PRESIDENT'S YOUNG PERFORMERS CONCERT / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

PRESIDENT’S YOUNG PERFORMERS CONCERT
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Victoria Concert Hall
Friday (27 September 2019) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 September 2019 with the title "Young guitarist on top of his game".

The Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s President’s Young Performers Concerts have been an annual showcase of local talent in concerto performances since the 1990s. The series has spanned tenures of four presidents since Ong Teng Cheong, featuring the likes of pianists Shane Thio, Lim Yan and Abigail Sin, violinists Lee Huei Min and Chan Yoong Han, and even a saxophonist, Samuel Phua. Kevin Loh is the first guitarist to appear on this platform, although he has previously performed with the orchestra.

His concerto was no big surprise: Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, surely the most performed and recorded guitar concerto of all time. While not presenting new insights, he gave a confident and big-hearted account of this familiar favourite. But how many people actually know its fast outer movements?

There was the intimate feeling of chamber music as Loh worked well with the orchestra, which relied mostly on strings and woodwinds in its narrative. Whether strumming out chords or negotiating tricky passage work, Loh was on top of his game. In the famous Adagio, he first accompanied Elaine Yeo’s sensuous cor anglais solo and then ventured out on his own. His sonorous mastery of the guitar’s lower registers was also a delight, sounding like some baritone majo (or Spanish gentleman) in love.  

The finale that followed erupted with festive colour, helped by the brass, especially the trumpets. Prolonged applause meant an encore, with Paraguayan guitarist-composer Agustin Barrios Mangore’s Waltz in G major (Op.8 No.4) being Loh’s perfect icing on the cake.

To balance the familiarity of Rodrigo, the concert led by SSO Associate Conductor Joshua Tan included two less familiar works. Opening the evening was Mendelssohn’s Die Schöne Melusine Overture, programme music on the legend of a two-tailed mermaid falling in love. Intricate woodwind passages and weepy strings painted a watery realm for an ill-fated romance to blossom, and eventually expire beneath the waves.

Max Reger’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart, receiving its Singapore premiere, concluded the concert. The German composer, front-liner of the “back-to-Bach movement”, was responsible for some impossibly turgid pot-boilers, but this was thankfully not one of those. Based on the 1^st movement theme from  Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A major (K.331, the one with the Turkish Rondo), the variations were well-crafted but difficult to pull off.

One might regard this as an expanded version of Brahms’ Haydn Variations, as there were more than a few similarities. The theme itself was plainly stated, with excellent woodwinds to thank again, but the variations got increasingly florid while maintaining a basic outline.

Kudos go to both conductor and orchestra for keeping the variations tautly strung, without allowing instrumental ornaments and details to complicate matters. There were even stretches of Straussian opulence and beauty, all coming before the massive fugal finale and the theme’s glorious re-entry. This could have been one big contrapuntal bore, but it simply was not to be.

Concert photographs by the kind courtesy of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

CD Review (The Straits Times, September 2019)

PIANO BOOK
LANG LANG, Piano
Deutsche Grammophon 479 8109 1 / ***

In his latest album, Chinese piano phenom Lang Lang has gone back to basics, playing pieces he learnt as a child. There are some no-brainers which open this 72 minute anthology, such as J.S.Bach’s Prelude in C major from Book One of The Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven’s immortal Für Elise. He plays these easy pieces with simplicity and finesse.

However in the very familiar 1^st movement of Mozart’s Sonata Facile in C major (K.545), he attempts some ornamentations which get annoying on repeated listening. Debussy’s Clair de lune comes across as being just too slow, while Tekla  Bardazewska-Baranowska’s The Maiden’s Prayer sounds banal whoever is playing. Surely, Mozart’s Variations on Ah, vous dirai-je Maman (Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) is beyond the technique of piano beginners, as is Mendelssohn’s Spinning Song and Debussy’s Gradus Ad Parnassum (Children’s Corner Suite).

Surely he would not have known of pieces by Max Richter, Yann Tiersen or Ryuichi Sakamoto growing up in Shenyang, but the Japanese film composer’s Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence receives a grandstanding rendition.

The Super Deluxe edition of this album runs onto two discs and includes a handsome hardcover book of scores and personal insights, with some 29 pieces in all. This is not a terrible album, but one cannot help feel it could have been much better.

DING YI CHINESE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL / Ding Yi Music Company et al / Review

DING YI CHINESE CHAMBER 
MUSIC FESTIVAL 2019
3peoplemusic / Tang Family Music Ensemble
Ding Yi Music Company
Esplanade Recital Studio
Saturday & Sunday 
(14 & 15 September 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 September 2019 with the title "A great variety of Chinese chamber music".

Trust Ding Yi Music Company to preach the gospel of Chinese instrumental music by organising its own international chamber music festival. Now in its fourth edition, the Ding Yi Chamber Music Festival 2019 ran over three days, featuring ensembles from Canada, Taiwan and China.

The second and third evenings showcased two very different groups, confirming that traditional Chinese chamber music is more heterogeneous than one imagined. 3Peoplemusic, a Taiwanese trio of Jen Chung (dizi), Kuo Min-chin (guzheng) and Pan I-tung (zhongruan), performed original compositions and arrangements that had a popular and upbeat feel.

Dizi and xiao carried carried the melodic interest, with guzheng and zhongruan providing accompaniment and counter-melodies. The strummed ruan oftrn simulated a guitar’s rhythmic and percussive thrust. In Luxury and Dissipation, a sense of improvisation presided over a ground bass that relived happy revelry on Chinese new year’s eve.  

Popular melodies like Molihua and Jackdaws Playing In The Water were woven into the fabric of Chung’s Slowly Rowing On Jasmine Waves and Kuo’s Three Ducks Communing. The most modern piece was Pan’s Ink Immersion, where each instrument posed as actors in a play with soliloquys of their own.

Three members of Ding Yi Music Company and conductor Quek Ling Kiong joined the threesome in Chua Jon Lin’s Flowers, a brief work stringing together motifs from 15 flower-inspired songs into a garland. 3peoplemusic’s encore was Taiwanese hit Tian Hei Hei (Dark Sky), styled in its own inimitable way.  

The festival was rounded up by Shanghai’s Tang Family Music Ensemble. With a performing tradition spanning eight generations, its seven members included four siblings in their seventies and eighties. Jiangnan shizhu (silk and bamboo music), involving bowed and plucked strings (silk) and blown dizi and sheng (bamboo), was their speciality.

There is much satisfaction to be had in heterophony, with different instruments playing in unison but coloured by distinct timbres. In the traditional Fan Wan Gong and Auspicious Cloud, melodic lines stood out with clarity and vividness. In two pieces based on the classic Old Six Beats, an upping in tempo also meant more elaborate ornamentations.

Elder spokesperson of the Tang clan, Tang Liang Xing brought out a surfeit of emotions on his pipa in Thinking Of An Old Friend and Drunk. In concertante works, sheng soloist Weng Zhen Fa waxed lyrical in Yan Haideng’s Tunes Of Shanxi Opera, while dizi soloist Zhan Yong Ming was joined by his student Ng Hsien Han in the double concerto Winds Of Affinity by Wang Chenwei. These were accompanied by Ding Yi’s ensemble conducted by Quek Ling Kiong.     

Two of Jiangnan’s most famous melodies, Xing Jie (Walking The Street) and Huan Le Ge (Song Of Joy) closed the colourful evening. The ensemble was joined by guests from the visiting groups and winners of the National Chinese Music Competition. Needless to add, the response was nothing short of overwhelming.   

STEPHEN HOUGH. EGYPTIAN PIANO CONCERTO / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

STEPHEN HOUGH. 
EGYPTIAN PIANO CONCERTO
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Friday (13 September 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times with the title" "Pianist Stephen Hough delivers a French feast".

Under the baton of Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Litton, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra performed an all-French programme opening with Hector Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture. Not written as a prelude to any opera or play, this was an out-and-out orchestral showpiece quoting themes from the opera Benvenuto Cellini that highlighted both ensemble and solo prowess.

After a slickly delivered introduction, the lot fell to Elaine Yeo’s cor anglais, which sang a plaintive melody with true pathos. Italian sunshine and drama filled the work’s animated pages, and it was with general pinpoint articulation and brilliant brass that began the evening on a high note.

The concert’s selling point was celebrated British pianist Stephen Hough’s return in one of his favourite party pieces, Camille Saint-Saëns’ Fifth Piano Concerto also nicknamed the “Egyptian Concerto”. Incidentally, he made his Singapore debut with this same work way back in 1986. Except for the central movement which quotes a Nubian song, there was little African to be had.

From the outset, it was French gaiety that reigned. But far from being the froth and fluff, Hough’s fingers of scintillation were tempered with steel. The filigree so key to Saint-Saëns’ keyboard writing was never submerged by the orchestra’s exertions, and it was clear this was no traipse in the Tuileries.   

The slow movement’s exoticism was delightfully overdone, the piano crafting piquant tinkling bell sounds. With the help of percussion, the wafting aromas went beyond Cairo to reach even Batavia. The toccata-like maneuvers of the finale, supposedly mimicking spinning turbines of a steamship, were a tour de force of velocity. With soloist and orchestra charging headlong at full speed, there could only be one result:  roars of approval from a clearly enthused audience.    

As an encore, Hough made the splendid gesture of sharing centrestage with SSO Co-Concertmaster Lynnette Seah, the orchestra’s longest serving player who retires later this year, in Elgar’s Salut d’Amour. Her tone was sumptuous, and the accompaniment classy and refined, after which Hough added Debussy’s Clair de lune, which was simply a treat.

The orchestra completed the evening with Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D minor. Franck was a key French establishment figure despite being born in Belgium and having a Germanic musical outlook. The opening to his symphony would have reminded one of Wagner and Liszt (his tone poem Les Preludes in particular), and the orchestra responded with a reading of taut objectivity.

Strings were sounding resolute yet capable of suppleness in the outer movements, while string pizzicatos, harp and cor anglais (Elaine Yeo again) set the right mood for the soothing slow movement. The finale was an ecstatically driven ride, with conductor Litton making frequent small leaps on the podium. The symphony’s triumphant close belonged to the brass, hitting the glory notes with fearless aplomb. So how do an English pianist, American conductor and Singaporean orchestra fare in French music? Very well indeed.  

CD Review (The Straits Times, September 2019)

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC
AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM 2018
Danacord 839 / *****

There is a distinct focus on French music in last year’s selections from the world-renowned festival held in North Germany, highlights works from the far-reaching peripheries of the piano repertoire. Like the gusty North Sea air that envelopes the festival town of Husum, freshness distinguishes  performances of pieces by Gabriel Dupont, Louis Vierne, Reynaldo Hahn, Alkan and Debussy. 

Faintly familiar strains come in the opening track from Debussy’s early and little-known Ballade, played by young German pianist Fabian Müller. Despite being supposedly Slavic in influence, this piece however inhabits the aesthete of the French belle epoque.

The real discovery are two pieces from Dupont’s cycle La maison dans les dunes (The House on the Dunes). Entitled On the Dunes One Clear Morning and Swells, these are impressionist and hauntingly beautiful from the German Severin von Eckardstein’s fingers. Despite his French-sounding name, Jean Louis Nicodé was actually Prussian. Two of his miniatures, Repentence and Remembrance from A Life Of Love bear the influences of Schumann, lovingly realised by British pianist Simon Callaghan.

Also to be heard are shorter pieces by Pancho Vladigerov, Valery Arzumanov, Leonid Desyatnikov, Robert Fuchs, Anton Arensky, Gabriel Grovlez and transcriptions of Rachmaninov and Piazzolla. The pianists represented are as diverse as Muza Rubackyte (Lithuania), Etsuko Hirose (Japan), Lukas Geniusas (Russia), Ingrid Marsoner (Austria), Sina Kloke (Germany) and Antonio Pompa-Baldi (Italy). How’s that for sheer variety? As they say, vivé la difference!    

SINGAPORE CHINESE ORCHESTRA ON TOUR Berlin Concert / Review

SINGAPORE CHINESE ORCHESTRA ON TOUR
Berlin Konzerthaus Gendarmenmarkt
Saturday (31 August 2019)

This review was published by The Straits Times on 2 September 2019 with the title "Singapore Chinese Orchestra's European tour de force".

Almost 19 years ago, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra made its Berlin debut at the historic Konzerthaus Gendarmenmarkt. This year was the turn of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO) conducted by Yeh Tsung, in the first concert of its four-city European tour. On its programme included four works representing the unique sound world that is Chinese and Nanyang music.

Nanyang music was a genre promulgated by the SCO and Music Director Yeh, conceived to encompass specific subjects, flavours and idioms of Southeast Asia. Opening the concert was the symphonic poem Krakatoa by Wong Kahchun, presently the Chief Conductor of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra.

Originally written for wind band, its sound textures translated very well on Chinese instruments. Dizis and percussion playing a modal tune conjured the tranquil mood of Javanese slumber before the violence of volcanic eruption, generating abrupt and startling contrasts. Suonas strategically placed high up at the back of the circle also created the effect of stereophony, contributing to the work’s raw and tumultuous impact.

Winner of the 2015 Singapore International Competition for Chinese Orchestral Composition, Hong Kong composer Gordon Fung Dic-Lun’s Arise, You Lion Of Glory provided another vista to Nanyang music. Its subject was the life cycle of the lion dance of local Chinese celebrations. Splendidly coiffed SCO pipa principal Yu Jia was at her extroverted best, portraying the lion’s stirring, passionate moves aided and abetted by rhythmic percussion, all the way to its eventual demise. The quiet and spiritual close of the work was accompanied by tinkling sounds of Tibetan prayer bowls. 

More familiar was Chen Gang and He Zhanhao’s Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto, undoubtedly China’s greatest compositional export. London-based Singaporean violinist Kam Ning wrung out all the pathos possible from the rhapsodic tale of Liang Zhu, the Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet. Her duet with cellist Xu Zhong provided tender moments which tugged on the heart strings. The encore was Fritz Kreisler’s Tambourin Chinois, typical Viennese chinoiserie but made to sound totally charming.

The fourth major work was Yellow Earth, an early work by Tan Dun, arguably the most famous living Chinese composer today. Its four movements depicted the parched, rugged landscapes and raucous celebrations of the Chinese outback. Exploiting the full range of instrumental capabilities, the orchestra provided a tour de force of virtuosic and cohesive playing.

As if to further showcase the orchestra’s wide-ranging versatility, it also took on the music of J.S.Bach. The famous Air On G String sounded quaintly idiomatic with yangqin replacing the harpsichord, and the melody tenderly carried on sheng, gaohu and dizi.

Chatty and engaging, Yeh clearly had the audience eating from his hands. Two encores of Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance in G minor (Op.46 No.8) and the Gavotte from Bach’s Suite No.3 had listeners in raptures and on their feet. Judging from the response, this concert was both a musical and cross-cultural triumph. SCO continues on its tour with further concerts in Prague, Imola (Italy) and Athens.

A Berlin standing ovation for the 

Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

A proud moment for Singapore.

SCO musicians with Chairman Mr Ng

& Deputy Chairman Mr Wu post concert.

SCO musicians Foong Chui San (zhongruan),

Tang Jia (cello), Huang Ting-Yu (cello)

& Cheng Tzu Ting (zhongruan).