COLOURS & VARIATIONS / METAMORPHOSIS / Karen Tay (Harp), Duo Tarenna & Friends / Review

 

COLOURS & VARIATIONS 

KAREN TAY Harp Recital 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Friday (23 August 2024)

METAMORPHOSIS 

Duo Tarenna & Friends 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Saturday (24 August 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 August 2024 with the title "An exciting showcase of Singapore musicians and composers".

Over the past weekend, this reviewer has had the fortune and privilege of witnessing the world premieres of works by two young Singaporean composers, performed by young local professional musicians. Like the newly commissioned works recently unveiled by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at the National Day Concert, this should be part of a healthy norm, rather than an exception. 

The first was New York-based Singaporean harpist Karen Tay performing London-based Lim Kang Ning’s Tenebroso. Its title relates to many shades of darkness in contrast with light, both in mood as well as musical textures. Possessed with a restless energy, it opened with buzzing ostinatos, operating on both high and low registers of the instrument. Darker hues predominated before culminating in a series of sweeping glissandi, concluding an eventful 6 minutes which did not overstay its welcome. 

The solo recital, presented by Kris Foundation, was mostly of 20th century works, where an outsized virtuosity was requisite despite eschewing outward showiness for its own sake. British composer Benjamin Britten’s varied five-movement Suite and American harpist-composer Carlos Salzedo’s colourful Scintillation, displaying varying levels of dissonance, were complementary companions for Lim’s creation. 

On a lighter side, Tay’s elegant and understated virtuosity brought polish to Frenchman Marcel Tournier’s impressionist Sonatine and American Brandee Younger’s popular music-inspired Unrest I. Transcriptions of familiar music by Domenico Scarlatti and J.S.Bach, and an encore of her mother Magdalene Wong’s delightful Forever completed a highly eclectic and accomplished recital. 

Karen Tay with Kris Tan and Lim Kang Ning.

The following evening saw the premiere of Ding Jian Han’s hreeviFruowT for flute and string quartet, part of the Composer’s Drawing Board commissioning project presented by Duo Tarenna (violinist Tan Tiag Yi and violist Cindy Ow). Joined by violinist Farah Wu, cellist Chan Sihan and flautist Paul Huang, the atonal work employed the flute and piccolo as both solo and ensemble instrument. 

Huang had the most expressive moments, including uttering fragments of themes and using percussive slap-tonguing and purring flutter-tonguing techniques. Ever-shifting contours through its busy 12 minutes kept the listener guessing what comes next and how it would end. Due to the demanding entries exacted, the work was conducted by Ding himself. 

This made for an ideal companion for Lee Jia Yi’s Eclipse for violin & viola (Tan and Ow) which was shorter but exhibited a similar restlessness, with screeching harmonics and slithering glissandi being par for the course. 

The balance of the 75-minute concert was less demanding on the ears. Joseph Kosma’s Autumn Leaves, arranged for string quartet by Toru Takemitsu, saw the famous melody emerge from Ow’s viola. Its relationship to two movements from American Chinese composer Anthony Cheung’s modern and dissonant The Real Book of Fake Tunes seemed tenuous. 

The opening Allegro movement from Danish composer Friedrich Kuhlau’s Flute Quintet in D major (Op.51 No.1) was the concert’s most traditional work, while Death of an Angel by Astor Piazzolla (arranged by Tan) headily combined tango and counterpoint. British composer Thomas Ades’ Tango Mortale from his quartet Arcadiana was a brief essay on darkness and violence. 

To quote the young conductor Adrian Chiang who had recently conducted a concert wholly of local works, “If we do not support Singaporean composers, then who will?”

NEW MUSIC IN A MYTHIC LANDSCAPE / SIFOM Ensemble / Review

NEW MUSIC IN A MYTHIC LANDSCAPE

SIFOM Ensemble

Singapore International Festival of Music

Chamber, The Arts House

Wednesday (19 October 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 21 October 2016 with the title "Three strikes and New Music is out".

New music has the perpetual problem of attracting audiences, and presenters are usually mindful of engaging patrons with various outreach efforts to win them over. This concert of new Singaporean music however did nothing of the sort as its presentation was lamentable and unacceptably poor.

There were neither composer biographies nor programme notes provided, just a host who happened to be Paris-based conductor Marlon Chen merely reading out titles of performed pieces. Even the names of performers were omitted. Strike One. Two works on the printed programme by John Sharpley and Koh Cheng Jin were discarded with no reasons given. The compensation was a  complimentary drink offered on the house. Strike Two.

Without fanfare, the 65-minute long concert (originally marketed as 90 minutes) began with Chen Zhangyi's Sandcastles. Violinist Arisa Ikeda and pianist April Foo gave an evocative reading with lyrical lines accompanied by rippling keyboard textures, like waves gently lapping on a serene tropical beach.

Bertram Wee's Love Songs for piano trio was sterner than its title suggested. Its 5 movements were atonal and dissonant, with the idea that the course of true love is never easy. Violinist Rida Sayfiddinov, cellist Dzhama Saidkarimov and pianist Thomas Ang covered a full gamut of 20^th century technical devices including harmonics, slides, brusque pizzicatos and heavy chords which cemented his case in no uncertain terms.  

A surreal soundscape was created for Ding Jian Han's Slow Jogging On A Not-So-Silent Night, scored for flute (Jeremy Lim), clarinet (Andrew Constantino), violin, cello and piano (Foo), conducted by Marlon Chen. No actual notes were played in its opening minutes, comprising only the sound of air passing through channels or over strings. This soon cystallised into tones, both short and long-held, which generated a Zen-like calm and mysticism.  

Newly commissioned was Mick Lim's #9 (Sharp Nine), a brief work for pipa (Chua Yew Kok), zhongruan (Loi Eevian), violin, viola (Ho Qian Hui) and cello, which ran a course of plucked notes and pizzicatos. The first work to actually resound with a distinctively Oriental idiom was Ho Chee Kong's Echoes Of Fall for marimba (Kevin Castelo), clarinet, gambus (Loi on ruan) and cello. There were virtuoso roles for each in this enjoyable serenade-like work, which could have come from Central Asia.  

The last and most substantial work was Tan Yuting's Chinatown, a song cycle with texts by Tan Chee Lay featuring talented and expressive soprano Angel Cortez. Its scoring with strings, winds, piano and percussion was lush, and two central fast movements took on the form of rhythmic dances. The subjects involved a culinary paradise and a back-alley barber, but Cortez's Chinese pronunciation was indecipherable, again not helped by the lack of texts or translations. Strike Three and you're out.  

Good music performed by dedicated musicians will always endure, but the cause of new music was not honoured with proper contexts and annotations on this occasion, thus coming off as a wasted opportunity.