D major (Op.6 No.4).

Two oboists and a bassoonist joined the strings for the five movements of Handel’s Concerto Grosso in D minor (Op.3 No.5), adding a different colour to the group. Despite the vastness of the hall, the very clear textures and immaculate sound came across with much vividness and not a little reverberation. What was lacking was a sense of intimacy, which will be fixed when Victoria Concert Hall reopens in 2014.

The most curious work of the concert was Georg Philipp Telemann’s 8-movement Suite called The Nations, composed for the 18^th century equivalent of a World Expo in Hamburg. Each of its quirkily scored dances paid tribute to the countries represented; vigorous and rhythmic for The Turks, alternating slow and fast for The Swiss, and bell-like sonorities produced by bass and cello ostinatos for The Muscovites. Charming.

The last two works of the 80-minute concert were the best known. Yet it was a pleasant surprise to see only 11 players in Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto – three each of violins, violas and cellos, one bass and a harpsichord. Light and buoyant, but never thin, was the result. Hanson’s improvised solo was a delight, leading up the central movement’s two obligatory chords before the finale’s joyous counterpoint at full speed.

The concert closed with Vivaldi’s popular Concerto for Four Violins in B minor, where Hanson was joined by SSO violinists Jin Li, Cindy Lee and Ye Lin. The teamwork was impeccable, with each player’s solos gratefully lapped up and complemented, and the general ensemble supporting at full tilt. Acknowledging the eager applause, the finale was encored. Let us have more of such concerts again soon.

  

VLADYSLAV SHEVCHENKO and KSENIIA VOKHMIANINA / Oboe and Piano Recital

If one is asked who are the two most prominent Ukrainians in the public eye today, chances are the names of Andriy Shevchenko (former Dinamo Kyiv, AC Milan and Chelsea striker) and Valentina Lisitsa (platinum blonde pianist extraordinaire) might appear, especially if you follow football and the piano. When asked who are the two most prominent Ukrainian musicians in Singapore, they would have to be oboist Vladyslav Shevchenko and pianist Kseniia Vokhmianina, both of whom are presently students at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. (NAFA). 

Their joint recital at Steinway Gallery Singapore on Saturday evening (27 April 2013) was a treat because of  their maturity of musicianship and virtuosity. Let us not forget that Horowitz, Richter, Gilels and Krainev were all from the Ukraine, so it obviously has to do with the water and upbringing (let's forget about Chernobyl for the moment). Shevchenko (student of Pan Yun)  is the star oboist of the NAFA Orchestra while Vokhmianina (student of Boris Kraljevic) was the 3rd Prize winner of the National Piano Competition in 2011 (not bad considering former 3rd prize winners have included Shaun Choo, Albert Lin and Keegan Ng).

The concert opened with the little single-movement Oboe Concerto in E flat major attributed to Mozart. Shevchenko brought out a sleek and elegant sound in the slow introduction, and the virtuosic twists and turns in the Allegro held no terrors for him. This is as assured a performance one can hope to get. 

Vokhmianina performed the entire Schumann First Sonata in F# minor (Op.11), combining both intellect and brawn. Her technique held up superbly in this very tricky and rather repetitive work. The fact she did not come to grief in the circuitous finale speaks well of her concentration, memory and reserve. A polished and powerful performance all round. 

A closer view of Kseniia's hands.

Steinway Gallery was very well filled for this recital. The other major work was Poulenc's poignant Oboe Sonata of 1962, which was written in memory of Prokofiev, who was himself born in the Ukraine. The performance was marvellous, full of fantasy while conveying a sense of regret and loss. The oboe seems to be the perfect instrument for bringing out those kinds of emotions.

After Debussy's Menuet from Suite Bergamasque, the duo played a delightful encore - the dreamy Capriccio by Ukrainian composer Ludmilla Shukailo. 

Our Ukrainian virtuosi receiving their well-earned applause.

LA BELLE ÉPOQUE / LEE CHIN SIN Baritone Recital with VICTOR KHOR, Piano / Review

LA BELLE ÉPOQUE

LEE CHIN SIN, Baritone

with VICTOR KHOR, Piano

Yamaha Recital Hall, Marina Square

Saturday (27 April 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 April 2013 with the title "Cordon bleu chef who sings with great feeling".

It is no secret that most of Singapore’s talented young singers hold daytime jobs unrelated to music. Tenor Melvin Tan is a wine merchant, sopranos Teng Xiang Ting and Lim Yan Ting are lawyer and life scientist respectively. So it is little surprise to learn that baritone Lee Chin Sin is a cordon bleu chef who co-owns a bistro.

Lee is not one of those booming-voiced operatic baritones who spout Don Giovanni or Figaro at will, but a more intimate sort comfortable with the parlando aspect of singing, one closer to the speaking voice. As such, he was well-suited for his selection of songs from the French Belle Epoque, a seemingly carefree era of bourgeois musical charm with an innocence that was shattered by the mayhem of the First World War.

He sang four groups of paired songs, beginning with Emile Pessard’s Absence and Berceuse, which revealed a casual insouciance that was easy on the ear.  His dusky tone gave Reynaldo Hahn’s Offrande and A Chloris, more commonly heard sung by a higher voice, a slightly darker hue, but still communicated its love and longing ardently.

Benjamin Godard is best remembered for his popular Berceuse from Jocelyn. His songs Les Larmes (The Tears) and Je ne veux pas d’autres choses (I Do Not Want Other Things) were both interpretively and physically challenging, and Lee was made to strain a little.

Francesco Paolo Tosti was no Frenchman, but his ‘A Vucchella (A Sweet Mouth) and Non t’amo piu (I Don’t Love You Anymore), both Italian songs, were coloured by the same sensibilities. There was a nice waltz-like lilt in the former, and how Lee tantalisingly hung on to the final note of the latter as it rose into the air, as if he was sorry to end.

In between groups of songs, Lee’s ever-perceptive accompanist Victor Khor had piano solos of his own, which dovetailed into the programme seamlessly. These included three of six Gnossiennes by Erik Satie, Debussy’s Ballade and Claire de lune and Poulenc’s Improvisation No.15, a homage to legendary French chanteuse Edith Piaf. Roger Branga’s solo transcription of Ravel’s Bolero closed the programme on a rowdy high.

And there were encores too. Lee’s was Edvard Grieg’s Ich Liebe Dich (I Love You), sung in German rather than the original Norwegian, while Khor had the final notes with Ravel’s Pavane for the Dead Infanta. This well-attended event suggests that more recitals of this kind can become a norm at this venue in time to come.        

JINHO KIM PLAYS CHOPIN / Review

JINHO KIM PLAYS CHOPIN

Esplanade Recital Studio

Friday (26 April 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 April 2013 with the title "Chopin with sympathy and authority".

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) is one composer whose piano music is varied and absorbing enough to sustain an entire recital. When performed with both sympathy and authority, it makes a rewarding proposition. Such was the case with Korean pianist Jinho Kim, presently an artist-in-residence at the LaSalle College of the Arts. Kim may be considered a Chopin specialist, having been the only person to have performed both Chopin’s piano concertos at Esplanade in a single concert.

Tickets for his all-Chopin recital were “sold out” and people had to be turned away at the box office. Yet there remained significant gaping lacunae in the seats, a public relations faux pas on the part of event management and no-show patrons, which was only mitigated by the quality of the playing. Kim showed that Chopin’s music was full-blooded, not effete or sickly.

Both dramatic and declamatory, the opening bars of the Second Sonata in B flat minor (Op.35), marked Grave, demonstrated on the outset he had something urgent to say about the music. The life and death struggles were brought out trenchantly, and the repeat which rightly included those vital bars upped the ante for the movement’s tumultuous development.

There was no relenting in the equally belligerent Scherzo, and even some notes were missed here and there, it was forgivable during the heat of the moment. The eponymous Funeral March was a dignified procession, the central cantabile being a brief oasis of repose. The whirlwind Presto finale, played with a remarkable evenness, was a chilling portrayal of the afterlife – an unforgiving terminal void. Little wonder the genteel Mendelssohn was so sickened by this work.

Chopin by Eugene Delacroix

The shorter works between the big sonatas were very well chosen. The Nocturne in D flat major (Op.27 No.2), beautifully gilded, evinced genuine warmth and nostalgia. The Second Scherzo in B flat minor (Op.31) closed the first half on a coruscating high despite the split note at the end. The three Mazurkas that opened the second half were totally satisfying, the gentle lilt in triple time being a potent reminder of Chopin’s Polish nationalism.

Concluding with the less frenzied Third Sonata in B minor (Op.58), Kim brought out a patrician, more restrained view of a classic. His sense of proportion was unerring in the substantial first movement, omitting the exposition repeat being a good choice on the occasion. The etude-like Scherzo could have sparkled a little more, but it was the expansive slow movement and its painstaking build-up that evoked the greatest pathos.

The rollicking finale that followed rode on waves of seemingly unlimited reserves, each statement of the resolutely striding theme arriving inexorably and with greater finality. After its brilliant end, Kim asked the audience, “Shall I play some Rachmaninov?” His view of the Elegie in E flat minor (Op.3 No.1) had an elegant and brooding melancholy that was hard to resist. The Russian Rachmaninov could be the subject of his next recital. So what about it?

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, April 2013)

THE SODRE COLLECTION

JASCHA HEIFETZ, Violin

with BROOKS SMITH, Piano

Alpha Omega Sound / ****1/2

Here is another rarity, a live recital recorded on 12 May 1955, from the archives of SODRE, the official radio and television service of Montevideo, Uruguay. At that time, the great Lithuania-American violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) was beginning to make recordings with the RCA Victor label, culminating with the audiophile Living Stereo series. Despite the boomy piano and remastered monaural sound, Heifetz’s penetrating tone – warm and full-blooded – shines through with every note. The 72-minute programme was fairly typical for the era, two major repertoire works surrounding by shorter encore-like pieces and transcriptions.

Tomaso Vitali’s Chaconne, a glorious pastiche of the baroque style, opens the recital. Then the unaccompanied solo of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata (Op.47) catches the ear like no other. This is the longest work, in a performance bristling with passion and inner fire. Debussy’s late Violin Sonata follows, providing a different flavour to the palate. The short pieces by Dvorak (a lesser known Slavonic Dance), Lili Boulanger and Richard Strauss (Heifetz’s own transcription) are lyrical and utterly charming. Two out-and-out showpieces, Wieniawski’s Caprice-Waltz Op.7 and Ravel’s gypsy rhapsody Tzigane, complete this treasure chest. There is some tape distortion and recorded applause may be intrusive, but the listener gets the sense of being witness to history itself. An indispensable document.

PAVAROTTI 101

Decca CD-Rama 4782977 (6 CDs) / ****

Is it an act of sadomasochism to attempt listening to 101 consecutive tracks of Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007) at one sitting? One tries, but it becomes a trial getting past two discs at a go. Like the cholesterol-laden pasta dishes the late great Italian tenor once loved, he is best savoured in small manageable doses. Possessing a most distinctive of voices, the radiance and warmth in which he bathes each aria that makes the experience memorable. The first disc is devoted to the verismo operas of Puccini, Leoncavallo and Mascagni, closing with Nessun Dorma from Puccini’s Turandot, which made him a household name.

The second disc continues with Verdi and bel canto giants Bellini and Donizetti. In Pour mon ame from Donizetti’s La fille du regiment, he nails nine high Cs with a gravity-defying nonchalance. The “King of the High Cs” goes one further to hit D flat in Cujus Animam from Rossini’s Stabat Mater, which appears in Disc 4, devoted to sacred songs. The last two discs feature popular Italian songs, including Rossini’s La Danza, Denza’s Funiculi Funicula, Leoncavallo’s Mattinata, di Capua’s O Sole Mio and Mudugno’s Nel blu, dipinto di blu, better known as Volare. Pavarotti is in his element here, and thankfully there is no more space for those ghastly crossover duets with pop stars. Pavarotti was one of the greatest voices of our time, so why was a short biography not included in this set, at the very least?

BUTTERFLY LOVERS / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

BUTTERFLY LOVERS

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (20 April 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 April 2013 with the title "A tale of two concertos".

The Butterfly Lovers by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao has to be the most popular concerto in Singapore, even beating off the likes of those by Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. Tickets for the Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s two evening concerts with famous Chinese violinist Lu Si Qing were sold out so quickly that a matinee performance had to be added. He was also the fourth violinist to play this Chinese evergreen here within the space of six weeks.

Despite the virtuoso violin part, it is not a concerto in the strictest of senses. It is more a programmatic symphonic poem in sonata form, as compositional theorists might point out. Its appeal comes from the sheer melodic charm of its first subject, an exciting development and a nostalgic recapitulation with all the tear-jerking melodrama. The tragi-romantic storyline also provides much scope for imagination.

To this end, Lu’s offered a wondrous sense of the narrative. His seemingly casual demeanour was that of a wizened story-teller spinning a yarn to wide-eyed children, belying an impeccable and faultless technique. His liberal use of portamenti (sliding pitches) at the beginning may have verged on the sentimental, but that was a deliberate attempt to mimic the operatic human voice with all its inflexions and nuances.

Needless to say, he received the most prolonged applause, yielding two encores, but that was only part of the story. The other part belonged to erhu soloist Song Fei, who was no less prodigious or vivid in Kuan Nai-chung’s Centennial Memory of Xinhai, composed in 2011 to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the Chinese revolution that overthrew the Manchu dynasty.

A bona fide erhu concerto written in the form of a 4-movement programme symphony, there were parts that suggested the composer to be an acolyte of Shostakovich and Beethoven. Pitting Kenneth Lun’s big trumpet obbligato part with Song’s delicate erhu in counterpoint, with Beethoven’s Fate motif (from the Fifth Symphony) hovering in the wings was a device employed to good effect in the opening movement Awakening.

Less good was the idea for the lugubrious third movement Nation Sacrifice to appropriate the corresponding funeral march movement of Mahler’s First Symphony, and to quote from Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony at the end. If that was an act of homage to the great masters, it was not very subtly employed.

The true star, however, was Song who portrayed the full gamut of emotions that a sobbing erhu might achieve. As rumination turned to agitation, and mourning into celebration, the final movement A Century’s perpetual motion was the tour de force of her imperious showing. The erhu’s big statement of the original trumpet theme was also Sun Yat Sen’s ideals of revolution coming to fruition, as the listener is led to believe.

The Singapore Chinese Orchestra conducted by Yeh Tsung also performed Xu Jian Qiang’s Dreams Of The Red Chamber Suite, based on themes from the Yue Opera, and Stephen Yip’s prizewinning contemporary composition Nine Actors. Substantial fillers those were, but it was left for the two big string concertos to hog all the glory.   

Photographs courtesy of Singapore Chinese Orchestra.

VICTOR KHOR Piano Recital / Review

VICTOR KHOR Piano Recital

Yamaha Recital Hall, Marina Square

Saturday (20 April 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 April 2013 with the title "Contemporary charms".

Yamaha Recital Hall is a little studio tucked in one corner of Marina Square, surrounded by furniture shops and boutiques. It comfortably seats 60 people and is the sort of milieu which local pianist Victor Khor thrives in. He prefers to play for small intimate groups of people, such as in dance practice rooms, cosy restaurants, private homes and the like.

His wide repertoire includes Bach, Russian Romantics and French impressionists, but his present preoccupation is tonal contemporary music. This 80-minute afternoon recital performed without a break, a follow-up to his well-received programme of Radiohead song transcriptions, was centred on piano music influenced by New Age pop culture and minimalism.

He opened with three pieces by China-born Australian composer Zhang Chi. Autumn In The Island is slow and contemplative, post-impressionist in style and tinged with the sparseness that reminded one of the Catalan composer Federico Mompou. Morning Lavender, cut from the same fabric, had some hints of Delius while the oddly titled Werewolf, though more animated in pace, was anything but fearsome.

The music did meander a little, but the audience was a patient one, responding to Khor’s sensitive musical insights with no little warmth. Two Japanese composers known for their film music were next. Joe Hisaishi’s Asian XTC was an Oriental melody all dressed up with pop leanings, while Ryuichi Sakamoto’s The Last Emperor struck several chords of recognition, the poignant music for the Oscar-winning Bertolucci movie an apt portrayal of fallen majesty and isolation.

Khor then played three selections from Between The Lines by the Belgian Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven, who is no relation of the famous French pianist Jean-Philippe Collard. The titular work itself brought out a hazy spectrum of colours, rising arc-like to a heady crescendo before receding. Shimmering, shifting hues and faster rhythms characterised Northern Lights and the concluding Falling Stars respectively.

These Singaporean premieres were made possible by a friendship struck up between pianist and composer through the universal medium of YouTube.

The most virtuosic work was Estonian Erkki-Sven Tüür’s three-movement Sonata, also the oldest, composed in 1985. Eclectic with multiple influences, what stuck in the mind were its kinetically charged pages, athleticism alternating with the tintinnabulation (bell-like sonorities) “patented” by his compatriot Arvo Pärt. The resonances and echoes from its succession of octaves, chords and clusters produced a quite hypnotic effect.

As an encore, Khor offered Sakamoto’s Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, a familiar favourite that was very well received. More importantly, he demonstrated that contemporary piano literature was not necessarily all about serialism and atonality, and could be very accessible when it chose to be.

HARLEM GOSPEL CHOIR / A Tapestry of Sacred Music / Review

HARLEM GOSPEL CHOIR

A Tapestry of Sacred Music

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (19 April 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 April 2013 with the title "O Happy night".

Esplanade’s 3-day festival of sacred music could not have gotten to better start, opening to the groovy beat of New York City’s Harlem Festival Choir. African-American gospel music began with the spirituals sung by African slaves on the cotton plantations of America’s Deep South. Converted from heathenism to Christianity by their white masters, black music took on religious tones, but coloured by an infectious sense of rhythm and that essential but undefinable element called soul.

Those expecting spirituals sung a cappella in strophic form would have been disappointed, as the songs performed were updated to contemporary popular tastes, accompanied by synthesiser and drum-set. This concert was in effect a worship service, much like those which charismatic Christian churches here aspire to, except that this was the real thing.

Each song is simple, built upon a catchy refrain that is repeated with increasing fervour and passion. The lead singer intones a proclamation, to which the chorus of eight respond and comment. This call-and-response form of worship does not conform to any liturgy but is no less sincere in its expression of faith and belief.

Typically informal was this call-and-response: “Have you tried Jesus?” answered by, “He’s alright!” Only the most dogmatically strait-jacketed would object to this, or the number that went “Who am I? I am a friend of God!” led by the deep-voiced Studdardesque dude (after the American Idol winner) called Mike. The audience was beginning to warm up, singing along with the chorus and waving their hands.

The music was less preachy after the intermission. No introduction was needed for John Newton’s Amazing Grace, showcasing the amazing vocals of soprano Quiona and the dread-locked Travis. Both employed seemingly impossible melismata for long-held notes, with gravity-defying feats in the highest possible registers. Church music or no, that was exactly what the audience came for.

All the nine singers took turns to lead, each bringing their own charm and personality to the proceedings. As for encouraging audience participation, they did not break the ice but melted it with a warmth and radiance that came with being genuinely joyous. When it came to Shakira (not that Shakira) to lead O Happy Day, the entire audience was up on its feet, including many who ventured up onstage to join the singers, jiving and swaying to the music.

This continued into Kool & The Gang’s Celebration, with slightly altered lyrics, and a much appreciated encore. Almost everybody was sorry to leave, and if people may be persuaded to forget for two and a half hours that terrorists and cancer still stalk the world, then the Harlem Gospel Choir has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams.

A standing ovation is a sure thing in all Harlem Gospel Choir concerts.

Really, nobody wanted to go home!

Good quality photos courtesy of Esplanade Theatres By The Bay.   

CENTENNIAL RITES / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra / Review

CENTENNIAL RITES

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Thursday (18 April 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 April 2013 with the title "Rites of raw, primal energy".

The national Conservatory has invited renowned artists and conductors over the years as Artists-in-Residence to lead and inspire its students to excel. Visiting conductors have included Leon Fleisher, Takuo Yuasa and Mark Wigglesworth, but it will take some doing to better Japanese conductor Eiji Oue’s impression and impact on the conservatory orchestra’s young minds.

Oue was once a protégé of Leonard Bernstein, and has adopted some of his very physical movements and mannerisms on the podium. He conducts with his whole body, including making animated faces (below), stamping on the ground, shaking his fists with approval, the very suggestive swaying of hips and occasional leaps into the air. All this effort would have been naught if the orchestra did not respond with appropriate urgency.

In the Charlie Harmon-orchestrated Suite from Bernstein’s musical Candide, the ensemble exuded polish with a fine sheen, distinguished by excellent solo playing. Spanish rhythms were deliciously served up in the Old Woman’s song I Am Easily Assimilated, and the build-up to Let Our Garden Grow had true poise and stature. Close your eyes, and one thinks of the Boston Pops.

As an accompanist, the orchestra also shined in the tricky idiom of Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto, partnering Conservatory Head of Strings Qian Zhou’s alternatingly silky and spiky solo part. Her tone, incisive yet ethereal, was exemplary while the command and control of her 1757 Guadagnini was breathtaking. Here is a case where searing dissonance goes hand-in-hand with seamless lyricism, and one marvelled how this tightrope act was finely balanced from start to end.

The YSTCO with Qian Zhou in Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto. 

The enfant terrible in Prokofiev had a precedent that was Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite Of Spring, premiered to a riotous reception a century ago. Its innumerable discords and irregular meters still confound and jar the senses, but the head-scratching nowadays is reserved to how young orchestras in Singapore swallow its daunting challenges whole and with relish.

The Orchestra of the Music Makers conducted by Chan Tze Law had set the bar in the 2012 Singapore Arts Festival, and the Conservatory Orchestra did not disappoint on the night. The desolate opening bassoon solo was taken on with great confidence by Guo Peiling, around whom the woodwinds swarmed about in what must be three or four minutes of the most hellishly exposed and difficult passages.

Overcome with aplomb they did, and when the crunching Dance of the Adolescents imposed by its sheer presence, the playing simply took the listener by the scruff of the neck and held on tenaciously. The music’s raw, primal energy never flagged for a single moment as the ensemble fired on all cylinders with Oue, conducting from memory, firmly at the driving seat.

The percussion section, centred around a livewire timpanist, held sway, very much in its top form. In reality, all the sections impressed and there was little room for error in this high stakes game. By the time The Sacrifice came on, one was ready to put down one’s critical pen and be willingly swept away by the sheer momentum of the occasion.

Playing of such fervency and virtuosity is becoming a norm these days, but treasured nonetheless. The Rite marks a major landmark in every young musician’s performing career, one not easily forgotten. The best part is this: they will build upon this experience to reach new and greater heights.  

Post concert, there was a mad rush for the Maestro's autograph.

This lucky girl has her viola case autographed by Eiji Oue. (Another viola joke: How do you prevent a violin from being stolen? Keep it in a viola case.)

Concert photos by courtesy of Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, April 2013)

SALUT D’AMOUR

Singapore Symphony Orchestra / LAN SHUI

SSO CD-1202 / ****1/2

This is the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s long-awaited CD of popular works and encores aimed at introducing the classics to young people and the beginner. There are lollipops like Bach’s Air On G String, Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No.5, which Music Director Lan Shui has often conducted to sign off a concert, and Mascagni’s Intermezzo from the opera Cavalleria Rusticana, which highlights the orchestra’s svelte string sound. The two big works are Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, a rarity by virtue of the presence of Lim Yau’s well-honed combined choruses singing in Russian (but no recorded cannons or carillons), and an exciting reading of Ravel’s Bolero.

The quest to be all-encompassing, seasonally aware and politically correct sees this astonishing sequence of unlikely suspects: Stravinsky’s Greeting Prelude (a distorted version of the popular ditty), Elgar’s Salut D’Amour, Li Huanzhi’s Spring Festival Overture and Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride. A classic for every occasion, including birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year and Christmas! Despite coming off like a hodgepodge of unrelated tracks, the playing is committed and polished, and the recorded sound is vivid.

RIES Piano Concertos  Op.42 & 177

CHRISTOPHER HINTERHUBER, Piano

New Zealand Symphony / Uwe Grodd

Naxos 8.572742 / ****

Lovers of Beethoven’s piano concertos may be pleased to learn that his student Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838) composed eight piano concertos. This disc couples his First and Eighth Piano Concertos, spanning the years 1812 to 1832. Like his teacher, Ries was a piano virtuoso whose concertos were vehicles for his glittering showmanship. Both are about half an hour long (the length of Beethoven’s Second Concerto), and in terms of technical difficulty often surpass those of the master himself. However these do not scale Olympian heights or plumb the same depths as Beethoven, and there is no discernible progression in style and idiom between the first and last.

Ries may be to Beethoven what Hummel was to Mozart, filling in the stylistic gaps of the piano concerto genre till the coming of Mendelssohn. The Introduction & Rondo Brillant Op.144 of 1825 is similar to the slow-fast two movement schema perfected by the early Romantics. As if alluding to the past, the rondo includes a motif that is found in the finale of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Austrian pianist Christopher Hinterhuber is a sympathetic interpreter, his gilded and accurate fingers bringing a certain glitz and charm to these minor masterpieces. Well worth several listens.

ENSO / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory New Music Ensemble / Review

ENSO

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory New Music Ensemble

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (14 April 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 April 2013 with the title "Programme for nuclear fission".

Pieces of new music benefit greatly from the manner they are presented, often in juxtaposition with other works, to gain coherence and synergy they would otherwise not have if performed separately on their own. Such was the case of the five works presented by the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory New Music Ensemble conducted by Kawai Shiu, a composer himself.

The title Enso, accordingly to his interview notes, refers to the focused energy inherent in mere notes and motifs with their potential for infinite variations. This reviewer chooses to equate this with the power harnessed within the nucleus of an atom, the concert being a controlled experiment in nuclear fission. With each work being progressively longer and generating greater volume than the last, the result was a chain reaction leading to ever increasing circles.

The first three works were brief and relatively quiet. Even Pierre Boulez’s Memoriale from …explosante-fixe… (1985) had a strange and ethereal serenity, centred around flautist Tanasak Angsugomutkul’s virtuosity in trills and flutter-tongue technique.  Thai student composer Achittapol Tinnarat’s Compression (2012) opened with an emphatic, even grandiose, statement of the G note, and generated interesting textures with harp, piano, woodwind and brass in what may be seen as a prelude to something bigger.

Allied to this was Giacinto Scelsi’s Pranam II (1985), centred round a C sharp pedal-note, for whom the concept of sound was a series of sustained vibrations. There were small and subtle changes of textures along the way, making barely perceptible shift in the aural geography, like the minute movements of tectonic plates, mostly silent but unusually impactful.

Greater upheavals were reserved for Polish centenarian Witold Lutoslawski’s Chain 1 (1983), which employed the largest ensemble on the evening. His technique was to utilise mere fragments or shards of themes, developing into larger blocks or segments, the overlapping of which provides the origin of his title Chain. The manner in which the work progressed inexorably to a massive climax and its application to nuclear physics is perhaps coincidental.

Shiu’s own composition kör (2013) gets its title from the Hungarian word for “circle”. Superficially it takes the form of a single-movement piano concerto, opening with pianist Abigail Sin’s statement of themes based on Messiaen-like chords. Around her, instrumental groups were creating a moving spectrum of sound, arriving at a centre of calm represented by Yang Shuxiang’s solitary violin. Joined by Victor Williams’s viola, the music then segued to a short sequence with piano and vibraphone as partners in percussion.

The music contrasted light with darkness, high-pitched instruments with lower register ones, before returning for solo piano to close, a full circle being completed. There was a small but receptive audience for this show, sympathetic to the conviction and confidence of the young players. It looks like Esplanade's Spectrum Series and new music performance is hear to stay.

Kawai Shiu speaks forthrightly at the post-concert talk, and exhorts the audience to listen to more new music - Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring on Thursday week.