AN EVENING WITH PAUL HUANG / PAUL HUANG PLAYS TCHAIKOVSKY'S VIOLIN CONCERTO / Review

 

AN EVENING WITH PAUL HUANG 

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall 

Thursday (5 September 2024)

PAUL HUANG PLAYS 

TCHAIKOVSKY’S VIOLIN CONCERTO 

with Orchestra of the Music Makers 

School of the Arts Concert Hall 

Saturday (7 September 2024) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 September 2024 with the title "Violinist Paul Huang is a rising star in classical music".

Remember the name. Young Taiwanese American violinist Paul Huang is one who will light up the classical musical world in years to come, much like his older compatriot Cho-Liang Lin did a generation before. His most recent visit to Singapore included a chamber concert at the Conservatory and two concerto performances at the School of the Arts. 

The fireside chat was moderated by
flautist and YST faculty member Rachel Ho.

The former opened with an informal fireside chat, where he gave commonsensical advice to younger musicians in attendance. “Do it only if you cannot live without it,” was his take-home message about pursuing a professional career in music. 

That credo was fully realised in a rare performance of French composer Ernest Chausson’s Concert for violin, piano and string quartet (Op.21). Partnered by American-Chinese pianist Ning An and CAVE String Quartet comprising violinists Viktoria Ivaylova Marinova and Syu Cheng-Yi, violist Kaitlyn Chin Kai Li and cellist Ren Yuxiao, this unusual 40-minute long work oozed passion from every pore. 

Photo: Ong Shu Chen

Extraordinary was its configuration, alternating between being a piano quintet, a violin-piano duo and a duo accompanied by string quartet, all within its symphonically-conceived four movements. The performers’ roles seemed as fluid as its idioms, which relived the Liszt-Wagner metamorphosis of motifs, while balancing Gabriel Faure’s Belle Epoque niceties and Cesar Franck’s austerity. 

Most important was the cohesion achieved between soloists Huang and An, in highly virtuosic parts, and the young student quartet, which grew in confidence as the work proceeded. The rollicking finale, played as if their collective lives depended on it, deservedly brought out long and loud cheers. 

Much more familiar was Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s evergreen Violin Concerto in D major (Op.35), performed by Huang and the Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) led by Chan Tze Law. In his hands, this warhorse sounded freshly minted. His solo entry was arresting and made one sit up. 

Exhibiting faultless intonation, a gorgeous big tone and rich vibrato, his vision was redolent of great masters of the past – Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein and David Oistrakh just to name a few. The orchestra was equally responsive to every nuance and feint, supporting him to the hilt yet unafraid to exude passion and fervour in this unabashedly Romantic music. 

There were moments in the Canzonetta slow movement when Huang chose to exercise rubato, and the ever-alert accompaniment never skipped a beat. Then came the all-guns-blazing finale, catching fire and radiating white hot excitement until the very last chord. Huang clearly looked like he enjoyed himself, and followed the romp with Fritz Kreisler’s Scherzo-Caprice (without its preceding Recitativo) as brilliant encore. 

Photo: Andrew Lee

The balance of OMM’s programme was of showpieces united by the common theme of love won and lost. Richard Wagner’s Overture to The Flying Dutchman opened the evening, where the brass truly shone, reminding this was the orchestra that premiered the first two operas of the Ring cycle in Singapore. 

Woodwinds got their turn in the limelight for the opening of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture, after which soaring strings took over for the work’s unforgettable love theme. George Gershwin’s Porgy And Bess: A Symphonic Picture by master orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett was a showcase for an ever greater variety of sounds, including multiple percussion instruments, three saxophones and a keyboard simulating a banjo. 

Hearing popular melodies like Summertime, I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’, It Ain’t Necessarily So and Lawd I’m On My Way dressed up in Hollywood glitz and glamour was a perfect way to close an evening of fine music.

COLOURS & VARIATIONS / METAMORPHOSIS / Karen Tay (Harp), Duo Tarenna & Friends / Review

 

COLOURS & VARIATIONS 

KAREN TAY Harp Recital 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Friday (23 August 2024)

METAMORPHOSIS 

Duo Tarenna & Friends 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Saturday (24 August 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 August 2024 with the title "An exciting showcase of Singapore musicians and composers".

Over the past weekend, this reviewer has had the fortune and privilege of witnessing the world premieres of works by two young Singaporean composers, performed by young local professional musicians. Like the newly commissioned works recently unveiled by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at the National Day Concert, this should be part of a healthy norm, rather than an exception. 

The first was New York-based Singaporean harpist Karen Tay performing London-based Lim Kang Ning’s Tenebroso. Its title relates to many shades of darkness in contrast with light, both in mood as well as musical textures. Possessed with a restless energy, it opened with buzzing ostinatos, operating on both high and low registers of the instrument. Darker hues predominated before culminating in a series of sweeping glissandi, concluding an eventful 6 minutes which did not overstay its welcome. 

The solo recital, presented by Kris Foundation, was mostly of 20th century works, where an outsized virtuosity was requisite despite eschewing outward showiness for its own sake. British composer Benjamin Britten’s varied five-movement Suite and American harpist-composer Carlos Salzedo’s colourful Scintillation, displaying varying levels of dissonance, were complementary companions for Lim’s creation. 

On a lighter side, Tay’s elegant and understated virtuosity brought polish to Frenchman Marcel Tournier’s impressionist Sonatine and American Brandee Younger’s popular music-inspired Unrest I. Transcriptions of familiar music by Domenico Scarlatti and J.S.Bach, and an encore of her mother Magdalene Wong’s delightful Forever completed a highly eclectic and accomplished recital. 

Karen Tay with Kris Tan and Lim Kang Ning.

The following evening saw the premiere of Ding Jian Han’s hreeviFruowT for flute and string quartet, part of the Composer’s Drawing Board commissioning project presented by Duo Tarenna (violinist Tan Tiag Yi and violist Cindy Ow). Joined by violinist Farah Wu, cellist Chan Sihan and flautist Paul Huang, the atonal work employed the flute and piccolo as both solo and ensemble instrument. 

Huang had the most expressive moments, including uttering fragments of themes and using percussive slap-tonguing and purring flutter-tonguing techniques. Ever-shifting contours through its busy 12 minutes kept the listener guessing what comes next and how it would end. Due to the demanding entries exacted, the work was conducted by Ding himself. 

This made for an ideal companion for Lee Jia Yi’s Eclipse for violin & viola (Tan and Ow) which was shorter but exhibited a similar restlessness, with screeching harmonics and slithering glissandi being par for the course. 

The balance of the 75-minute concert was less demanding on the ears. Joseph Kosma’s Autumn Leaves, arranged for string quartet by Toru Takemitsu, saw the famous melody emerge from Ow’s viola. Its relationship to two movements from American Chinese composer Anthony Cheung’s modern and dissonant The Real Book of Fake Tunes seemed tenuous. 

The opening Allegro movement from Danish composer Friedrich Kuhlau’s Flute Quintet in D major (Op.51 No.1) was the concert’s most traditional work, while Death of an Angel by Astor Piazzolla (arranged by Tan) headily combined tango and counterpoint. British composer Thomas Ades’ Tango Mortale from his quartet Arcadiana was a brief essay on darkness and violence. 

To quote the young conductor Adrian Chiang who had recently conducted a concert wholly of local works, “If we do not support Singaporean composers, then who will?”

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG'S PIERROT LUNAIRE / THE VIOLIN SONATA REBORN / The Sing Song Club / Paul Huang & Helen Huang / Review

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG’S

PIERROT LUNAIRE

The Sing Song Club

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday (20 June 2023)

 

THE VIOLIN SONATA REBORN

Paul Huang (Violin)

Helen Huang (Piano)

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (23 June 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 June 2023 with the title "Enthralling diversity of chamber music".

 

The scope of chamber music has never been wider, and it was fascinating to witness two chamber concerts that featured vastly diverse repertoire in a matter of days. The 20^th century, with its myriad influences and inspirations, made all this possible.

 

The 11^th edition of the Singapore Lieder Festival, an annual fixture of The Sing Song Club, featured just one work, Arnold Schoenberg’s melodrama / song-cycle Pierrot Lunaire. Composed in 1912-13, it had the same impact as Stravinsky’s contemporaneous ballet The Rite Of Spring, by initially raising an almighty stink. Today, its 21 short songs in German (translated from Albert Giraud’s French texts) are considered seminal in the history of modernism.

 

Freely atonal in idiom, the vocalist practises sprechgesang (German for speech-song), a technique which hovers and glides between pitches, with notes often sounding indeterminate. This performance was unusual by having tenor Adrian Poon instead of a soprano doing the honours. Cladded in a white kaftan, his dramatic but non-histrionic interpretation stole the show, the clarity of diction aided by helpful English transliterations projected on a screen behind.

 

No one could be accused of missing the commedia dell’arte plot of “Moonstruck Peter” with themes of life, love, death, disillusionment and finally homecoming. The essence of chamber music was also highlighted by individual virtuosity from instrumentalists Christoven Tan (violin/viola), Chee Jun Sian (cello), Alvin Chan (flute), Sean Lim (clarinets) and Shane Thio (piano), led by conductor Zechariah Goh Toh Chai. The 40-minute act was surprisingly well-attended and enthusiastically received.

 

Diametrically different and more traditional was the violin sonata programme by violinist Paul Huang and pianist Helen Huang, both American-Chinese of Taiwanese descent who are not related to each other. Kudos to them for omitting the usual suspects of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, instead offering unexpected Romantic era choices that had links with the past.

 

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

Coming from opposite ends of the Romantic period were Mendelssohn’s Sonata in F major (1838) and Respighi’s Sonata in B minor (1917), the contrasts of which were stark. The former sounded like an extension of Mozart’s idiom, formal in approach with a flowing lyricism, while the latter came close to brushing the impressionist palette.

 

Both works showcased Paul’s beautifully burnished violin tone, blest with clear and immaculate articulation. This was also a partnership of equals, where Helen’s pianism was complementary in every step, perfectly projected rather than just providing mere accompaniment. The finale of the Respighi, in the form of a passacaglia, a tightly-wound set of short variations, was a prime case of achieving an ideal union.

 

For the second half, Paul opened with Ysaye’s unaccompanied Third Sonata or "Ballade" from Op.27 (1923), a work in a single movement. Its thorny and highly chromatic opening page posed no obstacles to his finely-honed technique, later letting rip on its fast and virtuosic conclusion.     

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

 

Saint-Saens’s Sonata No.1 in D minor (1885) is underrated as a showpiece, but the duo showed what mileage could be gotten from its superficially charming yet hazard-laden pages. What could have sounded tiresome in lesser hands instead came alive with an outlandish display of string and keyboard calisthenics, before closing in a most thrilling tarantella thought possible. One goes back to 1994 for Itzhak Perlman’s performance of this same work at this same venue for similar superlatives.

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

 

Cheered on by a smallish but vociferous audience, the Huangs’ delightful encores of Londonderry Air (arranged by Fritz Kreisler) and Arthur Benjamin’s Jamaican Rumba (arranged by William Primrose) made for a perfect send-off. This dynamic duo had deserved nothing less than a full-house.

Paul Huang & Helen Huang were presented by Altenburg Arts.