THE GODDESS / Singapore Chinese Orchestra @ Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts 2014 / Review

THE GODDESS

A SILENT FILM CONCERT

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts 2014

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (15 February 2014) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 February 2014 with the title "SCO brings out tender moments".

Concerts with a live orchestra accompanying a screened movie are not new here. The first was the Singapore Symphony Orchestra playing Prokofiev’s soundtrack to Sergei Eisenstein’s war classic Alexander Nevsky in 2001. Then came those best-selling Arts Festival presentations with the Singapore Festival Orchestra, and more recently the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra in The Fellowship Of The Ring.

This concert by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra conducted by Yeh Tsung at Esplanade’s Huayi Festival had a major difference. New music for Chinese instruments was commissioned to accompany the 1934 Shanghai silent movie The Goddess (Shen Nü) written and directed by Wu Yonggang, and starring screen siren Ruan Lingyu.

The story of the 72-minute long film may seem over-simplistic for today’s sensibilities, but the emotions it engenders are real and palpable. Its protagonist is a single mother who reluctantly turns to prostitution in order to support her infant son. The boy even gets to go to school but when her life savings are stolen by a hoodlum, she sacrifices herself to guarantee his future.

The actual movie was preceded by a jazzy overture, with the kind of “hot music” played at the lounges of Shanghai’s Paramount and Cathay Hotels, to accompany a short feature on the history of the city’s film industry and Ruan’s short, meteoric but tragic life. She was the 1930s Joan Chen, one who used a plethora of facial expressions when words and conversations could not be employed.

The music, co-written by SCO composer-in-residence Law Wai Lun and Hong Kong film composer Lincoln Lo, did not conform to the idioms or pentatonic clichés of Chinese music. Instead they employed themes and motifs that were appropriate to portray the narrative, moods and emotions. At points, the melodic content was reminiscent of music from ballets of Khachaturian and Russian composers.  

It was the instruments that conveyed the sense of Chinese-ness, even if the emotions were universal. Tender moments between mother and son brought out some of the best music, with Zhao Jianhua’s erhu and Han Lei’s guanzi carrying the melodies, and the additional luxury of Clarence Lee’s grand piano adding that final bit of gloss.

On witnessing her son’s recitation in a school concert, a heartrending orchestral crescendo represented the pride swelling up in her heart. Slashing sounds on the guzheng signalled moments of suspense, while a drum-set beat out the unrelenting pulse of the heartless metropolis. Even when viewed in black and white, the dazzling neon of Nanjing Lu for all its glitz became synonymous with vice and squalor.

The standing ovation that greeted this production should be sufficient inducement for more classic movies to be screened with orchestral accompaniment. When the feature film is worth reliving, the medium of music will follow suit.

Conductor Yeh Tsung and the two composers
Law Wai Lun and Lincoln Lo acknowledge the applause.

VOICES OF BRILLIANCE / Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts 2014 / Review

VOICES OF BRILLIANCE

Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts 2014 

Esplanade Concert Hall 

Saturday (8 February 2014) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 February 2014 with the title "Brilliant vocals at a more intimate show".

After the good notices from last year’s Voices Of Splendour concert at the Huayi Festival, this year’s fixture was scaled down significantly but no less successful. Most glaring for an opera highlights concert was the absence of an orchestra. In its place was the lone figure of Shane Thio, still Singapore’s finest and busiest collaborative pianist.

In his usual best to support the three Chinese singers, Thio actually convinced that the luxury of an orchestra was just that, a luxury. His steadiness, sensitivity and versatility allowed the voices to shine, and there was no way they would be drowned out. Already plying their trade in the world’s great opera houses, the threesome was excellent in a selection of Chinese art songs and Western operatic arias.

Returning was statuesque mezzo-soprano Zhu Huiling, whose opening song Homesickness by Huang Zi possessed a soothing serenade-like quality. The more dramatic Anzoleta avanti la Regata by Rossini was well projected, and further theatricality was provided with the scintillating Chanson Boheme from Bizet’s Carmen, an apt follow-on to last year’s offerings of the Seguidilla and Habanera.  

The more compactly built Soprano Yu Guanqun impressed with how she could build up from the hush of intimacy to a sonic boom in the highest registers. She did so effortlessly in Mozart’s Come scoglio (Cosi Fan Tutte) and Leonora’s aria Tacea la notte placida (Il Trovatore). The Chinese romances Yearning For My Love and I Live by the Headwaters of the Yangtze were also beautifully crafted.

Baritone Shenyang, winner of the 2007 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, appeared to be the crowd-pleaser. His easy, almost leisurely, way with Leporello’s Catalogue Aria (Mozart’s Don Giovanni) in recounting amorous conquests, and devilish laughter in Mephistopheles’s Vous que faites l’endormie (Gounod’s Faust) were the key. In Zhao Yuanren’s How Could I Not Miss Her, he exhibited a very fine control that was both touching and sincere.

There were no duets, instead trios including Mozart’s Soave sia il vento, the voices blending nicely in almost the perfect sneak preview to the Singapore Lyric Opera’s production of Cosi Fan Tutte later this month. In Qu Cong’s I Love You, China and John Ordway’s Farewell, each had individual lines to sing before coming together in unison. Closing with a sort of party joke, the trio united for the quintessential tenor aria, Puccini’s Nessun Dorma (Turandot), as if to show that no tenors were being missed tonight. 

The encores brought the house down. The first had both ladies re-enacting Rossini’s Cat Duet around the silent and bemused baritone. The second was unaccompanied, the familiar Inner Mongolian folksong Mu Ge (Pastorale) in Huang Ruo’s nostalgic and spine-tingling arrangement. More of the same next year, please.    

Photograph courtesy of Esplanade Theatre by the Bay.

RAINBOW VERSES / Huayi Festival 2013 / Review

RAINBOW VERSES

HUAYI FESTIVAL 2013

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (23 February 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 February 2013 with the title "Rainbow of poetry in motion".

The Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s contribution to this year’s Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts was a unique concert uniting poetry and music. Whether ancient verse, dating over a millennium to the Tang and Song dynasties, sat easily with the far more contemporary art form of symphonic music was not even a doubt once the performances got underway.

The juxtaposition worked so well one wondered why this had not been attempted more often. This was a first-time collaboration with the National Theatre of China (NTC, above), whose thespians recited the verses with an air of authority and authenticity that could hardly be bettered.

The selection of poetry and music, overseen by conductor Yeh Tsung and NTC Director Tian Qinxin, was both eclectic and wide-ranging. First to be heard were Su Dongbo’s Nian Nu Jiao (Reminiscing at Red Cliff) and Li Bai’s Invitation to Wine, both well-known classics, accompanied by Liu Wen Jin’s Great Wall Capriccio and Zhao Ji Ping’s dedicated musical setting respectively.

Zhao Jian Hua’s evocative erhu solo was the perfect foil for stage veteran Han Tongshen’s highly dramatic recitation of Red Cliff, complete with the “evil” laughter often caricatured in movies. Wang Nan’s take on the pleasures of alcohol (below) was to be no less gripping.

The romantic notion of poetry reading by moonlight and soft atmospheric music was exemplified in Tang dynasty poet Zhang Ruo Xu’s Spring Blossoms on a Moonlit Night. Actress Fan Zhibo appeared like some celestial being dressed in pale blue, her soothing mezzo tones accompanied by just two instruments, Yu Jia’s pipa and Xu Hui’s guzheng. The sheer intimacy of the moment was a highlight for this moonstruck listener.

The concert’s nod to Singapore took the form of Wu Yin’s Legend of the Merlion, aptly helmed by two younger actors Dong Chang and Jin Ge, who were sassy and upbeat to the Nanyang-flavoured music of Rambutan from Simon Kong’s suite Izpirazione II. 

The connection between Chinese and English music came in Xu Zhi Mo’s 1928 poem Farewell Cambridge (above), read by Tao Hong and accompanied by Eric Watson’s Midsummer Common, its melody Lady Joan is familiar for those who know Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Greensleeves. Interestingly, Watson’s Tapestries I – Time Dances also provided uncannily excellent counterpoint to Gu Cheng’s I’m A Wilful Child, a confessional read with great conviction by Zhao Xiaosu.

The masterpiece of the concert was Bai Ju Yi’s famous Chang Hen Ge (Song of Everlasting Sorrow), an epic inspired by the suicide of Tang imperial concubine Yang Guifei. The tandem of Wang Weiguo and Li Yunjie (below) was poignantly mirrored by two huqins of Zhou Ruo Yu and Wu Ke Fei in Yang Chun Lin’s music.

Barely had this sober music ended when the incongruous sight of the heavily-tattooed Chinese rapper MC J-Fever leapt centre-stage to lead the entire cast for Spring.Summer.Autumn.Winter, a medley of poems set to symphonic rap music by SCO Composer-In-Residence Law Wai Lun. Purists might baulk at its inclusion, but it was very well-received by the audience. Here is evidence that Chinese poetry and music need not be moth-balled like museum pieces and consigned to antiquity. 

 
Concert photographs are courtesy of Esplanade Theatres by the Bay

VOICES OF SPLENDOUR / Huayi Festival 2013 / Review

VOICES OF SPLENDOUR

Huayi Festival 2013

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (15 February 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 18 February 2013 with the title "Rousing toast to top Chinese voices".

Chinese voices making their names in the world’s major opera houses are no longer a rarity, and this concert was a proud realisation of that fact. No programme was listed prior to the concert, but it turned out to be not far different from the annual galas presented by the Singapore Lyric Opera, but with a generous dose of Chinese art songs in sumptuous orchestrations added into the mix.

The voices were from the top rank of mainland Chinese singers, now plying their trade in western opera houses. Baritone Yuan Chenye (above) is no stranger here, having sung in Beethoven’s Choral Symphony that opened Esplanade Concert Hall at its inauguration in October 2002. He possesses a most expansive and heroic of voices, matched with a theatricality that served Figaro’s aria Largo al factotum from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and the Toreador Aria from Bizet’s Carmen well.

The advertised mezzo-soprano Liang Ning was indisposed on account of a skiing accident, and was replaced at the eleventh hour by Zhu Huiling (above), who was every bit a showstopper. She produced a beautiful tone and oozed dusky sensuality, totally appropriate for the Seguidilla and Habañera from Carmen, no doubt aided by her revealing low-cut black gown. 

Making the biggest impression and vocally most interesting was soprano He Hui (above), who opened with a radiant and nuanced account of Puccini’s Un bel di (Madama Butterfly). Her sense of drama was gripping, exerting a steely control for Verdi’s Ritorna vincitor! (Aida) and tugging the heart-strings in Puccini’s poignant Sola, perduta, abbondonata, from the final act of Manon Lescaut, set in the Louisiana wilderness. Unsurprisingly, she received the most vociferous of applause.

There were two duets with Yuan and the ladies. Mozart’s La ci darem la mano (Don Giovanni) and Verdi’s Ciel, mio padre (Aida) with Zhu and He respectively demonstrated the palpable vocal and physical chemistry between the singers.

The Chinese songs, such as Forever Flows the River, Under The Silver Moonlight, Pamir My Beautiful Homeland and Song of Fishermen, were mostly golden oldies, exercises in nostalgia which provided further opportunities for display of vocal prowess.

The Singapore Lyric Opera Orchestra conducted by Joshua Kangming Tan provided excellent accompaniment, and had several pieces on its own. Li Huanzhi’s Spring Festival Overture has become a ubiquitous fixture, and Chen Peixun’s Ode to Snow, exuded a pastoral demeanour that might have been mistaken for Vaughan Williams or Delius.

The concert closed with all three singers united in Gu Jianfen’s life-affirming ode That Is I, which got the audience so excited that an encore was demanded. The bubbly was brought out, with the rousing Brindisi (Drinking Song) from Verdi’s La Traviata – exuberant but sounding somewhat unrehearsed - being their just desserts. 

Photographs courtesy of Esplanade Theatres by the Bay.

Jie Chen Piano Recital / Review

JIE CHEN Piano Recital
Huayi Chinese Festival
Esplanade Concert Hall
Sunday (8 February 2009)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 February 2009

It is no exaggeration to assert that if Esplanade were to present more than one prize-winning Chinese pianist in its annual Huayi Chinese Festival, there will be no shortage of names for the next couple of centuries. The likes of Yundi Li and Lang Lang are merely the tip of an iceberg that does not look like melting anytime.

Now meet 22-year-old Jie Chen, whose wholesome and demure manner belies a serious artist, and seriously good musician. Her well-balanced piano recital showed why Asian pianists are conquering the world’s concert stages, the arena traditionally dominated by the Russian and Eastern European axis.

Poise and polish distinguished Chen’s view of Haydn’s Sonata in A flat major (Hob. XVI: 46), which brought out lovely sonorities aided by generous but judicious use of the sustaining pedal. A romanticised view, particularly in the central Adagio, would have sounded foreign to Haydn or Mozart’s ears, but borne with such beauty and persuasiveness, it is hard to resist.

Chen included two transcriptions of Chinese melodies by Wang Jianzhong, and these were lovingly recreated, with the piano simulating a host of traditional instruments. The cumbersomely titled A Hundred Birds Paying Respect To The Phoenix (Bai Niao Chao Feng in far more poetic Chinese) saw birdsong in resplendent mimicry, the trills of one nightingale out-singing the rest of the flock.

In the ubiquitous Bach-Busoni Chaconne, Chen never lost the rhythmic impetus set by the bass, upon which she built a cathedral of fancy and filigree. That she was able to bring out inner voices and harmonies while generating a large volume of sound was testament to her prowess.

The dynamic extremes of Chopin’s Four Ballades provided Chen’s sternest tests. Although her diminutive physical frame mostly matched the bluster and overwrought emotions demanded, but with caution thrown into the wind, as in the codas of the first two Ballades, choppiness in rhythm and several missed notes were a price to pay.

Taking a breather before the final pair was the best tonic, as the least intimidating Third Ballade and the rhapsodic Fourth Ballade (arguably Chopin’s greatest single movement) traversed from arch simplicity to the rarefied realms of ecstatic highs. For this listener, Chen’s unerring vision of the latter was alone worth the price of admission.

A return by this fine artist to our stages is imperative, and one most keenly awaited.