LOVE AND
FRIENDSHIP
Tang Tee
Khoon (Violin) and Friends
Esplanade
Recital Studio
Wednesday
(24
September 2014 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 September 2014 with the title "Chamber music treat from virtuosos".
Local
musicians are the mainstay in Singapore ’s active chamber music scene, but once
in a while, it is good to have foreign musicians inject variety and diversity
to the list of usual suspects. Singaporean violinist Tang Tee Khoon, presently
based in London , has forged successful partnerships with
British musicians and their performances here have never been less than sterling.
Her
latest collaboration, with pianist Sam Haywood and cellist Matthew Huber,
focused on the close interwoven lives of Felix Mendelssohn, Robert and Clara
Schumann, and the young Johannes Brahms. Here was a meeting of the giants of
musical Romanticism, which got the requisite response from a trio of young
virtuosos they deserved.
The
moment Huber’s 1685 Francesco Ruggieri cello sang the opening phrase in
Schumann’s Three Fantasies Op.73, one
knew it was going to be a musical treat. His use of gut strings ensured a
mellowness of timbre that was simply gorgeous, and his singing tone rode
through the music’s melting lyricism with rapturous fervour.
Haywood’s
control of pedalling on the Steinway grand was close to perfection in the
sometimes over-reverberant acoustics of the Recital Studio, and he blended ideally
with both Huber and Tang, who performed Clara Schumann’s Three Romances Op.22. Her 1750 J.B. Guadagnini, on loan from the
National Arts Council, shone prettily in the tender moments of these
rarely-performed miniatures.
How
Clara Schumann was able to maintain a semblance of hope and optimism in 1855,
when her beloved husband was dying a slow death in an asylum for the insane,
was testimony to her fortitude and dignity. Her spirit was buoyed by the
presence of Brahms, who remained a close confidante till their deaths in the
1890s. All this was detailed in the helpful programme notes that accompanied
the evening’s marvellous programme.
The
main works on show were two of the greatest piano trios of the classical canon.
Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No.1 in D
minor is regularly played here, but rarely does one find a performance that
radiated such warmth and true feeling as this evening’s outing. The overall
balance was excellent, with both stringed instruments raising their stakes to
meet the piano’s multitudes of notes.
The
Scherzo flew on fairy-wings, and
there was an audible gasp of delight from the audience as the music simply
evaporated into the ether. The ardency and passion on display carried the outer
movements which stormed and stressed, but there was never a moment of
impetuousness or misplaced power.
Brahms’s
Piano Trio No.1 in B major, in its revised
version, provided even greater scope for expression and an emotional outlet.
The broad opening melody, one of his most memorable, received a grandstanding
treatment, contrasted with the Hungarian-inflected Scherzo, the slow movement’s longeuers and the finale’s breathless
rush to the finish post. Performances like these leave listeners craving for
more, and Tang with her friends will return in May next year with the late
works of Franz Schubert, which should be an exciting prospect.
Photographs by the kind permission of Tang Tee Khoon and Friends.
