THE MODERN CHOPIN / POOM PROMMACHART, Piano / Review

THE MODERN CHOPIN

POOM PROMMACHART, Piano

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (29 January 2023)

 

What is the “Modern Chopin”? Was not the Poland-born and Paris-domiciled pianist-composer an early Romantic? And did the darling of the salon concert not die in 1849? Stereotypes of Chopin as a sickly, tuberculous and effete artist suffering for the love of his art and succumbing to a premature demise still abound. So how do our modern ears relate to the piano music of Frederic Chopin?

How should we view Chopin?
Delacroix's painting, a late 1840s daguerreotype
or Hadi Karimi's modern 3D rendering?

 

Young Thai pianist Poom Prommachart, once a student of Dang Thai Son (first ever Asian winner of the Chopin International Piano Competition, in 1980), provided many of the clues. One might mistake this artist as fashionista, ambassador for the Canadian luxury brand Kaimirra Tutan, to be more style than substance, but the proof of a pudding was in its eating.

 

One feared the worst when a signpost at the door listed Chopin’s 24 Preludes (Op.28) as lasting for 48 minutes. The rolled chords of the opening Prelude in C major (marked Agitato) were taken very leisurely, but that allowed each note to resonate longer, and when the next number in A minor (Lento) plodded by like a funereal dirge, one became almost certain of Poom’s intentions. When most are willing to spin out all 24 pieces as one indivisible whole, Poom instead regarded each piece as its own discrete and sparkling gem. With the audience heeded not to applaud between numbers, the succession of Preludes became all the more coherent.

 

Never has a work by Chopin displayed more heterogeneity in mood, harmonies, texture and tempi, yet held so well with some kind of spiritual “spatial and temporal glue”. It is the performer who holds the secret to that glue which eluded even the composer himself. Chopin only performed selections or small groups of Preludes, and never all 24 at one sitting. It was Poom’s singular vision that made this long sequence work. He had no need to gild the lilies in “simple” ones, as the numbers in E minor (No.4), B minor (No.6) and A major (No.7). And when virtuosity was called for, in F sharp minor (No.8), B flat minor (No.16) and the final D minor (No.24) for example, he unleashed all the weapons of his formidable arsenal.

 

More telling was the sheer beauty and poetry he brought out in F sharp major (No.13) and A flat major (No.17). And what of the famous D flat major (No.15), popularly known as the “Raindrop”, reliving the bad weather of Mallorca where Chopin and George Sand had made their retreat? With Poom, one was reminded not of acid rain but the pain of constant stabs to the heart, as a relationship breaks down irreversibly and irremediably. Raindrops were but a front for something deeper and darker.

 

The performance did not take 48 minutes, but rather closer to 36 minutes, which is about right. No performance of the Chopin Preludes has captivated this listener as much as this since the late-lamented Fou Tsong’s in the same hall in 1993, some thirty years ago.    

 

The recital’s second half belonged to Chopin’s Sonata No.3 in B minor (Op.58), a performance no less trenchant or absorbing. The first movement delighted in the dissonances of Chopin’s late period and through all this, the lyrical second subject was perfectly brought out. There can be no melody as exquisitely beautiful as this one. The exposition repeat was omitted, perhaps rightly so as to keep tautness to the proceedings. The etude-like Scherzo was whipped off effortlessly and it was ironically in the nocturne-like Largo where some concentration was lost. Nevertheless, the romping Rondo finale, with the ante upped each round, more brought the sonata to a thrilling end.   

 

As encores, Poom offered an improvisation on a Chinese song (Unending Love) to greet the Lunar New Year, and the most edge-of-the-seat version of Liszt’s La Campanella thought possible. And he had the cheek of declaring he had not enough practice. Most importantly, The Real Chopin made the audience listen to Chopin with new pairs of ears. 

This concert was presented by 

Tutan Entertainment 

with Piano Island Management.

AN EVENING WITH HONG KONG CHINESE ORCHESTRA / Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts / Review

AN EVENING WITH

HONG KONG CHINESE ORCHESTRA

Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (28 January 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 January 2023 with the title "Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra draws standing ovation."

 

It has been over four years since the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra last performed in Singapore. Led by Cultural Medallion recipient Yan Huichang, its Artistic Director since 1997 and Principal Conductor for Life, the orchestra’s return was close to a sellout house in this year Esplanade’s Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts. Its two-hour long concert revealed a versatility and virtuosity that has become synonymous with this ensemble.   

 

The sound of percussion opened Ng King-Pan’s The Chorale Of Spring, more a celebratory rather than ceremonial showpiece, which shared the rhythmic vitality and bounding energy as Stravinsky’s iconic ballet The Rite Of Spring. When the dagu, the most mammoth of all drums, is involved, something truly big is going down. This was followed by two movements from Peng Xiuwen’s Twelve Months Suite, contrasting a chamber-like intimacy and sentimentality with the exuberance of lively festivities.

Photo: Jack Yam / Esplanade

 

Photo: Jack Yam / Esplanade

Especially impressive was the inclusion of two vastly different concertante works. Well-known composer Zhao Jiping’s Pipa Concerto No.2 saw the orchestra’s pipa principal Zhang Ying as spectacular soloist. The single movement work in multiple linked parts opened with lushness and poetic beauty as the solo instrument found its way from lyricism to playfulness, and then prestidigitation associated with crisis and turmoil. There was a big tune at its climax with the orchestra’s famed ecologically-friendly gehus leading the way before receding to calm and quietude.  

 

Taiwanese composer Wang I-Yu’s Reeds had the orchestra’s soprano sheng player Chen Yi-Wei pitted against British organist Jonathan Scott on Esplanade’s Klais organ, an innovative work that sought a commonality between the millennia-old Chinese instrument with a modern Western electronic one.

 

It was not a mismatch given the astute scoring in the concert’s most modern sounding work. Beside the sheng's plangent oration and the organ's toccata-like maneuvers, there was a curious interlude which involved the drones and plucked twangs from Jew's harps scattered among the players. The work closed with all orchestral reeds joining in for one raucous high. 

 

Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun is a master of orchestral colour and sound effects as evident in the four movements of his Northwest Suite No.1. The rasping of cymbals rubbed against one another and the possibilities of the human voice opened this atmospheric work that celebrated the “yellow earth” landscape and peoples from Shaanxi, also conductor Yan’s home province.

 

Stark contrasts coloured the score, from breathtaking fanfares of a suona chorus, hyperactive percussion, a nocturne-like slow movement filled with underlying tension, to the constant perpetual motion of its fraught finale. With this, the orchestra trenchantly portrayed the toils and triumphs of human endeavour in a harsh environment.   

 

Several encores, including a medley of Chinese New Year favourites – with the god of fortune making a grand entrance - and one incorporating the popular Happy Birthday, had the audience, clapping, singing and finally rising to its feet. An evening with Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra was indeed an evening well spent. 

Photo: Jack Yam / Esplanade

Photo: Jack Yam / Esplanade

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION 2023 / Review

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

PIANO COMPETITION 2023

Grand Final (Professional category)

School of the Arts Concert Hall

Saturday (21 January 2023)

 

The Singapore International Piano Competition has come and gone, and barely a whimper was raised. Unlike the high profile Singapore International Violin Competition, organised by the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory last year and widely covered in the media, its piano counterpart was unheralded and mostly ignored by the concert-going public. The reason was simple: it was organised by Global International Musicians Association (GIMA) which has no local presence, instead operating remotely from Beijing, China. Despite not being sanctioned by Singapore’s National Arts Council, it nonetheless took place in earnest.  

Truly an august bench of jurors.

 

The competition’s website (sipc.sg) was a shambles with little or no practical information about attending (or the participants), however not everything was negative. The competition had an impressive jury of world-renowned piano pedagogues (Vardi, Kaplinsky, Slutsky, Tiu and Jinsang Lee will be known to competition anoraks even without their first names), and the young pianists taking part were on a whole very proficient if not yet revelatory artists.

 

There were only two Singaporeans in contention, both in the Junior category of the competition. Toby Tan Kai Rong, just 14, was the standout. In his preliminary round performance, the opening Bach Prelude and Fugue in G sharp minor displayed both clarity and colour, with no need for over-pedalling. In Liszt’s La Campanella, his playing was the very definition of tintinnabulation distinguished with feathery light runs. For the concluding Ravel Jeux d’eau, judicious pedalling became essential for that filigree of fluidity, which capped a satisfyingly nuanced performance. Out of 12 pianists, he would be advanced to the Final concerto round as the youngest finalist.   

 

The Professional Category would feature eight pianists, and I got to hear just three of them. For the semifinal recital of Alexander Lau (24, Hong Kong), there were only three persons in the audience: a mother, a boy about 8 years old and myself. Never has a competition audience been so severely outnumbered by jurors, hall stewards and competition officials.

 

Lau gave a very creditable showing in diverse repertoire which included Mozart’s Sonata in E flat (K.282, exhibiting some latitude in ornamentation), Alban Berg’s Sonata (a very coherent reading that communicated some existential crisis), Liszt’s Ballade No.2 (he clearly understands Lisztian virtuosity) and an impressive Scriabin set with a rapturous Sonata No.9 (the Black Mass) and the volatile Vers la flamme as its bookends. Only in the Scriabin Waltz in A flat (Op.38) was there some resort to banging. For his efforts, I was pleased he made the Concerto Final.

 

Time only permitted me to attend the concerto Final round of the Professional category. One way of ensuring that the fewest number of people come is to hold it on the eve of Chinese New Year. Thus there were no more than three dozen people (mostly overseas visitors) in the audience to witness three pianists performing concertos with the T’ang Quartet (Ng Yu Ying and Ang Chek Meng, violins, Jeremy Chiew, viola & Jamshid Saydikarimov, cello). In the absence of a symphony orchestra, the concertos were restricted to a narrow selection of Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin. So no Liszt, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov or Prokofiev this time around.

 

Alexander Lau gave a fluent and well-discipline account of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.17 in G major (K.453). His entries were clear and incisive, yet allowing fingerwork to “flow like oil”, a favourite expression of Amadeus himself. There were absolutely no technical issues and the short cadenza by Mozart himself sparkled. The slow movement was sensitively handled and the quartet responded alertly to his musings. The chirpy finale, whose main theme was supposedly mimicked by Mozart’s pet starling, was full of vitality and Lau’s very musical account of the variations was ebullience itself. The buffo element of the coda – delivered at a heady velocity - brought the work to an exciting close. Here was a very good start for the final.  

 

Wu Yifan (17, China), the youngest finalist, sports a nascent afro and looks more mature than his actual age. Exuding a super-confident air, his account of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3 in C minor (Op.37) showed he really meant business. Unafraid to let rip at vital moments, he was subtle enough to know when to pipe down and listen to the “orchestra”. Beethoven’s own cadenza, however, was given a bold and brash bashing about, and one wondered if Wu is drunk on his own virtuosity. The slow movement had its dramatic moments while the Rondo finale was given its due – a very good run and predictably emphatic end to the proceedings.   

 

Chen Xu (19, China) in Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.2 in F minor (Op.21) was arresting in his solo entry and he kept listeners rivetted from there onwards. His approach even made Chopin sound more modern than the year 1830 suggested, also bringing a heightened level of virtuosity in the first movement’s development. The nocturne-like Larghetto was delivered prettily with ornaments delicately spun with satin smoothness. Unfortunately the finale’s Krakowiak almost came undone, with untidy playing from the strings (most probably under-rehearsed) which also distracted Chen on his final approach. The coda was all messed up, which put paid to an otherwise buoyant account.

 

Toby Tan was the only
Singaporean prize-winner.

Jury deliberation did not take long. Toby Tan was awarded the 3^rd prize in the Junior category. The Professional category saw Wu Yifan claim top spot, with Chen Xu (2rd) and Alexander Lau (3^rd) followed closely behind. All these pianists have bright futures ahead of them, and the big question is to find themselves an audience in this all-too-distracted world of today.

1st Prize-winner Wu Yifan, seen with
Arie Vardi (Jury Chair), May Zhang (CEO, GIMA),
Wang Xiaohan (Artistic Director)
& Poon Chuifun (Executive Director)

 

The Singapore International Piano Competition has a long, long way to go before it can even come close to the best concours in Australasia, namely Hamamatsu, Sydney and Hong Kong. The city-state of Singapore needs to invest far more in its branding of international events that carries its name. If the violin competition can do it, there is no reason why the piano cannot attain similarly lofty heights.   

ANOTHER PIANO RECITAL NOT TO MISS: CON FUOCO by NICHOLAS HO on 31 January 2023

Here is another piano recital not to be missed, by homegrown Singaporean pianist NICHOLAS HO, known for his transcendental keyboard virtuosity. He was a student of Ong Lip Tat, Tedd Joselson, Edward Auer and Rank Dank, and has specialised in performing works of technical demands, including his original piano music.

The programme:

HAYDN Sonata in E minor

VLADIMIR HOROWITZ Four Pieces:

Waltz in F minor

Danse Excentrique 

Etude-fantaisie in E flat major

Fragment Douloureux

DICK LEE Yehenara

NICHOLAS HO 12 Etudes (World Premiere)

Tuesday, 31 January 2023

Victoria Concert Hall, 8 pm

You can purchase tickets here:

Nicholas Ho presents CON FUOCO [G] | SISTIC

MAHLER'S WUNDERHORN WITH HANS GRAF AND SUMI HWANG / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

This review was first published on Bachtrack on 24 January 2023 with the title "Heralding the Lunar New Year in Singapore".

 

Classical concerts are not usually associated with the coming of the Lunar New Year in Singapore, however the Singapore Symphony’s Music Director Hans Graf bucked the trend with an all Austro-German programme, one of excellent synergy and significant local geography.

 

Only 220 miles separate Richard Strauss’ Munich from Gustav Mahler’s Vienna, and just four years between their respective birth-dates. Their quite distinctive musical styles, however, made for a satisfyingly euphonious sitting. Strauss’ early tone-poem Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) from 1889 was an excellent starter, its vivid evocation of a dying man’s last ebbing breaths was well brought out by the orchestra.  

 

Amid a slow heaving pulse with strings bathed in a warm glow, solos from Evgueni Brokmiller’s flute and Pan Yun’s oboe stood out. Guest concertmaster Markus Tomasi’s violin also sang from the heart, but with a blow on the timpani, a titanic struggle of life and death ensued. This work now appears on a marvellous BIS recording conducted by previous music director Lan Shui, but live performances always have the edge on excitement.

 

Graf’s traversal of the music’s narrative was thrilling to say the least, culminating with that glorious five-note motif of redemptive force which seemed to conquer everything. One wonders whether its similarity to John Williams’ Superman theme was the Hollywood composer’s Freudian tribute to a mensch overcoming the fear of death or a Nietzschean act of uber-appropriation. At any rate, the  brass apotheosis near the end provided true comfort, and has there been a more perfect C major chord to close?

 

The first half’s second part was occupied by South Korean soprano Sumi Hwang, first prize-winner of the 2014 Queen Elisabeth International Competition for voice, singing four songs by Gustav Mahler. From Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Wonder Horn), settings to folklorish texts by von Arnim and Brentano, were three short songs: Ver hat dies Liedel erdacht? (Who made up this Little Song?), Verlorne Müh! (Wasted Effort) and Rheinlegendchen (Little Rhine Legend). Hwang’s German pronunciation and diction were totally idiomatic, bringing coquettish charm and not a little irony to the music. In Verlorne Müh!, she sang both the boy’s and girl’s parts, which diminished the element of flirting.

 

The best was left for the last, Ich bin der Welt abhanden kommen (I am Lost to the World) from  five Rückert-Lieder (Rückert Songs). Hwang’s limpid lines were wonderfully complemented by Elaine Yeo’s cor anglais, and the reflective mood redolent of the Fifth Symphony’s Adagietto, a contemporaneous work of 1901-02. The brief encore was another Rückert setting, Blicke mir nicht in der Lieder! (Look not, into my Songs!), which closed the first half on a high.

 

It seemed like Brahms’ Third Symphony in F major was just recently performed by the SSO. That was from Gerard Schwarz’s baton in February 2020 almost three years ago. How the Covid pandemic has distorted temporal perspectives. While Schwarz’s view seemed broader and more expansive, Graf’s took on an edgier outlook from the bloom of its Schumann-inspired opening to the development’s inexorable drive. The orchestra was no less responsive, with passionate spikes also colouring the congenial folk-like atmosphere of the slow movement.    

 

How the cellos sung in the sublime Poco allegretto third movement, tinged with nostalgia and regret, before answered by guest French hornist Austin Larson’s warm solo towards the end. The tense finale shot out like a tightly-coiled spring, generating frissons of excitement but before long, a perfectly-weighted brass chorale would herald the symphony’s placid close. In Brahms as with Strauss, the message was this: life is short but redemption is always at hand.

 

Star Rating: ****

TEXTURES IN CLASSICS on Navona Records / Review

 

TEXTURES IN CLASSICS

SANG-HIE LEE, Piano

JOHN CORINA, Oboe

Navona Classics NV6448 / TT: 75’34”

This album by Korean-American pianist and academic Sang-Hie Lee, an artist who combines music with medical research, begs several questions. The recordings were undertaken in 1975 and 1977, but why wait till 2022 for their release? And what is an oboe sonata from the 1960s doing in a recital of classical and romantic piano repertoire? Besides Lee’s students, friends and relatives, for whom is this album targeted?  

 

For the recital’s first half, one finds an artist with something valid to say. Beethoven’s late Sonata No.30 in E major (Op.109) is occupied with a restless spirit, befitting the Romantic age, and her reading has both poetry and lyricism. Mozart’s early Sonata in B flat major (K.281) is much less persuasive, with intermittent rococo sensibilities peeking through stiff mechanical and charmless playing. Between the sonatas are two Debussy Preludes, The Girl with the Flaxen Hair and The Interrupted Serenade, which were pleasant enough.

 

Bizarrely inserted into the programme is the three-movement Sonata for Oboe and Piano (1965) by Rhineland German composer-organist Hermann Schroeder (1904-1984), whose claim to fame was having taught the avant-gardeist Karlheinz Stockhausen. The music is dissonant and chromatic, resembling Hindemith’s quirkily approachable modern idiom, but receives a sympathetic performance from Lee and the late American oboist John Corina (1928-2014). Worthy of a listen.

 

Then it is downhill all the way. The gnomes of Liszt’s concert etude Gnomenreigen dance with lead-filled boots in what was a dispiriting experience. Even worse has to be the most wretched and technically challenged performance of Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Handel (Op.24) ever committed to disc. This reading is one almighty struggle (for both performer and listener), with lapses, fumbles and wrong notes littered all through its course. When the memory is all too fallible, was not a printed score at hand to lend assistance? And has nobody involved in this project ever heard of editing? Warts and all, this was at least a honest traversal, and a honestly bad one at that. Why even bother? With poor and recessed recorded sound, here is a rare dud from Navona Records.

For more information on this album:

Textures In Classics – Navona Records

MOMENTS MUSICAUX by ANTOINETTE PERRY / Navona Records / Review

MOMENTS MUSICAUX

ANTOINETTE PERRY, Piano

Navona Records NV6442 / TT: 77’30”

 

This album was taken from a 2014 live performance by American pianist Antoinette Perry at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School’s Newman Auditorium. It is essentially a collection of short pieces or “musical moments”, a term which Franz Schubert used for his six short pieces published in 1828. The term was also used by Serge Rachmaninov in 1896 for his six Op.16 short pieces, which are more complex and extended numbers than Schubert’s. Moments musicaux could also apply to short works in sets like Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, Grieg’s Lyric Pieces, Janacek’s On The Overgrown Path and their like.

 

Both Schubert and Rachmaninov’s sets of sixes were not performed in their entirety, but neither was there a need to as the selections were well chosen, exhibiting a variety of musical palettes. Schubert’s Musical Moment No.3 in F minor is the famous Hungarian-flavoured one, while Nos.5 and 6 are suitably contrasted, violence juxtaposed alongside a song-like sublimity. Perry’s choices of Rachmaninov’s Moments Musicaux Nos.1 (Slavic melancholy personified) and 4 (coruscating brilliance) were also excellent.  These were preceded by the Russian’s well-known Prelude in G sharp minor Op.32 No.12, a wellspring of introspection.

Antoinette Perry

 

The recital’s second half is dominated by a single work: the 18 conjoined short pieces of Robert Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze Op.6, which are also musical moments reflecting states of mind of the German composer’s alter-egos, impulsive Florestan versus reflective Eusebius. This receives a very coherent performance, filled with much lyricism, colour and nuance, and with close and loving attention paid to its various dance rhythms. Never a dull moment in its just over a half-hour duration.

 

There are two pieces of Americana, both delicious encores to close both halves of the recital, which could deservedly be called musical moments: Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s Souvenir de Puerto Rico: Marche des Gibaros and Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm. The recorded sound is vivid and other than applause and cheers, the audience is perfectly behaved. An enjoyable listen from start to finish.

 

You can sample and purchase this recording at:

Moments Musicaux – Navona Records