SOUL MUSIC / KAM NING Violin Recital / Review

SOUL MUSIC

KAM NING, Violin

NICHOLAS ONG, Piano

Lee Foundation Theatre

Thursday (28 January 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 January 2016 with the title "Violinist Kam Ning wins audience over in her solo recital". 

It has been opined that classical music is beneficial for infants and babies in utero. Singaporean violinist Kam Ning obviously advocates the idea, as she emerged for her solo recital in an advanced stage of gravidity. She amiably chatted with the audience before each work and that immediately made everyone feel at home.

The title “Soul Music” of her 75-minute recital performed without intermission pointed to the fact that every work was a feel good piece, hence good for the soul. J.S.Bach's music definitely fit that description, and his Chaconne in D minor (from Unaccompanied Violin Partita No.2) was as big as they come. Although she was performing on a modern instrument, she employed the period technique of minimising vibrato and carved out a lean and lithe sound for this classic.

Her intonation was impeccable throughout, and there was no stinting of dramatic impact in its build-up to a series of impressive climaxes. While Bach was serious, the next work, Sonata Representativa by baroque Bohemian violinist-composer Heinrich Ignaz Biber, made light of the violin's mimicry of nature and farmyard animals.

In 8 continuous movements, a panoply of violinist tricks delighted its listeners, including imitations of a nightingale's call, frogs croaking, henhouse noises and feline caterwauling. A military march where guest cellist Leslie Tan's instrument was turned into a cannon with the nifty use of paper, accompanied by Nicholas Ong on harpsichord, completed the special effects.

Completely different was Estonian composer Arvo Part's Spiegel Im Spiegel (Mirror In A Mirror), a meditative minimalist work built upon a series of arpeggiated triads on the piano and long-breathed sighs from the violin. Time stood still in this heartrending performance which was dedicated by Kam in memory of Mr Lee Kuan Yew. A case of better late than never.

Her idea of spirituality also took the form of her own improvisation of the Christian hymn Amazing Grace. In its variations, she employed the technique and idiom of bluegrass music and country fiddlers in a stupendous show of virtuosity that suggests Paganini making a trip to the Appalachians.

The concert closed with two gypsy-influenced pieces. Hungarian Jeno Hubay's Hejre Kati (Hello Katie) was slightly more traditional in the manner of gypsy rhapsodies, and if it sounded familiar, that was because its highkicking final pages was also used by Brahms in one of his Hungarian Dances. 

The outright showpiece was Ravel's Tzigane with its extended solo introduction and dizzying fast dance. Ong's sweeping piano part simulated the repeated notes of the cimbalom (Hungarian dulcimer) over which Kam's prestidigitation flew like the wind to a breathless close.

For her encore, cellist Tan returned to duet and duel in Mark O'Connor and Edgar Meyer's Limerock, another work-out of vertiginous country dancing which received prolonged applause. One surmises that what is good for the heart is also good for the soul.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, January 2016)

ZHOU LONG & CHEN YI

Symphony “Humen 1839”

New Zealand Symphony / DARRELL ANG

Naxos 8.570611 / *****

The Chinese husband-and-wife composing pair of Zhou Long and Chen Yi have highly successful individual careers, and Symphony “Humen 1839” (2009) represents their own only major joint collaboration to date. It was inspired by the 1839 burning of a thousand tons of opium in Humen, Guangdong, a Chinese version of the Boston Tea Party, but the event that sparked off the disastrous Opium Wars. 

Its four movements play for a half-hour, programmatic and almost Copland-like in its narrative. The music begins in Cantonese pomp, honouring the defiantly heroic figure of Lin Zexu, and depicts its humiliating capitulation under British aggression in the slow movement. This precedes China's inexorable ascent as a world power on its own right, represented by the finale’s triumphal music of the “Star Wars” kind. This is both a patriotic as well as cathartic work.

Two shorter pieces by Zhou complete the album. The Rhyme Of Taigu (2003) is a vigorously rhythmic work that celebrates the pomp and ceremonial role of the ancient dagu, the drum also known by the Japanese as the taiko. The Enlightened (2005) reflects on the contribution of ancient Chinese philosophies to a troubled world. 

This is a first-ever classical Grammy nomination by a Singaporean, the conductor Darrell Ang, and his spirited leadership of the splendid New Zealand Symphony is never in question. This is a disc befitting our SG50 celebrations.  

DON'T MISS:
DARRELL ANG conducts
Singapore Symphony Orchestra's
37th Anniversary Concert
Esplanade Concert Hall
Friday, 29 January 2016
7.30 pm, Tickets available at SISTIC

SETTS #2 / South-Eastern Ensemble for Today's and Tomorrow's Sounds / Review

SETTS #2

South-Eastern Ensemble for

Today's & Tomorrow's Sounds

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (24 January 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 January 2016 with the title "Madhatter's party with serving of afternoon tea".

The second concert by the South-Eastern Ensemble for Today's & Tomorrow's Sounds (SETTS), a new music ensemble formed wholly by professional musicians, was by far a less anarchic affair than its debut last year. It nevertheless occupies an important position for the performance of new local works once undertaken by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra's New Music Forum.

The 70-minute concert presented works by seven composers, including two world premieres and two Singapore premieres. Emily Koh's Implodex! (Singapore Premiere) for six musicians opened the proceedings. Conducted by SETTS co-founder Christoph Wichert, its configuration had strings (violin, viola and cello) placed onstage, complemented by offstage woodwinds (flute, oboe and clarinet).

Its title delves upon the origin of matter and anti-matter, with fragments of sound passed around the hall, the concordant alternating with the discordant. Its climax was a solo cadenza from oboist Joost Flach who went on to tear up pieces of paper, symbolic of a point of no return, before all the musical parts coalescing in a serene C major chord.

Receiving a World Premiere was full-time National Serviceman Tan Tiag Yi's The Quiet scored for string quartet (Christina Zhou & Nanako Takata on violins, Janice Tsai on viola and Lin Juan on cello) and marimba. Iskandar Rashid's mellow marimba strikes provided a gentle counterpoint to pizzicatos and bowing from the strings in this short movement, which revealed in its subdued mood the influence of Shostakovich.

Chen Zhangyi's Lost In Order was composed ten years ago, with the vastly contrasting timbres of Roberto Alvarez's flute pitted against Iskandar's assembly of four timpanis. The work began with the ennui of routine and repetition, escalated by an increasing urgency for the instrumentalists to break out from habit. They do so with an abrupt end to the piece.

Indonesian composer Ivan Tangkalung's Morning Call for solo bassoon was virtuosically tossed off by Wichert, with his instrument the channelling a cockerel's chanticleer and the urban sounds of a city readying for a day's busyness and business.

Zechariah Goh Toh Chai's Four Taiwanese Aboriginal Songs for wind quintet will be the most often performed work of all these. The reason is simple. Like a modern-day Bartok or Kodaly, its treatment of two songs and dances from the Pai-wan and Bei-nan tribes is both idiomatic and engaging. The performance by Alvarez, Flach, Colin Tan (clarinet), Wichert and Alan Kartik (French horn) will be hard to better.

Works by two Malaysian composers completed the show. Yii Kah Hoe's Cheers (Singapore premiere) was literally a madhatter's party, with Alvarez and pianist Shane Thio punctuating their solo parts with a serving of afternoon tea, complete with the clinking of teapots and teacups, noisy stirring of spoons, obligatory slurping and a toast of “cheers!”

The World Premiere of Wong Chee Yean's Six Sketches was a complete success. The full ensemble of strings, winds and percussion engaged in its short scenes from Greek mythology, drawn from Ovid's Metamorphosis. Among its movements involved the sinuous flute as Narcissus gazing at his own shadow, a beautiful duet for oboe and clarinet representing Orpheus and Euridice, a lively Dionysian scherzo, and a string fugue as Arethusa flees before transforming into a fountain to a wind serenade.

Inventive and surprising as before, SETTS #3 on 1 May at The Arts House is keenly awaited.  

IS IT POSSIBLE TO ATTEND THREE CONCERTS IN A DAY?

IS IT POSSIBLE TO ATTEND THREE CONCERTS IN A DAY?

In a word, YES. Way back in October 1989, on a fine London Sunday, I first went to Steven Isserlis's late morning cello recital at Wigmore Hall, then made it to Barbican Hall for Pinchas Zukerman's violin recital in the afternoon, and finally to Royal Festival Hall to hear Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct The Philharmonia.

That was London, but what about Singapore today? Last Sunday (17 January 2016) provided the rare opportunity to do just that, and even cram all the concerts in an even shorter space of time! This was what transpired:

3 pm. Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, for a cello-cum-chamber recital by the Canadian cellist Gary Hoffman. A fairly large audience was in attendance for a treat of Slavic chamber music, which included Janacek's Pohadka, Arensky's Piano Trio No.1 and Rachmaninov's Cello Sonata. My review for The Straits Times may be found in a post below.

With the listening done and autographs collected, I zipped off to Esplanade Concert Hall to attend the OMM Prom entitled Phantasia. Having a car helps cut through the commuting, but if you choose to park at the Parliament House Car Park ($2 per entry) instead of the Esplanade Car Park (an usurious $9, if one includes the 60+ minutes before 6pm), there is a chance of turning up late.

5 pm. Esplanade Concert Hall, ...and that was what happened. So I missed the first piece performed by the Orchestra of the Music Makers directed by Chan Tze Law, which was an innocuous suite of melodies from Puccini's La Boheme. The main work was Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantasia, a 45 minute conflation of melodies from his musical The Phantom of the Opera. 

The pleasure was in witnessing SSO Concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich and SSO Principal Cellist Ng Pei-Sian as guest soloists tackle the virtuosic solo parts as if it were Brahms's Double Concerto. They sportingly blended into the ranks of the orchestra to play the final work, the Rosenkavalier Suite from Richard Strauss's opera. SSO had recently performed this, and it could be said that the young musicians of OMM matched their seniors every bit in terms of passion if not technique.

Equally heartwarming was its encore, Sunset from Ferde Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite, which was followed by a reprise of the final waltz from the Strauss suite. Several members of the full-house audience were placed within the ranks of the orchestra to experience what it was like to be inside an orchestra. It must have been overwhelming, at least none of them were caught falling asleep!

7.30 pm. Victoria Concert Hall. A quick dinner at an Esplanade eatery before rushing off to attend a Chinese New Year Concert by the Kids Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the dynamic young maestro Tan Kah Chun. The Kids Philharmonic is where people from six to eighteen get a chance to play, and its string section is filled with children, but the winds, brass and percussion were all adults, which sort of diminishes the overall youthful look of the group. 

It is about three weeks to go to the Lunar New Year, so it was not too early to wallow in melodies like Zhu Xin Nian, Gongxi Gongxi Ni, Da Di Hui Chun and the one that goes Yahohei (not Yohotoho!), which were performed in a rightly celebratory spirit. 

The choral contribution was provided by the SYC Ensemble Singers and SMU Choir, but the ones who stole the show was the excellent Chinese-speaking emcee Li Rong De and the 84-year-old singer Chong Sit Fong (Take that, Birgit Nilsson!), who crooned the way to the hearts of the audience in Tian Mi Mi. 

If the procession of Chinese songs did not sound lacklustre, it had to be because all the arrangements were written by no less than Cultural Medallion recipient Phoon Yew Tien.

The audience down in the stalls was, however, appalling. There are people (whom I'll disrespectfully refer to as lao tou er, or old farts) who think nothing of talking and commenting on the proceedings while the music is being played. Little wonder the wonderful emcee pleaded with the audience to be considerate (“qian wan bu yao shuo hua”) after the interval.

So that was three concerts in a day in Singapore. Can there be such a thing as too much music for one's good? In a word, NO.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, January 2016)

RACHMANINOV Variations

DANIIL TRIFONOV, Piano

The Philadelphia Orchestra 

Yannick Nezet-Seguin

Deutsche Grammophon 479 4970 / *****

This 80-minute-long album brings together the three great sets of variations for piano by Russian composer-pianist Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943). The most popular is his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini ,one of his last works, based on Paganini's Caprice No.24 for unaccompanied violin, with a prominent role offered by the medieval chant Dies Irae. Its first ever recording was made in 1934 by Rachmaninov himself, partnered by The Philadelphia Orchestra, the same orchestra on this recording.

Young prize-winning Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov proves himself to be the composer's equal on the technical front, but goes one further with the Chopin Variations (1904) and Corelli Variations (1931) for solo piano, which Rachmaninov never recorded. The former, based on Chopin's Prélude in C minor (Op.28 No.20), is longer and more discursive, and Trifonov closes with a restatement of the original piece. In the latter, he adds his own individual touches by highlighting secondary voices.

His personal contribution is the 4-movement suite Rachmaniana, a tribute to Rachmaninov's skill in writing miniatures, crafted in the stylistic manner of the master himself. An impressive show of pianism all round.  

RESPIGHI Complete Orchestral Works

Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma 

Francesco la Vecchia

Brilliant Classics 94900 (8CDs) / **** 

Despite its title, this slim-line budget box set does not contain the complete orchestral output of Italian composer Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936). For example, it does not include the ballet music of La Boutique Fantasque or Belkis, Queen Of Sheba, both excellent examples of his orchestration skills, nor his orchestrations of Rachmaninov Etudes-Tableaux. 

His most important works are here. The Roman Trilogy – Festivals, Fountains and Pines – is a good place to start for the taste of his sumptuous and opulently canvases. The early hour-long Sinfonia Drammatica in three movements is overblown with Wagnerian gestures, but is made up by its mastery of form.

Respighi's forté was dressing up old music and antique forms in Romantic shades and colours, such as the three suites of Ancient Airs And Dances, The Birds (based on baroque keyboard pieces), Botticelli Triptych and Church Windows, which include elaborations on medieval chants. These are skilfully crafted as are the concertos built upon ancient modes. 

The best of these is the Concerto Gregoriano for violin (with excellent soloist Vadim Brodsky) and the Concerto In Mixolydian Mode for piano which in parts sounds like Rachmaninov and even Gershwin. There may be better performances on record of the Roman Trilogy but the Roman forces here score on authenticity. With excellent programme notes, here is a handy start to exploring this fascinating composer.  

GARY HOFFMAN Chamber Recital / Review

GARY HOFFMAN Chamber Recital

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Sunday (17 January 2016)

This review was published by The Straits Times on 19 January 2016 with the title "Cellist Gary Hoffman tugs at heartstrings".

A fairly sizeable audience turned up on a Sunday afternoon for a chamber concert by the Canadian cellist Gary Hoffman, who has developed a reputation as one of the world's leading chamber musicians. Performing with faculty and students of the Conservatory, the programme offered could scarcely have been more inviting as well.

Czech nationalist composer Leos Janacek's Pohadka is a musical fairy-tale in three short movements, scored in an unmistakeably haunting idiom with piquant harmonies and short repeated motifs which are largely derived from folk music. Hoffman's 1662 Amati cello opened with pizzicatos, sang and then wept, ably supported by Indonesian pianist Anthony Hartono's sensitive playing with well-nuanced pedalling.

That unusual palate-cleanser yielded the whiff of a breath mint before the more opulent offering of Anton Arensky's First Piano Trio in D minor. Colleague of Tchaikovsky and teacher of Rachmaninov, Arensky mined the same rich melodic vein which has come to characterise Russian romanticism.

Melancholic and sometimes sentimental, its thematic interest was shared by Hoffman's lush cello sound and Ukrainian Oleksandr Korniev's violin, which was every bit his match. Malaysian pianist Yap Sin Yee's busy part ranged from big-boned chords to an unexpected whimsicality in the scherzo 2^nd movement which exuded salon-like schmaltz that recalled Saint-Saëns' frivolities.

In the slow movement, Elegia (Elegy), the dyed-in-the-wool Russian brooding came to the fore, contrasted by a gossamer-light and dreamy central section. The passionate finale was conducted at high voltage but was not without moments of levity, and a reprise of the 1^st movement's opening theme. This seemed like a reminiscence of a past age, a yearning for the good old days.

The second half comprised just Rachmaninov's mighty Cello Sonata in G minor, which was a re-run of the heart-on-sleeve emotions displayed earlier in the Arensky trio. It seems one could not have enough of a good thing, because the performance with pianist and conservatory don Albert Tiu was a total treat.     

  

Hoffman's entry, literally a heave and sigh, was good enough to keep one transfixed for the work's entire 35-minute duration. His shaping of melodic phrases was excellent, keeping the thematic thrust and narrative coherent. He was aided by Tiu's unerring pianism, maintaining a cool head despite the multitudes of notes. The piano's bluster could have easily overwhelmed the cello, but that was never the case in this true partnership of equals.

The Andante slow movement tugged at the heart-strings with its unabashed lyricism, one of many high points in the recital. The hell-for-leather finale swept everything before it and the sonata concluded with the vocal ovation the performance deserved. One suspects the name of Rachmaninov helped draw the audience, but it is the quality of the playing that keeps them coming again.  

GALA: MAHLER'S THIRD / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

GALA: MAHLER'S THIRD

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Saturday (16 January 2016)

Esplanade Concert Hall

This review was published in The Straits Times on 18 January 2016v with the title "Journey from vulgarity to sublime".

The Guinness Book of World Records once listed Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony in D minor as the longest symphony ever written. It has since been surpassed by Havergal Brian's rarely-performed Gothic Symphony, but at over 100 minutes and in six movements, it remains the unsurpassed titan of the regular orchestral repertoire. Even the term regular is relative, as this was only the second performance in the Singapore Symphony Orchestra's 37 year history.

The Singapore premiere took place in 2007, when the newly-formed Singapore Symphony Children's Choir made its debut. Conducted again by SSO Music Director Shui Lan, this performance showed that both orchestra and chorus had made considerable progress over the intervening years. One might even conclude that SSO has become a great Mahler orchestra.

Eight French horns boldly declared the first in a series of fanfares in the opening movement, a statement of intent that was to distinguish the evening's work. Under Shui's firm guiding hand, the sprawling movement that was itself longer than most Mozart and Beethoven symphonies did not come across as a string of unrelated episodes.

Instead the music flowed through its progression of marches, with brass, winds and percussion in full throttle. Allen Meek's solo trombone led the procession, and the relentless pursuit of perfection was infectious, all the way through to tumultuous climax and dramatic close.

The second and third movements were shorter and lighter, with dance-like rhythms possessed with a rusticity that deliberately bordered on the provincial. A fairytale-like atmosphere gave way to more earthy vibes with Jon Paul Dante's offstage trumpet solo, sure and unwavering, being the pivotal key. All this apparent light-heartedness was, characteristic of the Bohemian composer, tinged with a sense of menace and macabre.

If the first three movements gloried in the banal and commonplace, the next three was preoccupied with the spiritual and eternal. Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke's mellow and reassuring rendering of O Mensch! Gib Acht! (O Man! Take Heed!) from Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra stood apart from the earlier rumblings.

She was later joined by women from the Singapore Symphony Chorus (Lim Yau, Choral Director) and Singapore Symphony Children's Choir (Wong Lai Foon, Choirmaster) in the celestial Es Sungen Drei Engel (Three Angels Sang), which sparkled like gold dust.

The journey of transformation from vulgarity to the sublime was completed in the long-breathed finale. Has Mahler written a better Adagio (marked Langsam in the score) than this? Ethereal strings took over, from its pianissimo beginnings and building up arch-like to final fruition. There were unexpected touches too, such as Jin Ta's sinuous flute appearing from nowhere or concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich's exquisite violin solo standing tall against a brass chorale.  

Conducting completely from memory, Shui's interpretation has to be one of the great Mahler performances in living memory here. The audience, in stark contrast with the one that greeted the Israel Philharmonic just a week ago, was impeccably behaved. Respectfully quiet between movements, it erupted with a chorus of bravos and a prolonged standing ovation at the end. This audience came here for the music, and their faith was justly reciprocated. There is hope for classical music here, after all.