FEMME-DOM / Li Churen Piano Recital / Review

 

FEMME-DOM 

LI CHUREN Piano Recital 

The Arts House Chamber

Saturday (30 March 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 April 2024 with the title "Singaporean pianist Li Churen scores with creative programme and technical fluidity".

If one wondered whether musical compositions by female composers may be distinguished from those of their male counterparts, young Singaporean pianist Li Churen has the answer. Known for highly creative and thought-provoking recital programming, she showed that such distinctions are moot and mostly a waste of time. 

Opening her hour-long recital with Claude Debussy’s Clair de lune, she showed that the Frenchman who crafted such bold scores as La Mer and Iberia also had a tender and elegant side. It would be hard to find a more seamless and luscious reading as Li’s. Score one for femininity. 

Then came three suites of works linked by theme, form or harmonic relationships, first by a woman followed with one by a man. The Chaconne by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina (born 1931) is as hard as nails, based upon an ancient variation form perfected by J.S.Bach. Its grinding dissonances and technical complexities were comfortably surmounted by Li, who brought a lyrical and even jazzy slant to this difficult music. 

Photo: Wan Zhong Hao

This continued directly into Frederic Chopin’s Prelude in E minor (Op.28 No.4), which shared a sequence of descending notes in common. Here was music of touching vulnerability, laid bare by its transparency and utter simplicity. Embedded within its page-long score was an improvisation by Li, fleshing out its material without trying to improve it. 

Photo: Wan Zhong Hao

Two Techno Etudes (2000) by Japanese composer Karen Tanaka (born 1961) delighted in repetitive rhythmic ostinatos, minimalist in feel and even resembling boogie-woogie on crack. The fluent perpetual motion mastered by Li had a strangely calming quality, the waves of sound generated having a precedent in Frenchman Maurice Ravel’s Une barque sur l’ocean (A Boat on the Ocean) from Miroirs (Mirrors) that followed. The musical imagery conjured from her hands of a little vessel buffeted by wind and surf was epic. 

For the final tandem, Li’s new original composition Dream of a Panther sounded impressionist and improvisatory, its shifting tonal centres resembling the big cat’s dark variegated spots. A sequence of chords quoting Russian pianist-composer Sergei Rachmaninov’s Second Sonata may be equated with virility and might. 

Photo: Wan Zhong Hao

In contrast, Russian Alexander Scriabin’s Sonata No.4 opened with a vapourous sensuality but took off with its second movement’s soaring flight of fancy, aptly titled Prestissimo volando (Very fast flying). Unlike Icarus, brought down to earth with a fatal bump, Li remained defiantly buoyant till its rapturous close. 

Shouts of “brava” brought forth two rather appropriate encores, Czech composer Leos Janacek’s gently rocking cradle song Good Night! from the cycle On An Overgrown Path and Li’s own composition Burning Moon. 

Photo: Wan Zhong Hao

Almost mirroring the recital’s beginning, it reprised the same music as Debussy’s Clair de lune but now dressed in vastly altered harmonies. As if refracted through a distorting prismatic lens, the final outcome became as illuminating as blazing sunshine. Whoever said that women did not understand physics?

CANDLELIGHT CONCERT: VALENTINE'S DAY SPECIAL / LI CHUREN, Piano / Review

CANDLELIGHT CONCERTS:

VALENTINE’S DAY SPECIAL

Li Churen, Piano

Chijmes Hall

Sunday (13 February 2022)

 

The chapel hall of CHIJMES (formerly the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus on Victoria Street) looks like an ideal venue for a Candlelight Concert. Its high ceiling, cloistered atmosphere and reverberant acoustics, and when filled with hundreds if not thousands of electronic candles, provide for a most evocative ambience for such a concert. One almost expects a procession of habit-wearing monks parading down the centre aisle and incanting Gregorian chants. But no, this was a piano recital by Li Churen, one of Singapore’s brightest young keyboard talents, in a programme of romantic music inspired by the story of Romeo and Juliet and the marketing hype that is Valentine’s Day.

 

A few caveats for starters, Chijmes Hall is not sound-proof and one gets to hear ambient traffic (including a police siren) and celebrating diners in the restaurants outside. The Yamaha 6-foot grand piano is clattery in timbre and not fully in tune, forcing the performer to make the best with other resources. Fortunately, Churen is an artist who would make a grocery list or tax report sound positively inviting.   

 

The recital opened with Debussy’s Clair de lune from Suite Bergamasque, which received a clear and luminous reading, the right recipe for a romantic evening. Following that were popular songs juxtaposed with classical works in short suites. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s All I Ask Of You from Phantom of the Opera opened dramatically with orchestral textures well-transcribed for piano before revealing the lyricism of the song proper. This in turn segued seamlessly into Chopin’s glittering Fantaisie-Impromptu (Op.66), with the memorable cantabile (one of his most memorable melodies) at its heart. In a way, the Phantom served as a prelude to the Fantaisie, reliving an old tradition of preluding that was popular a century ago and almost lost to posterity.

 

Another suite included Hugo Peretti’s Can’t Help Falling In Love With You (popularised by Elvis Presley but originally based on Plaisir d’Amour by Jean-Paul Martini), two excerpts from Romeo and Juliet-inspired films (music by Nino Rota and Craig Armstrong) and Mandopop song Michael Wong’s Fairy Tale, which preluded Liszt’s evergreen nocturne Liebesträume No.3. It should be noted that all the pop songs were transcribed by Churen herself, and were different in styles and tastefully done. Her versatility was matched by the virtuosity displayed in the Liszt cadenzas, which were tossed off effortlessly. Many people can play this Liebesträume, but only the best can overcome those scintillating finger-twisters.

 

The final segment of the recital included two significant classical pieces, Tchaikovsky’s bittersweet Romance Op.5 and Chopin’s Ballade No.4 Op.52, incidentally both in F minor. Both works share a common spirit of introspection and underlying sadness. Tchaikovsky’s is more plain spoken, with a more animated dance-like central section, while Chopin’s is more complex and deeply felt, as its layers are successively peeled off. These two pieces were built up to terrific climaxes, notably in the Chopin and credit goes to the audience for holding its breath (and witholding applause) for the climactic pause leading to the tumultuous final coda. The ending was simply spectacular, as one would expect.

 

Alan Menken True Love’s Kiss from the animated movie Enchanted, arranged by a young Singaporean composer, was the gilded icing on the cake. Loud and prolonged applause ensured that the Chijming audience was gifted two encores, both written by Churen herself. Andante cantabile was a lovely improvisation on the slow movement from Schumann’s Piano Quartet (Op.47) while Llama’s Land a mini waltz-fantasy that closed the Valentine’s Day-inspired recital on a rapturous high. 

27TH SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO FESTIVAL / Review

27^TH SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

PIANO FESTIVAL

Kseniia Vokhmianina, Li Churen, 

Nicholas Loh & Chang Yun-Hua, 

Piano Recitals

Victoria Concert Hall

Thursday to Sunday (3-6 June 2021)

 

AN EXTRAORDINARY TIME

Zhang Haiou, Piano Recital

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (5 June 2021)

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 9 June 2021 with the title "Extraordinary weekend of piano". 

The Singapore International Piano Festival was cancelled last year because of the Covid pandemic. It returned this year to limited audiences of 50 members per recital, featuring a cast of young pianists who are presently based here. There was however an international flavour with artists from Ukraine and Taiwan alongside two Singaporeans. Significantly, three of the four had completed undergraduate musical studies in local institutions, and for the first time, women pianists outnumbered the men.

 

On the opening evening, Kseniia Vokhmianina’s inclusion of Three Preludes by Ukrainian composer Levko Revutsky was an exploration of nostalgia and longing. The late Romantic and Slavic flavour, reminiscent of Rachmaninov and Scriabin, looked back to a bygone era of harmonic opulence. This was prefaced by J.S.Bach’s First Partita, six dance movements crisply articulated and buoyantly dispatched. The short preludes also ushered in Rachmaninov’s Six Musical Moments, more extended essays that traversed from grief to ecstasy through lyricism and prodigious fingerwork. Vokhmianina’s grand manner of pianism follow in the illustrious tradition of great compatriots like Cherkassky, Gilels and Richter.

 

It was curious to see music of American avant-gardist George Crumb (born 1929) championed by Singaporean pianists. This tradition was started by Margaret Leng Tan, and now carried on by Li Churen and Nicholas Loh. Crumb was a pioneer of the “string piano”, where the instrument’s interior is played as an extension of the traditional keyboard.

In Crumb’s Five Pieces (1962), Li plucked, strummed and scraped the strings, creating a nether-worldly soundscape that was atonal, violent yet intermittently soothing, but always provocative. Her programme was a masterclass of sonority, opening with her own Prelude After Bach, an improvisation before launching directly into the eight rhapsodic pieces of Schumann’s Kreisleriana.

 

Similarly, Crumb’s timbral ambiguities fused almost seamlessly with Ravel’s impressionistic Miroirs (Mirrors). Fantastic visions of night moths, sad birds, a boat assailed by surging waves and pealing bells gave way to the most extroverted reading possible of Alborada del gracioso (Morning Song of the Jester). Li’s sense of imagination and colour knows little bounds.    

 

The following evening, Loh’s take on Crumb’s Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik (A Little Midnight Music, 2001), built around a motif from jazzman Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round Midnight, was  just as impressive. In addition to afore-mentioned string piano techniques, Loh struck the piano’s wood, threw in quotes from Debussy, Wagner and Richard Strauss, before shouting out in Italian a countdown to midnight.

 

The companion work was Frederic Rzewski’s North American Ballades, essentially fantasies based on popular melodies. Its fourth and final piece, Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, seemed custom-made for Loh’s leather-clad burliness, with a bruising feat of piano pugilism, where palms, arms and fists rendered the keyboard black and blue.     

 

Completely separate from the Piano Festival and presented by Altenburg Arts were two recitals by Chinese pianist Zhang Haiou, the first overseas-based pianist to perform in Singapore since last year’s circuit breaker. Two pieces of transcribed Bach (by Samuil Feinberg and Dinu Lipatti) established a rich tonal palette for two late Beethoven sonatas that followed. Romantic era outpourings were served without reservation or apology. In the opening movements, mellowness and fluidity (Op.109) were contrasted with defiant vehemence (Op.111). Both works converged with variations on hymn-like subjects to  close. Zhang’s stunning mastery of the narrative was not without humour too, such as cheekily inserting the Ode To Joy motif in one of the final sonata’s variations.  

Two masterly sets of variations also distinguished Taiwan-born Chang Yun-Hua’s recital that closed the piano festival on a high. Aaron Copland’s Piano Variations were astringent but compact, carved out with a granite-like resolve, while Brahms’s Handel Variations gradually built on its expansivity, culminating with the most mighty of fugal finales. The 21-year-old’s enormous range also encompassed Beethoven’s programmatic “Les Adieux” Sonata and Spaniard Isaac Albeniz’s lilting Almeria from Iberia, both handled with sensitivity and idiomatic nous.

 

Four evenings and five recitals of piano music, uniformly of high standard and without a weak link, would scarcely be thought possible during a pandemic. One can only be grateful by quoting the title of Zhang Haiou’s recital, and count this as “an extraordinary time” indeed.   

  

For the record, the encores performed at the end of each recital were as follows:

 

Kseniia Vokhmianina (3 June, 7.30 pm):

Rachmaninov Elegie in E flat minor Op.3 No.1

Marcello-Bach Adagio in D minor

 

Li Churen (4 June, 7.30 pm):

Li Churen Butterfly

Li Churen Llama’s Land

 

Zhang Haiou (5 June, 3 pm):

Chopin Nocturne in C sharp minor Op.Posth

Chopin Nocturne in E flat major, Op.9 No.2

 

Nicholas Loh (5 June, 7.30 pm)

Kapustin Etude in Seconds, Op.68 No.1

Gulda Prelude and Fugue

 

Chang Yun-Hua (6 June, 7.30 pm)

Balakirev Islamey

 

 

COMPASSION / Singapore International Festival of Arts / Review

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

FESTIVAL OF ARTS 2021

 

THE CONSOLER

Take 5

The Arts House

Wednesday (19 May 2021)

 

GHOSTS OF YESTERYEAR

Morse Percussion

Esplanade Concert Hall

Thursday (20 May 2021)

 

ALONE TOGETHER

Li Churen, Yang Shuxiang & Leslie Tan

The Arts House

Saturday (22 May 2021)

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 26 May 2021

 

Compassion is the series of eight chamber concerts in this year’s Singapore International Festival of Arts, specially curated to reflect on the Covid pandemic and its tragic toll. Over the past year, the nation had gone into partial lockdown, lives and livelihoods were lost, but ways of coping were found and an indomitable spirit prevailed.

 

Four concerts involving voice and wind instruments had been cancelled, but the remaining recitals still had cogent stories and messages to convey. The Consoler provided an hour of 20^th century piano quintet music, forged from the trials of two world wars.

 

The Russian Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet was conceived under a pall of Stalinist totalitarianism, hence its seemingly traditional forms were coloured by a tragicomic personal voice. Frenchman Charles Koechlin’s Piano Quintet composed in the wake of First World War carnage and the Spanish influenza pandemic gave the impression of sunshine breaking through a sea of dense clouds.

 

Take 5, comprising pianist Lim Yan, violinists Foo Say Ming and Lim Shue Churn, violist Janice Tsai (replacing Chan Yoong Han) and cellist Chan Wei Shing, wrung out every bit of pathos possible from both works. While Shostakovich’s faux congeniality posed an illusion of hope, it was Koechlin’s humanity which yielded true consolation.

 

The four young musicians of Morse Percussion - Derek Koh, Joachim Lim, Julia Tan and Cheong Kah Yiong – had a field day in two works by American composers. David T. Little’s Haunt of Last Nightfall memorialised the 1981 massacre of innocents during the El Salvador civil war. Pitched (marimbas and metallophones) and unpitched (drums) percussion with the aid of electronics painted a harrowing scenario which traversed from serenity to violence, climaxing with the simulation of gunshots and machine-gun fire.

 

By contrast, four movements from Philip Glass’ Aguas De Amazonia (Waters of the Amazon), adapted for percussion from piano pieces, provided soothing balm to the ears. The novel use of slung cow-bells, crotales, wine bottles, water-filled glasses and bowls conjured an ethereal and other-worldly sonority and feel, suggesting that a reconciliation with Mother Nature be the best salve for the world’s ills.   

Trio of Li Churen, Yang Shuxiang and Leslie Tan
at the Poland Constitution Day concert.

 

Alone Together saw solos, duos and a trio from the newly formed trio of pianist Li Churen, violinist Yang Shuxiang and cellist Leslie Tan. The music of Poland prominently in various degrees of carthasis works by Penderecki, Wieniawski and Panufnik. Li’s original solo compositions included improvisations on Schumann, Mozart and Chopin and were strong on nostalgia. 

The concert’s most poignant moments came in the Intermezzo from Francis Poulenc’s Sonata For Violin and Piano, composed in memory of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, murdered during the Spanish Civil War. The trio’s encore, Piazzolla’s melancolic slow tango Oblivion, showed that music - in all its infinite variety - had the power to heal. 

CANDLELIGHT CONCERTS: CHOPIN'S BEST WORKS / Li Churen, Piano / Review

CANDLELIGHT CONCERT:

CHOPIN’S BEST WORKS

Li Churen, Piano

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (7 May 2021)

 

Whatever one might think of Fever’s Candlelight concerts, with its gimmicky placements of hundreds of smokeless electronic candles in concert venues, it has at least got the choice of performers right. The Vivaldi Four Seasons concerts engaged the more-than-acceptable Vocalise Quartet with a quite excellent Jocelyn Ng playing the violin solos. The bar was further raised with pianist Li Churen helming their Chopin recitals, unimaginatively called Chopin’s Best Works. Corny title aside, this Yong Siew Toh Conservatory alumnus with further degrees from Yale and Cambridge gave a best account possible for an hour of Chopin’s piano music.

 

Were these really Chopin’s best works? One might argue that moot point, but there was little denying the selections were fair representations of each genre of piano pieces which Chopin indulged in. There was one each of the nocturnes, waltzes, scherzos, impromptus, études, préludes and polonaises, but no mazurkas, ballades, rondos or sonata movements, but that is already a lot to pack in within 60 minutes.

    

To open with the Nocturne in E flat major (Op.9 No.2) was a no-brainer. Is there a more evocative work than this to convey the romance and mystique of night? Surrounded by candles, Li’s reading was one of tonal lustre and warmth, aided by judicious rubato and mastery of ornamentations. After a short address, the salon charms of Waltz in C sharp minor (Op.64 No.2, companion to the notorious “Minute” Waltz) was followed by a sequence in E major.  

Scherzo No.4 (Op.54) was an unexpected choice, the trickiest and most elusive of the four Scherzi, but Li nailed it with a combination of nimble fingers and mercurial wit. The popular “Tristesse” Étude in E major (Op.10 No.3) evinced tenderness before the little caprice of its central section gave way to a thunderous cascade in the thorniest and technically most difficult passage of all (completely avoided by the likes of Richard Clayderman). I am sorry even to bring up Clayderman, but Li totally showed that charlatan up, and everyone should know who is the real pianist.  

 

The next two works were enharmonically related: Fantasie-Impromptu in C sharp minor (Op.66) and Prélude in D flat major (Op.28 No.15). Digital brilliance alternating with pure lyricism reigned in the former while the latter reminded this listener less of falling raindrops but rather the gentle and constant flickering of candlelight. Little had I expected this outcome, but the visual element provided by the evening’s setting cannot be underestimated. The formal Chopin programme closed with Andante Spianato & Grande Polonaise Brillante (Op.22), the longest work on show. The nocturne-like introduction was beautifully voiced, later giving way to the vigorous dance of Polish nobility, coruscating from start to finish.

 

It was a great way to end, and Churen’s encore, an original work called Llama’s Land – beginning with a gentle waltz but gradually building up into a lively fantasy – showed her to be an excellent composer as well. Some years ago, I referred to her in a review as the “epitome of poise and polish”. Now let me now add “passion” to that list of superlatives.

 

Li Churen will perform at the Singapore International Piano Festival on Friday 4 June at Victoria Concert Hall, playing the music of Schumann, Ravel, George Crumb and an original composition inspired by J.S.Bach. Be sure not to miss it.    

http://www.sso.org.sg/sipf 

The National Gallery (Old Supreme Court)
looks great by "candlelight" too.

POLAND MAY 3RD CONSTITUTION DAY CONCERT / Review

POLAND MAY 3RD 

CONSTITUTION DAY CONCERT

Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre

Tuesday 4 May 2021

 

Imagine the feeling of surprise and pleasure to be invited by the Embassy of Poland in Singapore to attend an evening of Polish chamber music performed by Singaporean musicians. I had honestly never quite realised the close relationship between our city-state and the Eastern European powerhouse. For example, I did not know that Poland had donated ten thousand chicken eggs to the residents of Sembawang during last year’s Covid lockdown, nor was I aware of Singapore’s investments in the Baltic sea port of Gdansk. Thanks to HE Ambassador Magdalena Bogdziewicz and Alvin Tan, Singapore's minister-of-state for Culture, Youth, Information, Trade and Industry, in their respective speeches, I am that little bit wiser.       

 

Before the actual concert, Li Churen performed
on piano the national anthems of Singapore and Poland.

The concert was performed by a newly formed local trio of violinist Yang Shuxiang, cellist Leslie Tan and pianist Li Churen, all of whom have affiliation with the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music. Yang and Li are fairly recent graduates while the veteran Tan, founding member of the T’ang Quartet, is part of the faculty. Despite their age gaps spanning almost three decades, the threesome displayed rather good chemistry together, but more later.

 

The evening began with Chopin’s solo music, with Li performing the Waltz in C sharp minor (Op.64 No.2), displaying insouciance and rubato to equal measure, before letting rip in the Fantaisie-Impromptu (Op.66), dizzying fingers alternating with pure poetry in its lyrical centre. The solo segment was completed with the Andante Spianato & Grande Polonaise Brilliante (Op.22). The showstopper was given its due, with a nocturne-like introduction leading up to a fiery show of digital virtuosity. Churen has been engaged to perform in Fever’s Chopin By Candlelight recitals and this year’s Singapore International Piano Festival. The organisers really know their pianists.

 

Wieniawski’s Legende was given a passionate reading by violinist Yang and Li, opening with calm but smouldering disquiet before erupting into a full-throated rhapsody. Shuxiang is well-known for the wide breadth of his string tone, but his largesse did not come to fruition in the hall’s dryish and somewhat unflattering acoustics.

 

Leslie Tan’s instrument was cast in better light for two varied movements from Krzysztof Penderecki’s Suite for  Solo Cello. This is a largely tonal work, quite different from the recently departed composer’s  notorious Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, but still retaining a spiky dissonance and acerbic quality. The Aria was more of a lament while the Scherzo taxed his limits of agility to the full. It was not easy listening but rewarding nonetheless for the emotional depth on display.

 

All three performers were united for the early Piano Trio (Op.1) by Sir Andrzej Panufnik (1914-1991) in three short movements. This was a student work, dating from 1934, when his personal musical voice had not fully formed. Eminently tonal and late Romantic in idiom, the first movement were redolent of Debussy or Ravel but not so impressionist. There was melodic interest in the central movement, albeit all-too-brief before heralding lively finale’s ostinato beat. Elements of Polish folk music come into play, and one is reminded of Szymanowski’s compositions influenced by his sojourns in the Tatra Mountains. This must certainly be the Singapore premiere of this very engaging work, and the trio members worked well together to make it spark.

 

You can hear it again when the Yang-Tan-Li trio perform a similar programme at the Singapore International Festival of Arts on 22 May at The Arts House.                     

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS / Metropolitan Festival Orchestra / Review

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: A MUSICAL AFFAIR

Metropolitan Festival Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (3 September 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 September 2017 with the title "Brief but fruitful musical encounter".

The title of this concert was probably derived from the David Lean-directed black-and-white movie Brief Encounter of 1945 where Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto featured prominently in its soundtrack. It however accurately describes the musical collaboration between musicians from Singapore and Austria in this concert, organised by local non-profit organisation Global Cultural Alliance.

Its first half featured the popular Rachmaninov concerto with young Singaporean pianist Li Churen in the demanding solo role. From the intent and demeanour of its opening chords on the Bösendorfer Imperial Grand, one could tell the confident and self-assured Li was going to put her personal stamp on the old warhorse. And it was not to be a self-indulgent spiel, but a totally musical affair where the music came first.

She comfortably surmounted its striding arpeggios, heavy octaves and tricky fingerwork, ably abetted by the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra conducted by Chan Tze Law. It was towards the slow movement's close, with just strings accompanied her passionate chords, which provided the concerto's most heartrending moments. Even when she took liberties in stretching out the final cadenza, it was the blazing conclusion that elicited the longest applause.

The second half was almost double the length of the first, and it featured the 60-strong Chorus Sine Nomine from Austria with the same orchestra conducted by Johannes Hiematsberger. The main work on show was Schubert's Mass No.6 in E flat major (D. 950), composed in the final year of his all-too-brief life.  

The choir's size and experience of its singers (it is not a youth choir) ensured that the widest possible range of dynamics was encompassed all through its heavenly length – some 50 minutes, typical of late Schubert. From the quiet opening Kyrie Eleison expanding to the ecstatic declamations of the Gloria and Sanctus, rising to lofty heights of Brucknerian grandeur, there was little that the mass of voices missed.

Both the ladies and gentlemen's sections were well-matched and homogeneously merged as one. In the Credo, the three solo voices of tenors Jakob Tobias Pejcic and Florian Ehrlinger and soprano Marie-Antoinette Stabentheiner emerged. The effable lilt in Et Incarnatus Est, with its gentle triplet rhythm, was simply delightful.

A solo quartet completed by alto Daniela Janezic and bass-baritone Daniel Gutmann distinguished in the Benedictus, albeit all too briefly, but it was the statuesque Stabentheiner's soaring voice that stood out. All the fugal sections were splendidly handled by the chorus, no doubt the effort of Hiematsberger's meticulous and expert honing.

Before the mass which headily closed the concert, there was more easy listening in choral favourites. Brahms' Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen (How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place) from A German Requiem, Gabriel Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine (sung in French) and Hubert Parry's Blest Pair Of Sirens (in English) merely served as the warming-up prelude for the Schubert.  However brief this encounter was, may more such fruitful collaborations of equals continue.

All photos by courtesy of Global Cultural Alliance.