COMPOSIUM 2021
PRIZEWINNERS CONCERT
Ding Yi Music Company
Esplanade Recital Studio
Sunday (19 December 2021)
A perfect pre-Christmas weekend of Chinese music was completed with the Prizewinners Concert of Composium, Singapore’s international composition competition for Chinese chamber music. Organised by Ding Yi Music Company, this composer’s festival is now in its fourth edition. Nine prize-winning works were selected from a field of 88 works by composers from eight countries. Dominating the victors was China with seven members, and there were also singleton finalists from Singapore and Taiwan.
Contemporary Chinese chamber music is a relatively new concept, despite the fact that traditional Chinese music essentially began as chamber music. The notion of chamber music for Chinese instruments is to distinguish it from Chinese orchestral composition, which has already been served by a separate competition organised by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. Whatever these distinctions may be, both organisations have set an important precedent in promoting Chinese instrumental music outside of mainland China, and this is something our nation can be very proud of.
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| Conductor Quek Ling Kiong and the Dings, awarded to first prize-winners. |
This year’s competition was expanded to include three separate groups for entries, Category B1 and B2 covering works inspired by life sentiments (and experiences), and Category A with works inspired by Chinese festivals and customs. Three works from each category were performed this evening, and judged remotely by a panel of internationally distinguised composers and musicians from the Asia-Pacific sphere. Doing the honours were ensembles from the Ding Yi Music Company led with missionary zeal by the indefatigable Quek Ling Kiong.
Category B1 opened the concert with works scored for huqin, guzheng, pipa, dizi, cello and percussion (six players). With this instrumental combination in mind, there was no great surprise that composers would be channeling their inner Takemitsu, and so it proved. The first piece by Zhang Yi Meng (China), Ode On The Spring, was impressionist in colour and spirit, opening quietly and mysteriously with dizi solo. Hints of a nascent season coming to being - in the form of rhythm and dance - emerge and then recede. Shards of melody from erhu, cello and dizi tease the ear, but there is no full-blown dance as its premise is the promise of spring.
Sitting Together Among The Clouds by Liu Peng (China) takes on a more modern and abstract idiom, with highly effective use of timbral colour. Dizi and vibraphone greet listeners in this pointillist canvas, with stasis being the mainstay. There is a very slow and gradual crescendo, punctuated by erhu bird calls and guzheng drones, and one is left with the illusion of suspension of gravity, time and space.
The Covid pandemic was the inspiration for Memory by Xie Qin Wei (China), a work which attempted to juxtapose earthshaking events (sudden outbursts) with the normality of life (rhythms of a dance). The ubiquitous dizi and drum are heard on the outset, and several motifs are worked upon. While the dance signifies that life goes on despite adversities, darker emotions like angst, anxiety and fear are stirred in its louder sections.
Next was Category B2 works, written for huqin, yangqin, liuqin, sheng and percussion, also for six players but eliciting quite different timbres from the earlier category. Ding Jian Han (Singapore), who will surely win the Best Young Singaporean Composer Award, offered Lu(nox) as his response to the current pandemic. Easily the most modern sounding and atonal work on show, it had a violent opening followed by seemingly random outbursts of sound. He really knows how to get under one’s skin, aided by Bartok pizzicatos (plucked with extreme force) from the bass and the sheng’s eerie cries. With ear-piercing eructations guaranteed to sow uncertainty, doubt and fear, he had certainly succeeded beyond all measure, if this were his intention.
More soothing and engaging was He Jia Ning (China) in Ocean Breath, not so much a descriptive seascape like Debussy’s La Mer but a work that dwells on emotions the ocean evokes in one’s consciousness. A quiet opening, and the yangqin traipses over bass murmurs. Huqins bring sadness and past memories, while the reassuring sheng sings of nostalgia. Over gently pulsing ostinatos, thoughts are revived and brought into the open. Some of these linger but others are washed away by the ebb and flow.
Zhang Zhi Liang (China) from Sichuan has a very similar name to mine, so I was curious what to make of Tumbleweed. Supposedly inspired by his pet collie’s fur-balls blown by a breeze, this modernistic work is about motion and stasis, represented by its miniscule crescendos and decrescendos. Erhu portamenti and tremolos, sheng shrieks and yangqin microtones all paint a desolate landscape populated by the constant buzz and hum of insects (fleas?). He referred to it as an uplifting work, so I guess he also has a sense of humour.
Finally, Category A compositions were scored for 15-member orchestra, encompassing instruments previously listed and more, hence widening the scope of sonorities to be heard. The first work, Twinkling Of Bonfire Night by Zhou Jia Ying (China) was the most traditional work on show, a dance celebration of the Yi tribe which populates the provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou. After opening with a short guan solo, its colourfully scored dances alternate between slow and fast sequences, culminating in a episode of foot-stamping by all musicians. Not dissimilar to the famous Dance of the Yao which audiences are familiar with, I suspect that this work will be performed the most. Predictably, it also won the live Audience Award.
It appears that Liu Yu Hui (China) conceived his Rhythm Of Lv Opera IV: New Year Pictures as part of an ongoing cycle inspired by Chinese opera. In a pre-recorded video segment, he shared three hand-drawn pictures (of goldfish, deities and the iconic Lunar New Year baby) commonly found in Chinese homes and altars during the festive period. Instead of three separate movements, these were merged into a rowdily colourful work which most skilfully exploited the full gamut of instruments. Festive drumming was de rigeuer and episodes of solo playing reminiscent of Beijing opera rendered this a most raucous and evocative encounter of all. This really also makes one want to hear the other segments of his Lv Opera cycle.
Chilly Autumn With Misshapen Beauty Moon by Cheng Kuang-Chih (Taiwan) was most awkwardly titled, a terrible translation into English of the far more poetic Len Qiu Chan Yue in Chinese. Cold Autumn, Cruel Moon might just sum it up better, as huqin harmonics which greeted the work provided the chill of a misty and mysterious night. Was this the mid-Autumn festival or the Hungry Ghost Festival or even Halloween? The eerie soundscapes conjured up included a gong struck while immersed in a bucket of water, redolent of supernatural phenomena and befitting the best of haunted house movie effects.
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| Composer Liu Peng finds out he was awarded 1st prize for Category B1. |
The results of the Composium Competition were as follows:
Category B1
1st: Sitting Together Among The Clouds by Liu Peng (China)
2nd: Ode On The Spring by Zhang Yi Meng (China)
3rd: Memory by Xie Qin Wei (China)
Category B2
1st: Lu (Nox) by Ding Jian Han (Singapore)
2nd: Tumbleweed by Zhang Zhi Liang (China)
3rd: Ocean Breath by He Jia Ning (China)
Category A
1st: Rhythm Of Lv Opera IV: New Year Pictures by Liu Yu Hui (China)
2nd: Chilly Autumn With Misshapen Beauty Moon by Cheng Kuang-Chih (Taiwan)
3rd: Twinkling Of Bonfire Night by Zhou Jia Ying (China)
Most importantly, Composium by Ding Yi Music Company has cemented itself as a vital international platform for young composers to display their artistry and creative output. Hopefully these pieces will stand the test of time and reappear in the repertoire of Chinese chamber orchestras around the globe for years to come.
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