FOLKLORE & ROOTS / Roberto Alvarez & Hunter Mah / Review

 

FOLKLORE & ROOTS 

Roberto Alvarez, Flute 

Hunter Mah, Guitar 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Saturday (18 January 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 January 2024 with the title "Roberto Alvarez & Hunter Mah's charming recital celebrates folk roots of classical music".

Much of the music we know and love come from age-old sources, passed down by oral tradition before being formally documented and scored on paper by scribes whom we now know as composers. Little has changed, as highlighted in this totally charming concert by Spanish flautist Roberto Alvarez (associate principal at the Singapore Symphony Orchestra) and Singaporean guitarist Hunter Mah. 

Not a single word was uttered by the performers in this 70-minute long audio-visual spectacle. The works were not announced, and known only to those who bothered to check the e-programme. They instead allowed the very accessible music and stunning visuals (selected by local film-maker Su-Yin Mah) projected on a giant screen behind to do the talking. 

Argentinian guitarist-composer Maximo Diego Pujol’s Two Candombe Airs opened the concert, both works associated with African-origin dances popular in Argentina and Uruguay. Alvarez’s sweet tone gilded the melodic lines, backed to the hilt by Mah’s infectiously rhythmic strumming, all this accompanied by a film which traversed the cosmos and centering on Planet Earth and its peoples. 

Undoubtedly the most familiar music on the programme was Bela Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances, which were appropriately accompanied by a kaleidoscopic array of Eastern European folk tapestry designs. Serbian guitarist-composer Dusan Bogdanovic’s No Feathers on this Frog was another folk-song based work founded on old sayings and witticisms. 

“A bird with a broken wing can still sing, but you cannot get feathers from a frog,” was a little obscure but one will be more familiar with “All that glitters is not gold” and “Barking dogs do not bite”. The colourful cartoons on show were more closely related to naive art. 

The tree of life was a
recurrent theme in the concert.

In lieu of an intermission, a short animated film by Su-Yin Mah entitled Elan Vital (2009) was a Monty Pythonesque look at the violent history of mankind, from its descent from apes into an ongoing legacy of war and bloodshed. 

Of special significance was the Asian premiere of young Singaporean composer Goi Ywei Chern’s Qart Hadasht (New City), representing the most modern music in the concert. Its four varied movements, inspired by landmarks of historical Carthage, involved a compendium of virtuoso techniques on Alvarez’s alto flute. The overall effect was exotic, mystical and hauntingly beautiful. 

The concert closed with lighter music, with Brazilian guitarist-composer Celso Machado’s Musiques Populaires Brasiliennes, its five movements based on the choros (street songs) and native dance rhythms well-known to outsiders such as the samba and bossa nova. The accompanying visuals were of food, games and children. 

Speaking of children, both daughters of the Mahs were the stars in the film for two of Robert Beaser Mountain Songs, Barbara Allen and Cindy. These contrasting slow and fast numbers were based on popular American vernacular folk songs. The zippy and catchy rhythms of the last was so well-received that it had to be encored. Just delightful.