THE WONDER CHAMBER / Red Dot Baroque / Review

 

THE WONDER CHAMBER

Red Dot Baroque

Chamber @ The Arts House

Saturday (9 May 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 May 2026 with the title "Red Dot Baroque revives 17th century rarities in delightful concert".

A wonder chamber (Wunderkammer in German) is a collection of curiosities and oddities assembled in wealthy households, where novelty and rarity become virtues. This concert of 17th century works by Singapore’s leading early music ensemble Red Dot Baroque (RDB), curated and led by French-Canadian guest director and harpsichordist Olivier Fortin, was full of such surprises.

Fortin waxed lyrical about “stylus fantasticus”, a style in the baroque which broke from traditional forms and focussed on free expression and improvisation, like an early precursor of jazz. Opening the concert was Sonata “Tausend Gulden” by Habsburg court composer Antonio Bertali (1605-1669), so nicknamed A Thousand Guilders as it was highly prized by its patrons.

The Italian term sonata, or “sounding out”, did not have the same meaning as it does today. The music was a delightful succession of dances, alternating between fast and slow, before closing on a sublime quiet.

Thanks to RDB founder Alan Choo’s proselytising, the name of Bohemian virtuoso violinist Heinrich Biber (1644-1704) is no longer obscure in Singapore. Two of Biber’s Sonatae Tam Aris Quam Aulis Servientes (Sonatas Suitable for Altar and Court) got an airing, featuring the sonorous baroque trumpet of Danny Teong. Sonata X in G minor had the plaintive quality of a lament, contrasted with the celebratory tone of Sonata IV in C major.

From the Augustinian priest Romanus Weichlein (1652-1706) was the Sonata in B minor (Op.1 No.11) from Encaenia Musices (Musical Enchantments). Here, violinists Brenda Koh and Placida Ho, in conversation with the viola da gambas of Leslie Tan and Mervyn Lee, presented a series of increasingly syncopated variations.

Intimate dialogue and timbral contrasts between Ho’s animated violin and Lee’s elegiac gamba were the focus in the Sonata in D major by Hamburg native Dietrich Becker (1623-1679). Soaring over Christopher Clarke’s theorbo and Fortin’s harpsichord continuo, a playful sense of improvisation soon became apparent.

In Sonata II in G minor from Armonico Tributo (Harmonic Tribute) by the well-travelled Georg Muffat (1653-1704), student of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Arcangelo Corelli, a fusion of French, Italian and German styles emerged. Alternating slow and fast movements, solemnity, seriousness, humour and jocularity all became part of a heady mix of moods and emotions.

The ill-fated Italian Alessandro Stradella (1643-1682), stabbed to death for his serial philandering, displayed far more temperance in his Sinfonia in D minor for violin, cello and continuo. Violinist Koh and cellist Zoi Tzu-Jou Yeh had virtuoso roles, trading cuts and thrusts in an exhibition of control and exuberance.

The 75-minute concert closed with the full ensemble in Biber’s Sonata Jucunda (Joyous Sonata), juxtaposing high art with popular culture, the latter being the music of commoners – tipsy dances, drunken slurs, fiddle flourishes and unison passages resembling Turkish music, as opposed to celestial harmonies. This musical joke, representing a happy democratisation, makes the world go round. Whoever thought Biber was a socialist?

The Wonder Chamber by Red Dot Baroque was part of the Voilah! French-Singapore festival.