10TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT / More Than Music & Friends / Review

10TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT

More Than Music & Friends

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (19 March 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 23 March 2023

 

About ten years ago, a violin and piano duo called More Than Music was formed by two young alumni of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, with their first concert presented by Kris Foundation. It was the intention of violinist Loh Jun Hong and pianist Abigail Sin to present classical music as accessible and unstuffy, yet without needing to dumb down.

 

Their unqualified success led to concerts involving more members of the musical community, including violinists, violists, cellists, and the odd guitarist and trumpeter. During the height of the Covid pandemic in 2020, they invited fellow musicians to present all ten of Beethoven’s violin sonatas in a series of digital concerts. 

More Than Music’s tenth anniversary concert featured some more musical partners, but it was Loh and Sin who opened with Brahms’ Scherzo in C minor. Part of the four-movement F-A-E Sonata crafted by three composers for the violinist Joseph Joachim, its recurrent motif of three short stabs and one long note was reminiscent of Beethoven’s famous Fate theme.

 

Its sheer insistence, placated by a swooning lyrical melody, provided cuts and thrusts of this short impactful movement. Both players were in one mind throughout, bonded by a chemistry developed over the past decade, making for an impressive opening.  

 

Ironically, that would be the duo’s last outing for the evening, with Sin joined by fellow Conservatory colleague Albert Tiu in Rachmaninov’s Second Suite for two pianos (Op.17). Its inclusion also marked the 150^th birth and 80^th death anniversaries of the popular Russian composer. The first movement’s Alla Marcia, with quick successions of chords could have made for heavy weather, but their response was both crisp and devastatingly accurate.

 

Split-second razor reflexes ruled in the mercurial Waltz, dispatched with almost nonchalant ease, while the Romance simply oozed sensuality from every pore. The finale’s swirling Tarantella could have been even more scintillating had they gone absolutely for broke. Cooler heads prevailed, but the outcome was still a satisfying one.

 

As the pianists retired, Loh was joined by violinist Yang Shuxiang, violists Zhang Manchin and Wang Dandan, and cellists Ng Pei-Sian and Jamshid Saydikarimov (the latter four all Singapore Symphony musicians) for Tchaikovsky’s String Sextet in D minor (Op.70), also known as Souvenir De Florence.

 

This has to be the usually-morose Russian composer’s most cheerful and uplifting work, the music filled with Mediterranean sunshine and high spirits. From the outset, all six players bathed the hall with a warm sonorous glow, with each and every part distinctly discerned. Passion was in full flow for the fast outer movements, balanced by playing of true finesse in the slower second movement.

 

Here, pizzicato strings laid the way for a love-in between Loh’s violin and Ng’s cello, their parts so closely intertwined as to delight the inner voyeur of every music-lover. Most of all, it was the unbridled joy of music-making exhibited between friends which was the essence and lifeblood of chamber music. May we have many more years of More Than Music.  

 

An impressive wall of posters
from past concerts 2013-2023.

BRUCH VIOLIN CONCERTO AND MAHLER SYMPHONY 5 / GIVE AND TAKE (BACK AND FORTH) / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / T'ang Quartet / Review

BRUCH VIOLIN CONCERTO

AND MAHLER 5

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Thursday (2 March 2023)

 

GIVE AND TAKE (BACK AND FORTH)

T’ang Quartet

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Friday (3 March 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 March 2023 with the title "Chloe Chua emotes like an old soul, T'ang Quartet's partnerships bear fruit".

 

It is hard to believe that violinist Chloe Chua is still only sixteen. She seems to have been around a long time, chalking up impressive concerto performances since winning first prize at the Yehudi Menuhin Competition for Young Violinists in 2018. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra has also  promoted her, inviting her to be Artist-in-Residence for 2022/23 and embarking on a series of recorded albums.

 

Her performances so far have involved concertos from the baroque and classical periods, so Max Bruch’s First Violin Concerto in G minor, an acme of German Romanticism, was a first. From her opening entry, very exposed and the work’s barometer, she came across as an old soul. Purity and richness of tone, immaculate intonation and utter confidence stood her out as someone no longer to be labelled a child prodigy.

 

Artists blossom and mature, bringing new and personal ideas, not just those taught in the studio. Technique has never been an issue, and it was her ability to emote openly and without fear which brought a new dimension to this performance. The lyrical slow movement rose to passionate heights of ecstasy.

 

This was achieved with neither histrionics nor superficial effects, but sheer innate musicality. Her fiery passion in the finale merely confirmed earlier thoughts, with loud audience acclamation and adulation being just desserts.

     

Watch Chloe Chua's performance of the Bruch concerto with SSO here:

The last time SSO performed a Mahler symphony was during pre-pandemic 2019, almost an age ago, so Covid-era cobwebs had to be dusted off for the Austrian’s Fifth Symphony. Led by Dutch-Maltese guest conductor Lawrence Renes, the orchestra honed an exciting reading, full of fervour despite a few rough edges. Guest French horn principal Esa Tapani was excellent in the central Scherzo, which delighted in lilting waltz rhythms. The famous Adagietto, scored for just strings and harp, was crafted with rare beauty. Completing the romp was the finale’s playful counterpoint, capped by the brass in its full glory.  

 

Another Singapore musical icon, T’ang Quartet, has had a turbulent 30^th anniversary season. It underwent yet another change in personnel, with SSO musicians violist Wang Dandan and cellist Jamshid Saydikarimov replacing Han Oh and Wang Zihao for its latest concert. While this configuration is unlikely permanent, founding violinists Ng Yu Ying and Ang Chek Meng can still be relied upon to make a good fist of whatever the quartet performs.  

Composer Chen Zhangyi takes a bow.

 

Two works by Young Artist Award recipient Chen Zhangyi were on show including the world premiere of Give And Take (Back And Forth), which comprised six short varied vignettes. Chen’s music blends aural lushness with gentle dissonances in a memorable way, apparent in the opening Towers and Fountains, a depiction of Singapore cityscapes, and Drunken Poets, where plucked pizzicatos and bowed strings merged seamlessly within a colourful canvas. Ear-catching also were  more rhythmic movements, such as the minimalist swagger of Gears And Cycles – Interlocked or  Night Grooves, where jazz, pop and rock rhythms provided an dynamic close.  

 

The quartet’s sensitive and perceptive insights made music come alive, replicated in Chen’s Twin Cinema for string nonet (two string quartets and double bass), which saw a fruitful partnership with younger musicians. Here both quartets had separate narrative threads, representing different cultures (Venice and Singapore) with their respective interactions and reactions being the work’s essence.

 

The concert closed with that favourite staple of the quartet repertoire, Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F major. In a performance that luxuriated in lyricism and thematic cohesion, it was the pizzicato paradise of its Scherzo that piqued the ears, and the finale’s irrepressible perpetual motion which brought on the loudest cheers. 

PRELUDE TO THE AFTERNOON OF A FAUN, STRAUSS' DON JUAN AND ALBERT'S TCHAIKOVSKY / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra / Review

PRELUDE TO THE 

AFTERNOON OF THE FAUN,

STRAUSS' DON JUAN & 

ALBERT'S TCHAIKOVSKY

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Tuesday (10 April 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 12 April 2018 with the title "Pianist Albert Tiu steals the show". 

The Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra's final concert of the academic year resembled a graduation prom. Most of the lady players wore colourful evening gowns, adding a dose of glamour to a programme filled with glitzy orchestral showpieces. These are works which professional musicians are expected to play in orchestras, and the young players did a fine job under the helm of French guest conductor Olivier Ochanine.

Bravura was first order of the day in Richard Strauss' tone poem Don Juan. Needing little or no time to warm up, the orchestra immediately launched itself into its passionate pages. The romantic sweep and swashbuckling impressed, which was made even more special by the solo playing. The plaintive oboe in the work's dreamiest episodes was excellent, matched by solo clarinet in repartee, and the famous passage for French horns was truly a moment to wait for and savour. There were heroes and heroines aplenty.

The orchestra's versatility showed when it switched gears for Debussy's Prelude To The Afternoon Of The Faun with its languid and haunting opening. Long sinuous lines on solo flute set the mood where the ear entered a realm of sensuousness. The sensitive and evocative playing was accompanied by projected visuals created by media students Mervin Wong and Emilia Teo.

Great music and spirited playing do not need added visual dimensions, and the moving pictures of dispersing smoke, seeping water and close-up shots of plants and flowers were merely innocuous appendages. Other than an unintentionally comical cartoon of a faun, this seemed like an experiment in synaesthesia, an affliction where sounds induce coloured visual hallucinations. 

The longest work of the evening was Tchaikovsky's rarely performed Second Piano Concerto in G major, with Albert Tiu as soloist. Trailing in popularity to its predecessor by a long distance, it is also ungratefully taxing for the pianist.

Tiu however mastered its crunching chords, stampeding octaves, and tricky fingering with fearless aplomb, even if occasional over-enthusiastic orchestral playing masked some passages. More importantly, the ballet-like quality of the music shone through, culminating in a long and treacherously rhythmic piano cadenza which did little to faze Tiu.

The slow movement, played in its original unedited version, was a essentially a mini-concerto for piano trio. Concertmaster Askar Salimdjanov and principal cellist Jamshid Saydikarimov, both from Uzbekistan, conducted an exquisite pas de deux in an extended introduction before being sidelined by the piano in the concerto's finest melody. Resolution invariably occurs with Tchaikovsky, and a loving menage a trois with all soloists ensued. 

The infectious gaiety of the rollicking finale brought the loudest cheers and two encores. Still with Tchaikovsky, Tiu emoted with Mikhail Pletnev's transcription of the Andante from Sleeping Beauty, followed by his own arrangement of a fugal tango by Astor Piazzolla for the marvellously balanced threesome. The house simply rocked. 

  

Watch this performance of 

Tchaikovsky's Second Piano Concerto here: