GREAT MASTERS OF CHINESE MUSIC / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

GREAT MASTERS OF CHINESE MUSIC

Ding Yi Music Company

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (5 March 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 March 2017 with the title "Pearls of wisdom from Great Masters".

Marking its 10th anniversary, Ding Yi Music Company invited four veteran Chinese instrumentalists to grace its annual gala concert, where they performed with the ensemble and played mentor to young local musicians. Singapore Chinese Orchestra Resident Conductor Quek Ling Kiong assumed dual roles of conductor and host, enlivening the proceedings with spur-of-the-moment remarks and jokes.

The 150-minute concert opened with Wang Dan Hong's Four Dreams of Plum Blossom, showcasing the ensemble's mettle in an impressionist score based on the Peony Pavilion saga. Then each of the four music-meisters took turns to perform solo and ensemble pieces, beginning with 76-year-old guan exponent Hu Zhi Hou.

A reed instrument with a timbre not unlike a saxophone, Hu's guan elicited a hauntingly beautiful tone, full of vibrato for Two Variations On Yang Guan. The audience held its collective breath, and applauded vociferously for his performance of Zhao Ji Ping's Silk Road Fantasia Suite with the ensemble, which wafted with the aromatic mystique of Xinjiang in China's Far West.

Tang Liang Xing's Sound Of Strings brought out the folk flavour of his pipa in a work that began slowly but got more animated as it progressed. His agility was matched by eight young players (winners at the 2016 National Chinese Music Competition) in a unison rendition of Wei Zhong Le's Spring Snowfall, where their synchronisation was close to perfect.

Erhu master Zhao Han Yang displayed utmost control and finesse in the rhapsodic Capriccio On Qin Qiang, a Northern Chinese melody accompanied by Yick Jue Ru on yangqin. This was contrasted with mellowness in Shanbei Cantabile, which sang of a more soft-spoken variety of heroism. With 13 younger erhu players, the outfit displayed virtuosity in Galloping in the Boundless Prairie, a close cousin of the famous showpiece Horse-Racing.

Li Zhen sported a Mongolian outfit, reflecting his formative years in Inner Mongolia, for his celebratory Daqing Mountains for dizi. He switched this for the fibreglass bass dizi in Longing Of The Grassland, where a deep and throaty tone waxed lyrical in a nostalgic pastorale. He and ten other players had a field day in Feng Zi Cun's Happy Gathering, where a corporate shrillness was exceeded by boundless enthusiasm.

Pearls of wisdom rolled from the lips of the experienced when asked about their personal philosophies. While most extolled the discipline of labour (“Practise, practise, practise” was a mantra), one emphasised an all-round education on understanding Chinese culture. Hu's secret was doing 400 push-ups a day!

Tang exhanged his pipa for an erhu to join Zhao in the famous Jiangnan Shizhu number Xing Jie (Walking The Streets), its ambling pace soon gathering speed for a delightful close. All four maestros converged for the final number, Hui (meaning “confluence” or “conference”), by Ding Yi composer-in-residence Phang Kok Jun. It was a short and undemanding piece with a memorable melody, which left both performers and audience happily sated.

Black and white photography by Andrew Bi, courtesy of Ding Yi Music Company.

NATIONAL PIANO / VIOLIN COMPETITION 2009 Grand Finals / Review

NATIONAL PIANO & VIOLIN COMPETITION 2009
Grand Finals
Victoria Concert Hall
Sunday (13 December 2009)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 December 2009.

This year’s edition of the National Piano & Violin Competition drew a record number of entries: 215 for piano and 106 for violin. Thankfully quality rose in equal measure with quantity, and often surpassed it. The grand finals featured the best in the Artist categories, and a 4-hour-long concert with six concertos (three each for violin and piano) partnered by the indefatigable Singapore Festival Orchestra conducted by Chan Tze Law ensued.

Winners of the NPVC Artist category:

Li Zhen & Zhao Meng Chan (from L)

Photo: The Straits Times

Two artists emerged head and shoulders above the rest. Violinist Zhao Meng Chan (China), from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, had the most natural way with Sibelius’ ruggedly hewn Violin Concerto in D minor. He ran the full gamut of emotions, cutting through swathes of orchestral sound with a searing intensity that went beyond superficial brilliance. His brand of dare-devilry, coupled with an unusual charisma, suggests he is ready to walk onto any world platform.

Zhao was the undisputed first prizewinner, edging out Wendy Toh (Singapore), whose version of the same concerto was well-disciplined, textbook-perfect and ultimately safe. Her exercise in good taste had to be content with third place, trailing behind Du Shuaili (China), whose free-spirited, wild and wayward stabs at Dvorak’s folksy Violin Concerto in A minor threatened to derail the proceedings on more than a few occasions.

On the piano, Shaun Choo (Singapore, left), who studies in Salzburg, cut the most elegant and aristocratic figure. His Rachmaninov Second Piano Concerto was a wonder in self-restraint and control, erupting into full-blown passion and unabated poetry right when the music demanded it. His expansive vistas in the slow movement which spoke of love and regret, contrasted with of the febrile excitement of outer movements, was easily the evening’s revelation.

Choo’s relegation to third place will be a cause celebré for time to come, but that should not diminish the achievements of Maria Immaculata Setiadi (Indonesia) and Li Zhen (China), both Conservatory students, who finished second and first respectively. Both punched way above their weight in Liszt’s fearsome concertos, exulting in salvoes of octaves while delicately filling in the pretty bits. It was Li in the First Piano Concerto in E flat major who packed in the tauter and more exciting performance than Setiadi, who was slightly less immaculate in the Second Concerto in A major.

Controversy is the stuff of musical competitions worldwide. However winners and also-rans can always remind themselves that true artistry is not a horse race, but a lifelong quest.