NIGHT OF THE SAXOPHONE / AZARIAH TAN & YANG SHUXIANG Recitals / Review

NIGHT OF THE SAXOPHONE

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Thursday (19 August 2021)

 

AZARIAH TAN Piano Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Friday (20 August 2021)

 

YANG SHUXIANG Violin Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (21 August 2021) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 August 2021 with the title "Homegrown talents shine in saxophone, piano and violin".

 

Whether now is a good time to be a young professional musician is debatable. While competition for performance opportunities is stiff due to sheer numbers of homegrown talents, the dearth of visiting overseas artists has also meant that locals get a better chance to be heard. One thing is certain: many of Singapore’s young soloists are excellent and often comparable with those of international standing.

Photo: Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Aloysius Lim

 

A shining example is saxophonist Samuel Phua, recent graduate from Finland’s Sibelius Academy, who performed the Saxophone Concerto of Russian composer Alexander Glazunov with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra led by music director Hans Graf. Not only did he have the requisite expertise to overcome the single-movement work’s technical hurdles, his alto saxophone’s creamy smooth tone also oozed charm and seductiveness.

 

Whether in lyrical passages or young composer Jonathan Shin’s tricky cadenza specially written for this performance, Phua was spot on in his execution. As if further proof of prowess were needed, the encore of Gershwin’s Promenade, arranged by SSO librarian Avik Chari, was stylish swagger personified.

 

The balance of the concert illustrated Mozart’s genius in two contrasting serenades. Serenata Notturno and A Musical Joke were perfect examples how to properly craft or ruin a composition respectively. The former was taken perfectly straight, while the latter played strictly for laughs, and one admits it takes true skill to make deliberately music sound bad.

 

On two consecutive evenings presented by the Kris Foundation, pianist Azariah Tan performed a solo recital as well as partnered violinist Yang Shuxiang. In the recital, two early Romantic sonatas by Chopin and Schubert were coupled to gripping effect. Both composers had led tragically short lives, prematurely curtailed by infectious diseases.

Photo: Kris Foundation / Lisa Peh

 

In the tuberculous Chopin’s Third Sonata, Tan found the right balance of tortured self-reflection and outright passion, evidenced in the nocturne-like slow movement and tumultuous finale. Even better was his journey through the syphilitic Schubert’s sprawling Sonata in A major (D.959), a slow burn that captured world-weariness in the most lyrical way possible. Through his ten fingers, Tan became a vivid storyteller.       

Photo: Kris Foundation / Lisa Peh

 

Heart-on-sleeve expressiveness defined Yang in his account of three Austro-German violin sonatas. The brief diversion that was Hindemith’s Sonata (Op.11 No.1) was merely a prelude to Schubert’s Grand Duo in A major (D.574), where its sheer congeniality and melodiousness could just melt hearts. This was chamber music at its most intimate, the give and take between violinist and pianist being close to perfection.

Photo: Kris Foundation / Lisa Peh

 

And when one thought the passion quotient had been exhausted, then came Richard Strauss’ Violin Sonata, a concerto-like romp through the full gamut of emotions. Yang’s brawny string tone and faultless intonation, allied with natural showmanship, made his performance a truly memorable one. The last three evenings proved that one does not need to leave our shores to witness greatness of musical artistry. 

 

ALBERT TIU PLAYS CHOPIN / Orchestra of the Music Makers / Review

ALBERT TIU PLAYS CHOPIN

Orchestra of the Music Makers

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (22 August 2021)

 

The Covid pandemic has altered concert life in Singapore in many ways. While audience numbers are strictly limited, with only vaccinated and those tested negative for Covid admitted, ensemble sizes have also been reduced, with not more than 30 performers on stage. Performers travelling from overseas are subject to quarantine, which caused the change of programme in this concert by the Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) led by its Music Director Chan Tze Law.

 

Cellist Qin Li-Wei was to have performed the solo part in Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, but recent changes to stay-at-home notices meant that he had to miss this concert. No worries as fellow Conservatory colleague pianist Albert Tiu gamely stepped in to perform Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto, memorising it within three weeks of the concert date.

 

Tiu is the finest performer of Romantic piano music in Singapore bar none. In Chopin, his artistry encompassed every facet of early Romantic piano writing – cantabile passages inspired by bel canto singing and florid ornamentations, gestures of impetuosity in fantastic flourishes – all came together in a heady mix. This was a virtuoso concerto, written as Chopin’s calling card, but was also exquisite chamber music writ large. This was no better illustrated in the nocturne-like Larghetto slow movement, where discreet strings accompaniment and principal cellist James Ng playing a counter-melody to Tiu’s piano proved truly sublime.   

 

With the exclusion of all blown instruments (double woodwinds, horns, trumpet and trombone), the string arrangement adapted from Chopin’s string quintet version worked extremely well. One hardly missed winds in the big tuttis, and during the climatic pause in the finale, when the French horn’s call was substituted by Wang Dandan’s solo viola, she stood up to be counted. The scintillating end was greeted with appreciative applause, and the encore was a reprise of those precious final minutes from the Larghetto. Just perfect.

 

The programme’s second half was devoted to a string orchestra arrangement of Schubert’s String Quartet in D minor (D.810), better known as Death and the Maiden. Mahler himself penned a version of his own, but the version heard this evening was a rearrangement of an arrangement. Whatever the differences may be, it worked very well too. What strikes the listener is the sheer sumptuousness of the string sonorities, where the original group of four is multiplied manifold (up to 29 players in total). In this arrangement, there was division of labour too, with concertmaster Zhao Tian’s violin and James Ng’s cello providing solos that stood apart from the rest.

 

The omission of exposition repeat for the first movement was astute and well-founded, lending a tautness to the music’s narrative flow. The second movement’s variations on the lied Das Tod und das Mädchen (the subject being the piano introduction of the eponymous song, and not the song itself) were the highlight of the performance, with the ensemble responding magnificently to each change of dynamics. The ensuing Scherzo was decidedly short-winded but well handled before the finale’s swirling tarantella rhythm provided a sweeping close to an energised performance which can only be a product of youth and vitality. One cannot imagine another group of strings other than the national orchestra’s that could have conjured a reading of such vivaciousness and immediacy.

 

OMM’s next concert on 1 October at the same venue will be a showcase of the orchestra’s winds, brass and percussion. One can hardly wait. 

A FEW WORDS WITH SINGAPOREAN PIANIST MAY PHANG

A FEW WORDS WITH 

SINGAPOREAN PIANIST MAY PHANG

 

The name of MAY PHANG may not be as familiar with music lovers in Singapore as she ought to be. As a rising piano virtuoso pursuing overseas studies during the 1990s, she performed Tchaikovky’s First Piano Concerto with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and was invited to give a solo recital at the Singapore Arts Festival as part of its Homecoming Series. 

Now based in Indiana, USA where she is Professor of Piano at DePauw University, she has just released a CD recording of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. This is a musical landmark, as she is the first Singaporean pianist to record this milestone of the keyboard repertoire.  

Pianomania's review of the CD may be found here:

pianomania: BEETHOVEN Diabelli Variations / May Phang / CD Review (pianofortephilia.blogspot.com) 

Pianomania has a few words with this interesting artist, who not only masters the classics but also has a keen interest in rarities and byways of the piano repertoire.

 

 

2020 was an extraordinary year, not just because of the Covid pandemic but it marked the 250^th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). Was your latest CD recording, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations issued on the Centaur record label, inspired by that premise?

 

It happened that way by coincidence. Covid just came on top of that.

 

 

Anton Diabelli (1781-1858), better known as a publisher of music, lives on because of Beethoven’s cunning composition. The subject was a quite trivial, even silly waltz, was it not?

 

Most sources do say that the waltz is banal, but as explained in my CD liner notes, I somehow find it quite interesting.  Waltzes by nature are not meant to be profound, and this very short one packs a punch in so many ways.  There are so many possibilities to faithfully realize what’s indicated in the score, yet the effects could be quite diverse. The same cannot be said of many other themes in the piano variation literature!

 

 

A work from Beethoven’s “late period”, he employed an encyclopaedic knowledge of  keyboard technique and expression to craft a vast array of moods and emotions in these variations. Do you have any favourite variations or sequences, ones which specially resound with you?

 

There are many, for very different reasons. Some you love for the musical expression, some for their witty brevity, their brilliance of construction, their unusual qualities, the technical and other challenges they pose.  Ultimately, I think it is how nothing is what it at first appears to be.  For example, what may sound simple may not be so. There are layers to be uncovered. That is what I love about the entire work.

 

 

Comedy and wit abound in some of these, including the deliberate quote from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni in Var.22, or more subtly by closing the monumental work with a seemingly anti-climactic minuet following the mighty fugue. What does Beethoven’s idea of humour mean to you?   

 

The sturm und drang part of Beethoven is often emphasised, and his most famous compositions - the Fifth Symphony, the Moonlight and Pathetique Sonatas - further espouse that.  I do not believe Beethoven to be the curmudgeon he appeared to be.  Humour exists in many forms – plain funny, amusing, comedic, witty, sarcastic, allegorical, tongue-in-cheek, parodic, paradoxical, innocent,  or child-like.  Sometimes, it also coexists with despair and disappointment, perhaps as a disguise or foil. Humour is multi-dimensional, the more so the greater the adversities a person has had to experience in life.  That is what Beethoven’s use of humour in this work means to me.

 

 

You also have some original artwork on the cover of the CD booklet. Tell us more.

 

I did create the artwork and designed the entire cover, but it was not a painting per se, but a digital manipulation. Since you show an interest, it is an image of the Hafner Haus in Mödling, outside Vienna, where Beethoven resided in the summers of 1818 and 1819, and composed the Diabelli Variations. I knew that Beethoven lived upstairs, but that is why I can only be downstairs. As close as I can get without disturbing him. 

 

Your earlier CD recording, Travels Through Time (released in 2013) is notable for its catholic choice of repertoire. It included Wagner and Stephen Foster transcriptions, and works by Golden-Age pianists Ossip Gabrilowitsch and Misha Levitzki. Your hunger for rarities and the off-beat is truly admirable. What fuels your interest in music’s less well-trodden paths?

 

The piano repertoire, already enormous, continues to expand, with new music being written, and older, lesser known pieces being unearthed or re-discovered. What drives me is more the compunction to want to explore and experience as much of the piano repertoire as possible, rather than having any specific plan of going down less-trodden paths, or trying to be novel in some way.

 

 

What are your some future plans in the spheres of performance and recording?

 

I wish I had the resources to perform and record more frequently. I am very excited about launching my very first concert series this year “Travels with May Phang”. I also enjoy working with composers and plan to collaborate more and commission in the near future.

 

May Phang’s Centaur recording of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations is available online at:

 

Physical album at Arkiv Music:

https://www.arkivmusic.com/products/beethoven-diabelli-variations-phang-863786 

 

Digital album download at: iTunes and Amazon

 

Online streaming at: Spotify and Apple Music

BEETHOVEN Diabelli Variations / May Phang / CD Review

BEETHOVEN Diabelli Variations

MAY PHANG, Piano

Centaur CRC 3882

TT: 62’45”

 

It had to be recorded sometime by a Singaporean, and that wasn’t Melvyn Tan. The honour goes instead to a former Ong Lip Tat pupil, May Phang who is presently domiciled in Greencastle, Indiana where she is a piano professor at DePauw University.

 

The story of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations is worth repeating. The publisher Anton Diabelli had written a waltz-like ditty in 1819 and invited the Who’s Who of Vienna’s musical society to contribute a variation each. People who responded included Czerny, Hummel, Schubert, the pre-teen Liszt and many others who have long been forgotten. The irascible Beethoven dismissed the idea out of hand but later changed his mind by writing 33 variations including a terrific fugue near the end. His masterpiece, completed in 1823, is to the early Romantic era what J.S.Bach’s Goldberg Variations was to the Baroque.

 

Running over an hour, Phang’s interpretation is one of the most expansive in the catalogue. Most performances take between 50 to 53 minutes (Richter at 50’, Staier at 51’, Brendel and Paul Lewis at 52’, and Igor Levit at 53’) although there are some outliers (Anda sprints at 38’ but does not observe all repeats, while Richter-Haaser jogs at 47’). The venerated Claudio Arrau clocks in at 55’, but that’s still seven minutes short of Phang.

 

Hers is at the other end of the spectrum, where the likes of Anatol Ugorsky (61’ on Deutsche Grammophon) and most famously Piotr Anderszewski (63’ on Virgin Classics) habitate. The expansiveness comes mostly in the slow variations (notably Nos.14, 20, 24 or Fughetta, 29 through to the end save the busy fugue of No.32). Beethoven is at his most sober in No.31’s Largo, molto espressivo, which is positively dreamy and almost improvisatory at a leisurely pace. Phang takes 5’24”, Ugorski 6’02” while Anderszewski tops it at 6’33”, all of whom play repeats.

 

It is the Tempo di Minuetto (No.33), the worthy final peroration where Beethoven adds the directive moderato ma non tirarsi dietro / aber nicht schleppend (moderate but do not drag). Here, Phang really takes her time at 5’16” compared with Ugorski’s 5’06” and Anderszewski’s surprisingly short-winded 3’52”. And yet it does not feel she is dragging.

    

Playing this disc repeatedly has been a pleasure, and nowhere does Phang’s view of the work’s architecture and inherent longeurs come across as protracted, nor is there deliberate slowness for profundity’s sake. Her technique stands up well to scrutiny, and she more than copes with Beethoven’s quixotic moods shifts and razor-sharp wit, which make this journey well worth making. The recorded sound is richly resonant but not over-bright. Beethoven has been well served, and listeners (Singaporeans or otherwise) will not be disappointed.

 

 

May Phang’s Centaur recording of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations is available online at:

 

Physical album at Arkiv Music:

https://www.arkivmusic.com/products/beethoven-diabelli-variations-phang-863786 

Digital album download at: iTunes and Amazon

Online streaming at: Spotify and Apple Music

 

PRESIDENT'S YOUNG PERFORMERS CONCERT 2021 / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

PRESIDENT’S YOUNG PERFORMERS CONCERT

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (6 August 2021)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 August 2021

 

The Covid pandemic has not been kind to the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s annual President’s Young Performers Concert. Last year, the event was reduced to an online presence without a live audience. This year, the programme was substantially altered to meet the heightened alert’s performing restrictions. Mozart’s Ninth Piano Concerto (with Pualina Lim) had to be deferred as the score included two oboes and two horns.

 

Still on the programme, however, was harpist Charmaine Teo performing Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane (Sacred and Profane Dances), employing only strings as accompaniment. Exuding the elegance of the French Belle Époque, Teo’s nimble fingers and consummate musicianship gave the work the shine it deserved.

 

The slower opening dance’s pentatonic melody and pastoral character had gracefulness in abundance, merging almost imperceptibly with the closing dance’s scintillating spell. There was nothing profane about the latter, but had an earthy and liberated quality by comparison with what came before. The loud plaudits accorded to Teo yielded an inspirational encore: a short but heartfelt harp transcription of the pop song You Raise Me Up.     

 

Debussy’s staple of the harp repertoire was sandwiched by two Russian works for strings, led from memory by Joshua Tan, who was until July the orchestra’s Associate Conductor. Anton Arensky’s Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky, once rather popular but not often heard these days, opened the concert. It was based on Tchaikovsky’s song Legend: Crown Of Thorns, characterised by its typically Slavic and melancholic mood.

 

The work’s seven short variations were inventive, covering a range of styles that required the ensemble to adapt and respond at short notice. One variation saw violas and cellos singing the theme while violins negotiated tricky accompanying runs, before the entire ensemble switching into major mode, thus altering the music’s overall countenance.

 

Much is expected from SSO’s fabled strings, and the players did not disappoint. The performance was incisively delivered while filled with spirit and verve. The final variation was a direct tribute to Tchaikovsky himself, scored in the manner as his tear-jerking Andante cantabile, which made all the sense given the 80-minute-long concert’s closing work.    

 

Tchaikovsky’s Serenade For Strings is so well-known that it can easily be tainted with a bored familiarity. Not so on this occasion as Tan’s charges leapt headlong into its opening measures, with richness and resonance at the outset. Even in the first movement’s busy counterpoint, there was clarity in the details and prestidigitation.

 

The second movement’s waltz had genuine lilt, with sentimentality and precision poised in a fine balance, while the most sublime moments came in the elegaic slow movement. Its gently rising theme and ensuing melody from the violins can only be described as uplifting, before the rollicking finale brought down the house. The audience may have been small, but the applause was raucous and real.  

 

You can vote for the Singapore Symphony Orchestra as Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year here:

 

www.gramophone.co.uk/awards/gramophone-classical-music-awards-2021 

Gramophone's Orchestra of the Year Award 2021 | Gramophone