UNBOXING THE ORGAN
Phoon Yu (Organ) and Lorong Boys
Victoria Concert Hall
Sunday (1 October 2023), 4 pm
SAYS HU
Ding Yi Music Company
Esplanade Recital Studio
Sunday (1 October 2023), 7.30 pm
This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 October 2023 with the title "Classics made approachable in innovative show; Ding Yi shines spotlight on huqin".
Classical music can be daunting for newcomers but innovative programmes can make appreciating the classics so much easier. That has been the approach of local organist-composer Phoon Yu and Lorong Boys, comprising David Loke (violin), Jonathan Shin (piano), Samuel Phua (saxophone), Eugene Chew (double bass and electric bass) and Joachim Lim (drums), in this 45-minute concert attended by many children.
Originally billed as a lecture, it was more a mini-history of the organ / classical music with boring bits left out. The comedic tone was set with Phoon opening with J.S.Bach’s Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring as the Boys trooped out in monastic habits. Phoon played the geeky character of Kevin from the Bukit Batok Benedictine Brotherhood who travels in time to be inducted as the newest member of the gang.
 |
| Kevin (Phoon Yu) gets knighted as one of the Lorong Boys. |
Along the way, there were nifty arrangements of the Sunrise from Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, now named Thus Rocked Zarathustra in its expanded heavy metal guise, Prokofiev’s Montagues And Capulets (from Romeo And Juliet) and Paganini’s Caprice No.24. It was all tongue-in-cheek, not to be taken too seriously. Did anybody notice that Shin’s The Other Swan for violin and piano was an inversion of The Swan by Saint-Saen, sounding more impressionistic, like Debussy’s Clair De Lune?
On a lighter side, the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby made an appearance with Shin’s none-too-shabby singing voice. The concert closed with Handel’s Passacaglia in G minor, better known in Halvorsen’s violin-cello arrangement. This “big band” version truly made its short variations rock.
Despite the title Says Hu (Hu Shuo in Chinese, literally meaning talking nonsense), Ding Yi Music Company’s chamber concert was far less irreverent but no less relevent. The showcase of huqins (bowed string instruments) opened with a huqin quartet led by Fred Chan Hong Wei. This unit functions like a Western string quartet, with instruments covering different registers including gaohu, erhu, zhonghu and cello.
Luo Mai Shuo’s scherzo-like Dance On Strings and Phang Kok Jun’s beautiful Rhapsody showed there was not much of a divide separating east and west. Add two more players, including double bass, the string sextet that resulted served Bao Yuankai’s Going To West Gate well. It included a lovely episode with Chan’s gaohu accompanied by plucked pizzicatos.
This 100-minute concert’s second half featured works with prominent solos. Bassist Chee Jun Hong displayed a vocally agile side in ancient song Yangguan Refrains, arranged by Huo Junxia / Lim Kiong Pin, accompanied by yangqin, sheng and percussion. Erhu player Chen Ning’s take on Li Bo Chan’s Reminiscences Of The Silk Road was more abstract and modernist. Its Central Asian idiom, accompanied by erhu, yangqin and ruan, was more subtly handled than most works of this persuasion. Both soloists were excellent.
The most impressive work saw guest huqin player Li Bao Shun, concertmaster of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, in the Singapore premiere of Zhang Zheng’s Sword Sorrow, conducted by Wong De Li. He was accompanied by ten players including piano, harp and percussion in an elegiac work that mourned the losses of war. It opened dramatically but settled into moving plaints showing the erhu's enormous emotional range, with suona offering a conflicting ceremonial voice. The cinematic quality was also heightened with vocalisations by orchestra members as the work closed.
That could have been the end, but it was left for the string sextet to close with Hunting The Tiger Up The Mountain, arranged by Chen Chunyuan / Sim Boon Yew, the perfectly-paced chase piece to conclude the evening on a virtuosic high.
No comments:
Post a Comment