SPRING BLOSSOMS / NAFA Chinese Chamber Ensemble / Review

SPRING BLOSSOMS

NAFA Chinese Chamber Ensemble

Lee Foundation Theatre

Thursday (4 February 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 February 2016 with the title "Ushering in Chinese New Year with raucous music".

As the beginning of a new lunar year draws ever close, one is readily reminded that much Chinese music heralding the onset of spring exists beyond the usual suspects. This 80-minute concert by the excellent Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Chinese Chamber Ensemble was a showcase of the Chinese orchestra's celebratory colours. 

The first three works were led by Singapore Chinese Orchestra Resident Conductor Quek Ling Kiong, beginning with the ubiquitous Spring Festival Overture by Li Huan Zhi in Sim Boon Yew's arrangement. An elaborate display by the drumming section ushered in the furiously-paced opening that did not let up until its lyrical second subject heard on solo sheng.

Equally busy and raucous was Peng Xiu Wen's Lantern Festival, which depicts the feeling of anticipation on New Year's Eve. Xuonas, de facto brass of the ensemble, led the way through its gaudily lit procession to a rowdy conclusion.

The sole concertante work featured elegant young guzheng virtuoso Yvonne Tay, winner of numerous awards and prizes, in Zhou Yu Guo's Robe Of Clouds. This is a rhapsodic piece which begins with an evocative slow segment, almost impressionist in its narrative, before taking off in a fast leaping dance.

This culminated in a showy cadenza exhibiting the full gamut of the plucked instrument's sonorities, which Tay brilliantly explored to best possible effect. This undergraduate, Principal Guzheng in the Ding Yi Music Company, augurs a bright future for Chinese instrumental music in Singapore.   

The same could be said about young conductor Moses Gay who helmed the balance of the concert. His casual stage demeanour belied a serious musician who had something vital to say. Lo Leung Fai's Spring was perhaps the most eclectic work on show, its pivot being a big tune that sounded like a variation of the familiar Molihua.

Accompanying figures that resembled those in the West End musical Les Miserables and a finale whose theme reminded one of Dvorak's American Quartet were probably coincidental, but the end result was the same –  jolly good fun for all concerned. Wang Fu-Jian's arrangement of A Moonlit Night On The Spring River, sensitively played, provided genuine reflective moments before all of old Middle Road broke loose.

Ten singers in festive costumes fronted the Spring Festival Medley which erupted with popular seasonal favourites Da Di Hui Chun, Ying Chun Hua and the inevitable Gong Xi Gong Xi Ni. The hapless nightclub-like arrangement paid nil regard to harmonic subtleties, instead letting the lucky percussionist on the drum-set go to town on a rampage. 

Conductor Gay cheekily quipped that an encore would be played “whether you like it or not” and that turned out to be the cheerful Hua Hao Yue Yuan (Beautiful Flowers, Full Moon), which saw synchronised clapping from the audience. In the tradition of the Vienna Philharmonic, the performers hollered a hearty “Gong Xi Fa Cai”, and there can be no more auspicious greeting than that. 

NAFA COMPOSITIONAL RECITAL / NAFA Chinese Chamber Ensemble / Review

NAFA COMPOSITION RECITAL

NAFA Chinese Chamber Ensemble

Lee Foundation Theatre

Thursday (13 March 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 February 2014 with the title "Budding talent show promise".

Like the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory that trains young professional musicians to play in Singapore’s symphony orchestras, it is the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts which grooms instrumentalists for a career in ensembles like the Singapore Chinese Orchestra and Ding Yi Music Company. Similarly, the Academy also hones composers for contemporary Chinese music.

This hour-long concert mostly conducted by Quek Ling Kiong, Resident Conductor of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, provided a brief glimpse of the budding compositional talent for Chinese instrumental music here. The future does appear promising at the very least.

It began Zhou Tie’s Act Five, a quintet for erhu, bamboo flute, pipa, ruan and percussion. Resembling an ensemble that accompanies the stage, the group’s assignment was both dramatic and atonal, employing short fragments with the economy that recalled the Second Viennese School works of Anton Webern.

Ernest Thio’s Batu Belah for four huqins (two erhus, gaohu and zhonghu) and cello was based on a familiar Malay song. Operating on a rather narrow dynamic range, the work could have benefited from an expansion or development of the thematic material, and the performance from more accurate intonation.

The title of Lim Tee Heong’s study for solo zhonghu, Long Gou Shui (or Long Kao Chui in Hokkien), sounds far more eloquent in Chinese than the cumbersome English Swirling Waters in the Drain. Soloist Shunta Goh gave a sizzling performance of a perpetual motion that hovered between the repetitious Philip Glass and Bartok’s Solo Violin Sonata.

If the pieces for small ensemble were experimental in nature, the works for the full complement of players seemed more catered towards mass appeal and the genre of film music. Ng Chee Yao’s Ode of Affection employed all sections of the orchestra and played out like a romantic interlude from a movie.

James Goh’s Rain in a Season of Drought was sumptuously orchestrated, highlighting an lovely erhu solo and later a parade of percussion heralding a welcome precipitation. A drone, insistent beats from wooden temple block and strummed ruans provided the backdrop to melodies from the sheng and woodwinds in Ernest Thio’s Prayer.

The concert closed with the Erhu Rhapsody No.1 by Wang Jian Min, head of Chinese Music at the Shanghai Conservatory. Shunta Goh on erhu provided the requisite virtuosity for a work that typically began with a slow and meditative introduction, and then sprinting off breathlessly with the orchestra keeping up neck and neck to a brilliant conclusion.