A LITTLE BIT OF MAGIC / BRENDAN-KEEFE AU & AYANO SCHRAMM-KIMURA Vocal Recital Review

A LITTLE BIT OF MAGIC

Brendan-Keefe Au, Tenor

Ayano Schramm-Kimura, Soprano

Sim Yikai, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday (2 August 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 4 August 2016 with the title "An enchanted evening".

One of the pleasures of a reviewer's lot is tracking the progress of talented musicians from their student years to their professional debuts and beyond. One such talent is tenor Brendan-Keefe Au, who has made significant progress since he was last reviewed in 2012. However one thing that has not changed is his rare skill and zeal in programming themed recitals.

A Little Bit Of Magic referred to the sense of wonder and enchantment encountered in the two-hour-long recital which encompassed five groups of songs united by common themes. He begun the Forest Theme with Lee Hoiby's Be Not Afeard (from The Tempest) and Henry Purcell's Come All Ye Songsters Of The Sky (The Fairy Queen). His clarity of enunciation and projection, as clear as a bell, were well noted.

Schubert's Das Müller und Der Bach (The Miller And The Brooklet) from Die Schöne Müllerin received a most poignant reading, where the heart-broken protagonist contemplates death by drowning. Shifting between minor and major keys, his pleading plucked on heart-strings and refused to let go. In contrast, his partner in song Japanese soprano Ayano Schramm-Kimura struck a dramatic presence in Schubert's Die Erlkönig (The Elf King), a relentless race against time with death by disease being the eventual outcome.

Ayano helmed much of the second set, the Water Theme songs, including Hugo Wolf's funereal Spirits on the Mummelsee Lake and Faure's wordless Vocalise-Etude. Her restraint and purity in the classically proportioned A Chloris by Reynaldo Hahn was a thing of beauty, while emoting beautifully in Czech for Dvorak's familiar Song To The Moon from Rusalka.

Three songs from the Sky Theme revealed near-perfect control from Au, from the transparent lines of Vaughan Williams The Infinite Shining Heavens to the ever-broadening melody of Liza Lehmann's Ah! Moon Of My Delight. In between, Mendelssohn's Auf Flügeln des Gesänges (On Wings Of Song) was gilded with a seamless cantabile. Whoever imagined the paradise mused was not in Germany, but rather exotic India?

Speaking of Faraway Lands as a theme, Alban Berg's Seven Early Songs were brought out with mysterious allure and sensuousness by Ayano. While not atonal, the music was nonetheless chromatically conceived and compactly structured. Unfortunately the audience's tendency to applaud after every short song became a distraction.

Pianist Sim Yikai provided more than adequate accompaniment, although his over-pedalling at parts muddied some of the more densely-textured songs. However he got Scriabin's languid Poeme (Op.32 No.1), a solo while the singers took a breather, spot on.

The final Mundane Theme was anything but mundane. Instead both singers took turns celebrating the worldly pleasures of Poulenc's Les chemins de l'amour (a waltz-song), Weill's Youkali (a tango-song), Richard's Strauss' blissful Morgen! (a wedding night creation) and William Bolcom's cabaret classic Amor. Their duet, Noel Coward's I'll See You Again and encore, Lehmann's There Are Fairies At The Bottom Of My Garden, completed the evening's delights.

VIVA VERDI! / Bellepoque / Review

VIVA VERDI!

Bellepoque

Esplanade Recital Studio

Thursday (28 November 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 September 2013 with the title "Operatic entertainment".

The third concert this year celebrating the bicentenary of Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi’s birth was undertaken by Bellepoque, an enterprising local group specialising in light musical theatre. Unlike the large-scaled productions by the Singapore Lyric Opera and Singapore Symphony Orchestra, this was salon concert of arias, duets and choruses modestly accompanied by piano.

Five operas were represented, with highlights performed in mostly chronological order. With popular numbers interspersed with the less familiar, the arrangement worked well if not for the variability of the singers. Veterans appeared alongside relative novices, and the marked disparity of abilities was sometimes all too obvious.

La Traviata (1853) opened the show with the popular Brindisi (Drinking Song) sung by the full ensemble of seven singers. It was misfortune that tenor Edwin Cruz (Philippines) had to lead, as he could barely keep in time. The empty champagne flutes the singers pretended to drink from seemed symbolic, as the performance lacked fizz.

The role of Violetta was shared by sopranos Angela Cortez (Philippines) and Sabrina Zuber (Italy), in Un di felice and Addio del passato / Parigi o cara respectively. Both were competent enough, and the transformation of the courtesan from a picture of health to frailty was very believable. Opposite them was Singaporean tenor Shaun Lee’s Alfredo, whose raw and desperate heroics in this highly demanding part was reminiscent of the legendary and now-retired Leow Siak Fah.

Baritone William Lim (Singapore) was his usual unflappable self in Germont’s aria Provenza il mar, easily the most convincing moment of the segment. He and soprano Satsuki Nagatome (Japan) united in A tal colpa e nulla il pianto from Un Ballo In Maschera or The Masked Ball (1859) gave the best duet of the evening, with passion now in full flow.

Nagatome in Ritorna Vincitor! from Aida (1871) also provided the single most arresting aria of all, spitting the words with true fervour and vehemence. Contrast this with the struggling Cruz in Celeste Aida, who never quite hit the high notes and whose final last gasp was achieved by falsetto rather than full voice. It was a small mercy that the great closing duet of Aida and Radames was not on the programme.

From Verdi’s last opera Falstaff (1893) came Fenton’s little aria Dal labbro il canto, sung with sensitivity and finesse by tenor Brendan-Keefe Au (Singapore), clearly someone who knows where his strengths lie. The concert ended with the famous Hebrew slaves’ chorus Va Pensiero from Nabucco (1842), where unison singing sometimes eluded the men.

Pianist Vincent Chen dutifully filled in for the indisposed Robert Casteels in accompaniment, and Thomas Manhart’s conceptualisation was narrated with engaging humour in Italian-accented English by actress Alessandra Fel. A mixed bag, to be sure, for a fair evening’s entertainment.    

STORIES FROM THE GARDEN / Brendan-Keefe Au Vocal Recital / Review

STORIES FROM THE GARDEN

BRENDAN-KEEFE AU Vocal Recital

The Living Room @ The Arts House

Friday (17 August 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 August 2012 with the title "A master of nuances in four languages".

It is refreshing to encounter a tenor who does not aspire to be the next Pavarotti or Domingo. Young tenor Brendan-Keefe Au, in his debut vocal recital (with pianist Hye-Seon Choi accompanying), is closer in spirit to Peter Pears or Ian Bostridge, to name two British tenors renowned for their sensitivity and refinement rather than “can belto” abilities.

Au is of slight and slender built, but carries himself with an air of confidence. Add a boyish smile and gentle personality, the likeability factor comes across winningly. In a well-conceived programme of 18 songs inspired by the garden, nature and love, he impressed with a mastery of nuances and shades in four languages.   

Opening with Italian, there was lightness and crispness of articulation in Scarlatti’s Le Violette, Sarti’s Lungi del caro bene (Far from my Beloved) and Bellini’s Vanne, O rosa fortunata (Go, Fortunate Rose). His expression of sorrow and longing were made all the more believable, and he was just warming up.

German accounted for eight of the songs, beginning with two light-hearted Lieder by Schubert. The familiar Heidenröslein (Little Red Rose) rang with a playful sprightliness, while Die Taubenpost (Pigeon Post) from the cycle Schwanengesang (Swan Song) warmed up the heart in the anticipation of good news from one’s beloved. In Mozart’s Das Veilchen (Little Violet), Au’s sense of theatricality and vivid story-telling came through well.

It was, however, less plain-sailing in Brahms’s Lerchengesang (Lark’s Song), where the high registers seemed beyond easy reach, and strain became apparent. The comedic irony of Mahler’s Ablösung in Sommer (Relief in Summer) was not fully realised, but Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen (Where the Beautiful Trumpets Blow) was a bona fide interpretation, its ghostly martial echoes a poignant reflection of death on a battlefield.

Au’s French held up well in Chausson’s two chansons, Les Papillons and Le Colibri (The Humming Bird), the latter finding a rapturous high amid lush Wagnerian harmonies. He was on a comfortable home stretch for the four English songs that closed the evening. Vaughan Williams’s Silent Noon and Quilter’s It was a Lover and his Lass delved on love from different view-points, and he was convincing on both accounts.

Two settings of British folksongs, The Ash Grove and The Last Rose of Summer, with Benjamin Britten’s piquant piano harmonisations, were pure pleasure itself. The darkly hued Last Rose would have cast a gloomy pall, but Au finished off with the far more cheerful Down by the Salley Gardens for good measure and prolonged applause. The road to true artistry is a long and arduous one, but this talented tenor is well and truly on his way.

LOST TO THE WORLD / The Sing Song Club / Review

LOST TO THE WORLD
The Sing Song Club
The Arts House
Tuesday (20 December 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 December 2011 with the title "Sing Song Club in fine voice".

From the organisers of the First Singapore Lieder Festival in August and September came one final recital of art songs by Gustav Mahler and Franz Liszt, whose anniversaries are being observed this year. The Sing Song Club is Singapore’s version of Britain’s renowned The Songmaker’s Almanac, with pianist Shane Thio being the local Graham Johnson, that indefatigable instigator of the most ambitious singing projects.

Although the following for art song is small here, its practitioners are a young and determined lot who will become our top singers of tomorrow. Baritone Daniel Fong (above), a student at London’s Royal Academy, exuded a warm and expressive tone for the five Mahler songs on texts by Friedrich Rückert. Rich, sonorous and unafraid to project himself, his views on subjects like love, solitude and abandonment sung in clearly enounced German were palpable, even believable.

Ich bin der Welt abhanden (I Am Lost To The World), which lent the title to this concert, was treated with a world-wearied gravity that belied its apparent wistfulness. In Um Mitternacht (At Midnight), the shift from minor to major mode came like a shaft of life-affirming sunlight that washed away all gloom.

Tenor Brendan-Keefe Au (above) was less confident, and had a false start in Rheinlegendchen (Rhine Legend), but possessed a youthfulness that suited his set of Knaben Wunderhorn (Youth’s Magic Horn) songs well. These whimsical and often ironic songs of German folklore and country life found a sympathetic soul. Amid the militaristic undertones of Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen (Where the Beautiful Trumpets Blow), melancholy gave way to the expectancy of love.

For sheer tonal beauty, it was hard to beat soprano Rebecca Li (above), whose petite frame also packed a poignant punch. Such purity and innocence were distilled in two rarely heard Mahler songs and a further three by Liszt. Often overshadowed by his florid piano works, Liszt’s Freudvoll und leidvoll (Joyful and Sorrowful), Es muss ein wunderbares sein (It Must Be A Wonderful Thing) and S’il est un charmant gazon (If There is a Lovely Grassy Plot) basked in a radiant glow that can only be described as sublime.

This recital shows our young vocalists to be far more than enthusiastic bathroom singers. Further events by The Sing Song Club in March and May of next year are to be watched out for with keen anticipation.

Vocal Recitals / David & Jonathan Tay / Brendan-Keefe Au & Lim Yanting / Review

VOCAL RECITALS:

ON WENLOCK EDGE

David & Jonathan Tay
The Arts House
Tuesday (10 August 2010)

L'HEURE EXQUISE

Brendan-Keefe Au & Lim Yanting
University Cultural Centre
Tuesday (17 August 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 August 2010.

There have been an increasing number of voice students, to judge by the number of vocal recitals taking place of late. Some pursue their art overseas while local voice teachers have also been kept busy.

25-year-old twin tenors David and Jonathan Tay are undergraduates at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. They are no two peas in a pod. David has the richer tone, coming closer to the “heroic tenor”. In Vaughan Williams’ song cycle On Wenlock Edge, his ease of expression carried the gamut of emotions, from furtive hope to dark resignation. Assertive but not loud, he transcended the impressionist hues provided by the Artsylum Quartet and pianist Rachel Teoh.

Jonathan possesses a darker shade, more like a baritone’s. In five songs by Vaughan Williams, Quilter and Finzi, accompanied by pianist Valarie Wilson, he faithfully captured the moods and nuances, even if there was audible strain and approximate intonation in higher notes. In the Italian song segment, his guitar serenade from Rossini’s The Barber Of Seville provided a muted contrast from his brother’s booming Alfredo from Verdi’s La Traviata.

Together, their duet from Act IV of Puccini’s La Boheme was a touching moment. David sang Rodolfo while Jonathan sportingly settled for the baritone Marcello’s role. As they say, there can only be one primo tenore in a family.

Tenor Brendan-Keefe Au and soprano Lim Yanting, both non-music students at the National University of Singapore, provided what the title of their recital promised – an exquisite hour. Their selection of songs, accompanied by pianist Shane Thio, were mostly Romantic and about romantic love.

Being non-native to the German language, there was some unfamiliarity of pronunciation in Schubert and Hugo Wolf Lieder, and songs by Beethoven and Mozart. However in Italian, where mere expressions alone can bring out the amore, they seemed more at home.

Au’s ardent demeanor in Bellini’s Malinconia and Tosti’s La Serenata left little to the imagination, while Lim took flight in Arditi’s waltz song Il Bacio (The Kiss) even if she was occasionally overmatched by its dizzying coloratura. Her pair of Belle Epoque songs by Frenchman Reynaldo Hahn, and Au’s fine control in Quilter’s Now Sleeps The Crimson Petal were poignant and evocative, epitomes of grace.

Together, their flirtatious Schumann duet Unterm Fenster, acted out with a twinkle in the eye, brought the short evening to a delightful close.