CONFLUENCE / Singapore Ruan Ensemble 10th Anniversary Concert / Review

CONFLUENCE

Singapore Ruan Ensemble

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (5 July 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 July 2015 with the title "Ruan music hits the sweet spot".

The Singapore Ruan Ensemble marked its 10th anniversary with a concert that showcased some of the finest young talents in the local Chinese instrumental community. The group founded by Singapore Chinese Orchestra principal Zhang Rong Hui began with 20 players and has now expanded to over 50 members, augmented by bowed strings, wind and percussion for this concert.

The ruan is a four-stringed plucked instrument with a round torso, which sounds similar to a lute, guitar or banjo. Performing as a group, its mellow strummed sound has a pleasant ring, filled with varied timbres from instruments of differing registers. As a solo instrument, virtuosic playing of great agility makes for breathtaking spectacles.

The first half was led by Taiwanese conductor Ku Pao-wen, opening with Wang Chen Wei's Confluence. An excellent example of Nanyang music, its themes combined Chinese, Malayan and Indian influences which the ensemble played with much gusto, culminating in a fugue (a Western contrapuntal device) where the voices were very well delineated.

Law Wai Lun's arrangement of the guqin tune Xiao Xiang Shui Yun (Clouds Over Rivers Xiao & Xiang), a landscape portrayed in music, was beautifully atmospheric with a dizi melody rising above ruan accompaniment. Zhu Lin's Song Without Words was an Italianate serenade, the piano's contribution making its sound particularly Mendelssohnian.

Enjoying the solo spotlight was 16-year-old Megan Tan, whose sparkling performance in the vigorous finale of  Liu Xing's Reminiscences of Yunnan was distinguished by sheer steadiness and personality. Twin sisters Clara and Sophy Tan (below) were zhong ruan and guzheng soloists respectively in their composition Traveller, an engaging meditation on the Silk Road, which had contemporary touches provided by Govin Tan on tabla and Dayn Ng's electronica.

Doubly delighted: Clara & Sophy Tan
(or is it Sophy and Clara?)  enjoy the applause.

Quek Ling Kiong conducted the concert's latter half, which included another arrangement by Law, of the Nanyin favourite Melody Of Peach Blossom. Here, sanxian and dizi solos came to the fore. This was followed by Tan Kah Yong's arrangement of Nikolai Budashin's Fantasy On Two Russian Folksongs, where the ruan's kinship with its Russian counterpart, the triangular balalaika, became all the more apparent.

The evening closed with Law's arrangment of the popular war classic, Xin Hu Guang's Gada Meilin, starring the Mongolian Mai La Su and his traditional horsehead fiddle. This box-shaped 2-stringed instrument is bowed like an erhu but with a deeper voice of a cello. What enthralled the audience the most was Mai's throat singing, creating bitones with each exhalation, which got them applauding even before the act was up.

Two ensemble encores, one sentimental and the other fiery, closed a most satisfying evening of exuberant and spirited music-making.        

JOURNEY TO MONGOLIA / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

JOURNEY TO MONGOLIA
Singapore Chinese Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Saturday (5 November 2011)

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 7 November 2011 with the title "Tender is the Mongol warrior".

This very interesting concert by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra dwelled on two themes, music inspired by the rugged wilderness of Mongolia, and contrasting timbres of the matouqin (horse head fiddle) and modern cello. A short but arresting prelude introduced the remarkable voice of young Mai La Su, heftily built like a wrestler and attired in traditional Mongolian costume including headdress.

His was the art of humai, or throat singing, where the human voice produces multiple tones by the use of harmonics or overtones. At least two very different kinds of sound were discerned, a sustained low-pitched bovine grunt and an other-worldly high-pitched whine as if electronically synthesised.

These were skilfully employed in Tang Jian Ping’s Yuan (The Origin), dovetailing neatly with Mai’s matouqin playing. Cradled between the thighs, this unusual bowed string instrument produces a mellow sound similar to the viola and cello. In this rhapsodic piece, his artistry alternated between crafting a singing tone and multi-tasking - combining both skills simultaneously as well as plucking the Jew’s harp. The Mongolian minstrels of antiquity were being headily relived.

More conventional was Qin Li-Wei’s cello-playing in Wang Qiang’s Gada Meilin, a cello concerto on the life and death of the titular Mongolian general. His unmistakeably deep-breathed tone, full of body and lustre in its soliloquys, was reminded one of similar passages in cello concertos by Elgar, Shostakovich and Bloch. With such committed advocacy, this work deserves to be as well-known as the overplayed Butterfly Lovers and Yellow River Concertos.

The orchestra under Yeh Tsung’s direction also performed Tang’s Gallant Steed and Zhang Han Shu’s Beautiful Ke Er Qin Steppe, picture postcard portrayals of Mongolian lore and landscape. The former was a furiously driven depiction of the Golden Horde sweeping down the plains, the latter a tuneful suite in the manner of Khachaturian’s ballets.

Both matouqin and cello were united for Tang’s Genghis Khan Capriccio, a double concerto in one movement. Adequate amplification allowed both instruments to be heard equally, one playing the melodic line with the other accompanying, and later with the roles reversed. This was a partnership of prima inter pares – first among equals, in music that is both meditative and dramatic.

It was however Mai’s humai, which had the last words as the work came to a surprisingly subdued and subtle close. It seemed the mighty Mongol conquerer had a tender and human side too.