7TH LUCIEN WANG PIANO COMPETITION 2016 FINALS / Review

7^TH LUCIEN WANG PIANO COMPETITION

Lee Foundation Theatre

Wednesday (30 March 2016)

It is to my discredit that I had missed attending the annual Lucien Wang Piano Competition for all these years, until this time around. The competition serves as a platform for piano students of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, and was named in memory of Lucien Wang, one of Singapore most prominent piano teachers.

Lucien Wang (1909-2007), who was originally from Canton, served as a vital link between generations of Singaporean pianists and the French piano school. During the 1930s, she had studied with Alfred Cortot and Nicholas Tcherepnin in Paris, before settling in Singapore. She was widowed when her husband was murdered by the Japanese during their occupation of Singapore in 1942. She devoted her entire life to the teaching of the piano and lived humbly in an apartment on Loke Yew Street, off Armenian Street. Her prominent students included the late Ong Lip Tat, and the very much alive Benjamin Loh, Lim Jing Jing and many others.

There was very little publicity for this event, and the audience was a tiny one. I had hoped the organisers had written something about Lucien Wang in the programme leaflet, so as to initiate the listeners (and young pianists themselves) to the uncommonly rich heritage she had bestowed to Singapore. Also, piano students of all levels (including the NAFA School of Young Talents) could have been invited or coerced to attend, which would have made it less of a low key affair.  

There were 14 candidates for this year’s competition, of which 5 were selected to perform in the final round. Each pianist had to play up to 20 minutes of solo repertoire, and was judged by a panel formed by Lim Yau (Dean of NAFA’s school of music) and Japanese concert pianist Noriko Ogawa.

The first to perform was Liu Qingqing who offered Schubert’s Sonata in A minor (D.537). She gave a technically accurate account of its three movements but kept within a rather limited dynamic range. Sounding brittle and clipped in her phrasing, the lack of aural allure and singing tone diminished the reading. The central movement in E major, which was later reworked in the finale of the great A major Sonata (D.959), came across as perfunctory. She sounded the best in the finale, which suggests a much better future performance is a real possibility.

The decision of Andren Koh to play pieces of Godowsky and Scriabin, both late Romantics, seemed unnecessarily narrow in the choice of repertoire. Nevertheless The Gardens of Buitenzorg from the former’s Java Suite was beautifully performed, with very well-phrased legato lines and excellent pedalling. The latter’s Fantasie Op.28 had colour and nuance, building up to a big chordal climax. Only a small lapse towards the end blotted his copybook somewhat. 

Chio Jia Le gave the most varied and interesting programme but one wished he had been better prepared. Beethoven’s Sonata in F sharp major Op.78 is far more difficult than it sounds or its two short movements suggest. His articulation was good in parts but the phrasing was prosaic, and a major lapse in the second movement did this reading in. Brahms’s playful Capriccio in B minor (Op.76 No.2) was an absolutely wrong piece for him given his plodding and cheerless reading, but the Prokofiev Suggestion Diabolique (Op.4 No.4) was more of his kind of thing. By this time, one wondered what the point of it all was.

Soh Wei Qi gave a most spirited account of the 1^st movement of Mozart’s Sonata in C minor (K.457), full of robust stürm und drang and symphonic bluster, a portrait of rude health. This big-boned playing continued into Chopin’s Scherzo No.1 in B minor (Op.20) where its crashing chords and prestidigitation were well served. He was unafraid of mixing it in, however the slow central section based on a Polish cradle song should have been sung in a less matter of fact manner.

Donald Law was the most confident of the five finalists and his playing showed it. The 1^st movement of Beethoven’s Sonata in A flat major (Op.110) revealed playing of real stature, a warm sound, singing tone and meticulously crafted filigree. This was likely the most satisfying performance of the whole evening. His view of Debussy’s La plus que lent, the “slower than slow” waltz, is still unformed. He has not decided how to spread his rubato about, and was not helped by a stilted approach and several unintentional blues notes. York Bowen’s Toccata provided the final tour de force, in a breathless reading that closed the evening on a real high.

Donald Law receiving the First Prize
certificate from Maestro Lim Yau.

Personally I would not have awarded a First Prize, in a hope that the young piano continue to better themselves through inspired study, industrious application, and that axiom on how to get to Carnegie Hall: Practise, Practise and Practise. The judges were in a generous mood, awarding 2^nd prize to Andren Koh and 1^st prize to Donald Law. Hopefully this will spur them (and the others) on to further artistic heights. I am certain the spirit of Lucien Wang would have looked on fondly and lovingly.

Guest judge Noriko Ogawa spoke briefly
and encouragingly to all the finalists.

All the pianists, their teachers and judges.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, March 2016)

GODOWSKY Walzermasken

KONSTANTIN SCHERBAKOV, Piano

Marco Polo 8.225276 / *****

The Polish-American virtuoso pianist Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938) is best remembered for his outlandishly contrapuntal rearrangements of Chopin's Etudes and various outrageous piano transcriptions, but his original music has been much neglected. Walzermasker (Waltz Masks) is a cycle of 24 pieces in three-quarter rhythm composed in 1912, essentially waltzes in elaborate costumes and disguises.

The tradition of waltz-cycles is not new, and Godowsky does let one in on his secrets. Each piece is teasingly titled (such as Momento Capriccioso, Valse Macabre and Orientale) and there are tributes to Schumann (the ecstatic opening is reminiscent of his Carnaval), Schubert (lilting and rustic), Brahms (jaunty and vigorous), Chopin (lyrical and coy), Liszt (naturally virtuosic) before closing with Johann Strauss II (with Viennese voluptuosness).  

As if one were not done with waltzes, the album closes with Godowsky's Symphonic Metamorphosis on Johann Strauss' Artists Life, another of those seemingly unplayable paraphrases. Siberia-born super-virtuoso Konstantin Scherbakov makes light work of its digital excesses, and that is how it is supposed to sound: complex yet seemingly effortless.

FAURÉ Violin Sonata No.1

R.STRAUSS Violin Sonata

ITZHAK PERLMAN, Violin

EMANUEL AX, Piano

Deutsche Grammophon 481 17741 / *****

It is hard to believe that the celebrated Israeli-American violinist Itzhak Perlman is now 70. A long-awaited return to the recording studio yields this lovely coupling of lyrical violin sonatas from the late Romantic period. His much-beloved sweet and singing violin tone is gloriously intact, undiminished by the intervening years. This is immediately apparent in the soaring opening melody of Frenchman Gabriel Fauré's First Violin Sonata in A major (1875), which is reciprocated by partner Emanuel Ax in the intricate and immensely taxing piano part.

A wide-eyed sense of fantasy occupies its four movements, which will touch even the most jaded of listeners. This same exalted state continues into Richard Strauss' early Violin Sonata in E flat major (1887), with its succession of flowing melodies finds the most sympathetic of interpretations. Has the slow movement, entitled Improvisation, sounded this beguiling or beautiful? Perlman and Ax  are peerless in this repertoire, and this album is a welcome addition into an already crowded field of excellent recordings.

A FRENCH CONNECTION / Take 5 Piano Quintet / Review

A FRENCH CONNECTION

Take 5 Piano Quintet

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (27 March 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 March 2016 with the title "Piano quintet has fun with diabolical diversion".

There was more than one French connection in this latest concert by Singapore's foremost piano quintet, Take 5. Firstly, all three French composers featured were much better-known as organists than pianists. Secondly, Camille Saint-Saëns was a teacher of Charles-Marie Widor, who in turn taught Olivier Messiaen. Thirdly, all the three works performed were receiving local premieres.

Saint-Saëns' Piano Quintet in A minor (1855), a conscientious work of a youngster, is virtually unknown for good reason: it is an awfully boring piece. More academic exercise than something truly inspired, its four movements seemed to tick off the boxes of technical accomplishments which all composition students strive for.

Piano chords and filigree from Lim Yan dominated the 1st movement, while a prayer-like slow movement presented Chan Yoong Han's viola and Chan Wei Shing's cello with some melodic interest. The Presto 3^rd movement gave the pianist frantic runs up and down the keyboard while the finale had the obligatory fugue, as inevitable as some tiresome graduation speech.

The quintet completed by violinists Foo Say Ming and Lim Shue Churn, were as expected, good servants to this pleasant and innocuous music, making the best case as they possibly could. The first half concluded with a little sting in its tale: Messiaen's unpretentiously titled Piece for Piano & String Quartet (1991).

Its pungent 4 minutes said far more than what Saint-Saëns accomplished in an entire half-hour. Four incisively-driven notes on strings were ear-catching, ushering in the purposeful dissonance of Lim's piano mimicry of birdsong, in this case the garden warbler (fauvette des jardins). Even before the ears could come to grips with its rarefied idiom, the same four notes emphatically ended the piece.

For those imagining Widor's Second Piano Quintet in D major (1894) to be much like his organ music, notably that Toccata of countless wedding services, they would be pleasantly surprised. His idiom is decidedly darker here, more aligned to the Cesar Franck and Richard Wagner axis.

The chromatic language in the opening movement occasionally lapsed into moments of lyricism and levity which were refreshing. There was even a short final flourish at the movement's end for violinist Foo to relive his re:mix ringmaster act as leading showman. Bare piano octaves heralded the 2^nd movement's passacaglia, which for all its austerity led to a heartwarming climax of rare beauty.

Short and exciting, the scherzo-like 3^rd movement swept past like something out of The Flying Dutchman, filled with searing dissonances and malevolent intent. One suspects the players had the most fun with this diabolical diversion, somewhat reluctantly reverting to a more casual and lighter stance for the finale.

Themes from the 1^st movement were rehashed, but this time a salon-like charm took precedence, with some rhapsodic musing before a grandstanding close. Having clearly appreciated the experience, the audience applauded long after the quintet had taken its last bows, packed up and gone home.

AN EVENING OF FIREWORKS / NORIKO OGAWA Piano Recital / Review

AN EVENING OF FIREWORKS

NORIKO OGAWA Piano Recital

Victoria Concert Hall

Saturday (26 March 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 March 2016 with the title "Piano playing that sparkles".

It has been 7 years since Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa last performed in Singapore, and 11 years since her solo recital in the 2005 Singapore International Piano Festival. She marked a welcome return to Victoria Concert Hall with a recital of familiar favourites.

Fireworks are not usually associated with Mozart's keyboard music, which were written for dainty and fragile instruments like the fortepiano. His audiences were more of the 18^th century drawing room variety rather those in vast concert halls, who would have been startled by sounds of a modern Steinway grand. Ogawa made no concessions for supposed authenticity by projecting a robust but crystal-clear sonority in Mozart's Sonata in A major K.331.

The opening Theme and Variations movement was crisply and lusciously articulated. While the central movement came across less like a courtly Minuet than an elaborately decorative study, it was the popular Rondo Alla Turca that romped home with a irrepressible gusto. Many students race through it with dizzying fingers but few understand its martial strides as Ogawa did.

More acute in colouring and tonal shadings was Ogawa's interpretations of Debussy, for which she is rightly renowned. In Images (Book I), the shimmering ripples of Reflets Dans L'Eau (Reflections In The Water) were down to her velvety touch and excellent control of pedalling. How the stately Hommage A Rameau (Homage To Rameau) rose to an impassioned climax and well-placed accents in the vertiginous Mouvement (Movement) all made for an indelibly memorable outing.

The Debussy set closed with a true showpiece in L'Isle Joyeuse (The Happy Island), bacchanalian evocation of a famous Watteau painting of unbridled hedonism. Her prodigious fingerwork and enraptured senses became one in a multiply-hued brush-stroked canvas which brought the first half to a scintillating close.

Taking the fireworks theme to heart in the all-Chopin second half, it was a parade of popular hits beginning with the Minute Waltz Op.64 No.1. How often does one hear this trifle in concert, or played with such precision yet carefree abandon? This was followed by the Grande Valse Brillante in B flat major (Op.18), more super-charged glitter in three-quarter time.

A rare moment for quiet reflection took place in the nocturne-like Andante Spianato, with smooth legato singing lines. This was before trumpeting fanfares which led to the swashbuckling Grande Polonaise Brillante, where all stops were pulled to live up to its title. Ogawa's faultless pianism meant that nary a note was dropped and this imperious show continued into the final two warhorses.

The First Ballade Op.23 and Second Scherzo Op.31 are such regularly-heard pieces that they risk becoming hackneyed, but surely there were first-time listeners among the many young people who attended. They would have been treated to how these works ought to sound, for Ogawa's blend of passion and poetry with no punches pulled made them ring out eternally fresh.    

Prolonged applause yielded two encores. The Paganini-Liszt La Campanella brought out yet another facet of fireworks, and the sublime Schumann Traumerei to conclude was a signal it was close to bedtime.

Noriko Ogawa meets her former student,
the Kuala Lumpur-based pianist Tomonari Tsuchiya.

A meeting of old friends:
Noriko with violists Jiri Heger and Lionel Tan.

Boris Kraljevic, Jiri and the Pianomaniacs.

XPERIENZ: IN C / Asian Contemporary Ensemble / Review

XPERIENZ: IN C

Asian Contemporary Ensemble

University Cultural Centre Dance Studio

Friday (25 March 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 March 2016 with the title "Unusual experience of minimalist music".

The Asian Contemporary Ensemble (ACE) founded by young conductor Wong Kah Chun surprised once again, and in ways which one least expected. Its latest concert coupled Beethoven's evergreen Fifth Symphony with the Singaporean premiere of American minimalist Terry Riley's seminal score In C, in performances which confounded expectations and pre-conceived ideas.

The Dance Studio at UCC is a very small space, which meant that the audience numbering about 100 was seated within the orchestra's ranks. This closeness must have been unnerving for performer and listener, but within a friendly milieu of sharing space and feedback, both parties soon got used to each other.

Conductor Wong, informally attired in polo shirt and denim jeans, introduced the various instrumental groups to the audience and also briefly spoke about Beethoven's orchestration between the movements. Without further fanfare, the Beethoven symphony got underway with the familiar “da-da-da-dum” motif.

Shorn of opulence or bombast, the composer's ideas were laid bare on a plate. One soon discerned how he brought the disparate parts together, in consonance and dissonance. Just four each of first and second violins, three violas, two cellos, two basses and the minimum complement of winds, brass and percussion, meant that the sound was not going to be rich or fulsome.

That was not the idea in the first place, and depending on where one sat, the balance was also certain to be awry. However what the listener got was a truly organic feel of an overplayed masterpiece, and the power of raw emotions set into music. This pair of ears happened to be in the direct trajectory of the trio of trombones that announced themselves wholeheartedly in the finale, and shrill blast of the piccolo.

The Surround Sound effect worked better in Riley's 1964 classic that started an inexorable trend in musical minimalism. Its premise was both simple and primitive, a repeated rhythmic pattern of the C note over which various sequences from combinations of instruments could be grafted onto its unwavering linear structure.

The ensemble was further pared down, now led by percussionist Ramu Thiruyanam on the MalletKat Pro (an electronic xylophone) and drum, with significant contributions from cello and keyboard. Traditional instruments like guzheng, tabla, guitar and bamboo flute were added into the mix, and audience members armed with a single-paged score were encouraged to sing any of the 53 notated fragments during appropriate moments.

The result was a heady and serendipitous melange of sounds, dizzying and strangely hypnotic. Riley's work was in essence the basis of music itself, the very foundation upon which the sounds of African drumming and Javanese gamelan become possible. The Western forms of the canon, passacaglia, theme and variations and the more sophisticated fugue could all be derived from its basic pulse and momentum.

Every incarnation of In C would result in very different outcomes, and ACE'ss version which played for  a good 37 minutes became a thrilling encounter with music at its most rudimentary grassroots. Little wonder that the many children in the audience sat quietly transfixed, clearly overawed by the experience. That is exactly how good music should move people.      

Professor Ho Chee Kong was in the audience, and
took the opportunity for photos with the performers.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times / March 2016)

IVO POGORELICH

Complete Recordings

Deutsche Grammophon 479 4350 (14CDs) / ****

It has been 36 years since the Belgrade-born pianist Ivo Pogorelich burst onto the scene after being eliminated in the semi-finals of the 1980 Chopin International Piano Competition. 

Martha Argerich's famous walkout from the jury sealed his notoriety, which was further fuelled by his unconventional attire and provocative interpretations. He made 14 albums for the German yellow label from 1981 to 1995, all of which have been reissued here. A given with uncommon and unpredictable genius, his playing ranged from transcendental to outright perversity.

Begin with his “brave new world” debut all-Chopin recital, which includes a brisk, angular and unsentimental Second Sonata “Funeral March”. A must-listen is his Ravel Gaspard de la nuit, one of the best versions ever committed to disc, coupled with a blistering account of Prokofiev's Sixth Sonata, and excitable takes on Bach’s Second and Third English Suites. 

The downsides include an auto mechanic's view of Beethoven's last Sonata Op.111, a bloated Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition, and a constipated Brahms recital. Also, how could anyone possibly make Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales sound this ponderous? In between there are illuminating views of Scarlatti, Haydn and more Chopin, which sound quirky at first but grows on one's further listening. Never boring for a second, here is an original from first to last.

PETER AND THE WOLF IN HOLLYWOOD

ALICE COOPER (Narrator)

National Youth Orchestra of Germany

Alexander Shelley (Conductor)

Deutsche Grammophon 479 4888 / ****1/2

In an effort to update Sergei Prokofiev's 1930s children's musical adventure to the present day, the American creative team of Giants Are Small have crafted a prequel set in Los Angeles of the 21^st century. Peter is an orphaned Russian boy who moves to America to live with his hippie grandfather who is a gardener in a once-famous actor's Beverly Hills mansion. A wolf escapes from the zoo, gobbles down a school of ducks and sets Peter on his big game hunt.

The prequel takes up half the disc and includes a redundant episode where Peter builds a giant robot for his quest which breaks down anyway. It contains no new music, instead cleverly splicing together music by Wagner, Elgar, Zemlinsky, Satie and others before seguing into Prokofiev's iconic score.

The narrator is rock icon Alice Cooper (of heavy metal Alice Cooper Band fame), who is engaging in an easy, avuncular manner, regularly dropping words like “dude” and “cool”. The hunters of the original story are replaced by camera-toting paparazzi, and there are also American-styled radio news commentaries. 

The young German orchestra is excellent and this version can be safely recommended for children's enjoyment wherever one comes from. 

Photographs from NATIONAL ARTS COUNCIL'S THANK YOU DINNER 2016

Every two years, the National Arts Council (NAC) holds a Thank You Dinner for the members of its multiple arts resource and advisory committees. I have sat on several of these, the longest being the committee for the National Piano and Violin Competition. The stand-up dinner was held at the Gilman Arts Hub, well-known for its many art galleries, which had recently received some stick for its relevance in local art consumption scene.

Nevertheless, the NAC has done much work and dished out much lucre for the many arts groups in Singapore over the years, without which our arts scene would be in a much poorer state. My personal stand has been that Western opera has not been helped enough, and our three local opera companies are barely scraping to produce one major production a year. That is something which our nation - and the powers that be - should address. 

Anyway, here are some photos to see who turned up for dinner this year: 

A night time view of Gilman's Block 7.

NAC Chairman Prof Chan Heng Chee
gave a short speech so that people could
get to the chow pretty quick.

Expat composers now naturalised:
Robert Casteels & Eric Watson

Conductor Joshua Kangming Tan
with jazz pianist supremo Jeremy Monteiro.

Elaine Ng (NAC) & Andrea Teo (Former MediaCorp
and now Resorts World)

Pianomaniac with Grace Ng (NAC) &
Terence Ho (CEO, Singapore Chiense Orchestra)

A cappella group Vocaluptuous
was invited to provide the evening's entertainment.

Quek Yeng Yeng (NAC) &
Julie Tan (President, Singapore Music Teachers Association)

Rebecca Li (NAC) & Kon Mei Leen
(Former Principal, Methodist Girls School)

Fancy being asked to add to the graffiti!

NAC staffers mug for a photo.