pianomania: QIN LI-WEI RETURNS / re:Sound / Review

QIN LI-WEI RETURNS

re:Sound

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Saturday (30 August 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 September 2025 with the title "Cellist Qin Li-Wei and re:Sound deliver exuberant showcase of string techniques".

If there were a locally-based soloist who could be relied on to generate ticket sales and assure box-office success, that would be Chinese-Australian cellist Qin Li-Wei.

Blessed with innate communicative skills and apparent ease of execution, his third collaboration with crack chamber outfit re:Sound opened with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Cello Concerto in A major (H.439). Composed in 1753 and straddling between the Baroque and Classical eras, this work is fast becoming as popular as Joseph Haydn’s two famous concertos.

In the intimate spirit of chamber music, Qin functioned as a third cellist in ensemble tuttis and when his solo arrived, a mellow but full-toned voice was revealed. Nimbleness and agility ruled in the first movement, later brooding in the introspective slow movement filled with sensitivity and feeling, which the Germans called Empfindsamkeit.

Its lingering beauty would later find culmination in a brief but soulful cadenza. The exciting finale reeled off like a fast danceable jig. With cello and accompanying strings in quickfire repartee, this made for an exhilarating end.

The Singapore premiere of 20th century French composer Jean Francaix’s Concert Variations for Cello (1950) was served like a 12-minute dessert after the main course. This was not strictly a set of variations, but witty and sometimes bluesy character studies alternating between fast and slow. Virtually an encyclopaedia of virtuoso cello and string techniques, it delighted in pizzicatos while a perpetual motion final variation closed the work on an exuberant high. Qin’s encore of the Gavotte from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suite No.3 in C major was also warmly received.

When Qin Li-Wei plays,
everybody listens.

A landmark set by re:Sound this evening was Ludwig van Beethoven’s Third Symphony in E flat major (Op.55), or Eroica Symphony, performed in Singapore for the first time without a conductor. Concertmaster Yang Shuxiang did the honours by leading from his violin. This reading was also remarkable for using valveless natural horns and trumpets, and baroque calfskin timpanis.

While the other musicians played on modern instruments, this performance with chamber orchestra came as close as possible to the spirit of music-making in Beethoven’s lifetime, some 200 years ago. While running for some 50 minutes, there was never hint of a drag. Distinguished by lithe and light textures, this was also the edgiest performance in living memory. Urgency and heroism in the first movement was contrasted by tragic gravitas of the second movement’s Funeral March. Surprisingly, this slow movement’s longueurs was a minute swifter, a case of relativity being upended.

Very exciting was the Scherzo, where the trio of natural horns played by Edward Deskur (founding Singapore Symphony Orchestra member), Alan Kartik and Xavier Tan faced the ultimate test in its Trio section. They blazed through fearlessly with lusty aplomb. The finale, built on variations on a dance from Beethoven’s ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, brought the enterprise to an unforgettably breathless close.