THE GABRIELI PROJECT
CHAMBER MUSIC WEEK:
OPENING GALA
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory
Sunday (16 March 2025)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 March 2025 with the title "A moveable feast of music".
The opening concert of Yong Siew Toh Conservatory’s week-long Chamber Music Week was a tribute to the 16th century Venetian composer Giovanni Gabrieli (1557-1612). Curated by Red Dot Baroque (RDB) and its leader, Young Artist Award recipient Alan Choo, the 70-minute long interactive concert with conservatory students attempted to transport the sounds of Basilica San Marco (Saint Mark’s Cathedral) in Venice to the halls of the Conservatory.
YST’s broad vistas and high ceilings provided the right architecture that served Italian baroque antiphonal music to a tee. Claudio Monteverdi’s Toccata to Orfeo with just four brass players and drummer filled the capacious foyer with the very resonance that would define the entire concert.
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| Photo: Jellal Koay |
Choo, an ever-approachable guide, conducted a show-and-tell on the mobile audience of a couple of hundred by addressing the significance of each work. Next up, Gabrieli’s Canzon in Echo for 12 showed what three choirs of instruments sounded like when placed at different sites of the venue.
Brass was on terra firma, the same level as the audience, a string group played from the terrace above while a mixed group resounded from an even higher balcony. The effect was magical, with each group echoing the others in a call-and-response that was common for such music.
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| Photo: Jellal Koay |
Moving to the long corridor that separated the concert hall from practice rooms, the musicians were situated like four ends of a cross, not dissimilar to a cathedral floor-plan. In Salamone Rossi’s Sonata in Dialogo Detta la Viena, a conversation was struck between four RDB players - violinist Gabriel Lee and theorbo player Christopher Clarke on the floor, with violinist Placida Ho and cellist Leslie Tan on a lift landing above.
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| Notice people listening from the third floor lift landing. |
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| Photo: Jellal Koay |
This was intimate chamber music but heard in a big space. Placed even further apart were the two choirs of strings and mixed instruments which performed Lodovico Grossi da Viadana’s folk-like La Bergamasca. There was a natural echo given the distances spanned but never one that distorted the senses or music.
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| Even Ron Jeremy was spotted at this concert. |
The audience was now herded into the concert hall proper, where the main ensemble performed on stage while additional choruses were placed in the perimeter gallery above. Girolamo Fantini’s Entrata Imperiale per Sonare in Concerto with five brass players and drum welcomed the guests, while Cesare Bendinelli’s Sonata No.333 on five brass and timpani provided further entertainment.
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| Photo: Jellal Koay |
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| Where are the three violinists? |
Choo was the main soloist in Biagio Marini’s Sonata in Echo for three violins, but where were the other two violinists? They, Lee and Ho, had tucked in two raised hidden corners and were only noticed when their instruments did their curious bit of echoing.
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| Photo: Jellal Koay |
The numbers grew larger, with Francesco Cavalli’s Sonata for 12 from Musiche Sacre (two choirs) and Antonio Bertali’s all-string Sonata a Due Cori for 8 were the prelude to the mother of all antiphonal works, Gabrieli’s Sonata XX for 22 (five choirs) led by Choo debuting as a conductor. Needless to say, the sheer scope and grandeur of the surround-sound effect was not one to be replicated here anytime soon.
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