RELATIVELY MOZART / PAUL LEWIS PLAYS MOZART PIANO CONCERTO 25 / Review

RELATIVELY MOZART

Donald Law, Piano

NAFA Wind Ensemble

Esplanade Recital Studio

Monday (13 February 2023)

 

PAUL LEWIS PLAYS

MOZART PIANO CONCERTO 25

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Thursday (16 February 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 February 2023 with the title "Three servings of Mozart's Piano Concerto No.25".

 

Mozart wrote some 27 piano concertos, but what were the odds of encountering the same concerto performed three times within the same week? The concerto in question was Piano Concerto No.25 in C major (K.503), which garnered the attention of Singaporean Donald Law and Briton Paul Lewis (twice) in two different but equally engaging programmes.

 

The first performance was in an idiomatic arrangement for winds by Malaysian pianist-composer Wong Chee Yean, with Law accompanied by the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Wind Ensemble conducted by Dutch wind specialist Joost Flach. The plangent sonorities of woodwinds and brass could easily overwhelm any solo instrument but this combo of eleven players - pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, French horns and bassoons, and double bass - were kept well in check.

 

This allowed the highly musical personality of Law to shine, impressing with crisply articulated  fingerwork and a singing tone. The effect was that of fine chamber music, with the martial strains of outer movements tempered by his lyrical restraint. When virtuosity was demanded, he also duly delivered. The choice of Hungarian pianist Lili Kraus’ cadenza for the first movement, which had the cheek of incorporating the La Marseillaise (French national anthem) near its end, was inspired.

The concert also saw Law playing Mozart’s Sonata in A major (K.331) which delighted with a familiar set of variations and the famous Rondo Alla Turca (Turkish Rondo). As a bonus, the ensemble was joined by four members of the special-needs Purple Symphony – a flautist and three percussionists – for a rousing version of that romping rondo.

 

Then there was the pair of performances with Lewis partnered by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra led by American conductor Robert Spano. Little was spared in Mozart’s original orchestration which had in addition to strings and winds, a pair of trumpets and timpani, providing the music with a festive and celebratory feel.

Photo: Chrispics + / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

 

Like Law, Lewis revelled in the solo part’s technically demanding passages which can easily get embedded within the busy orchestral partnership. Lewis played his teacher-mentor Alfred Brendel’s first movement cadenza, which also quoted La Marsaillaise, albeit a secondary motif (which Debussy used in his piano prelude Feux d’artifice), but at its beginning. What is the big deal about La Marsaillaise? That was because many listeners thought Mozart’s repetitive second subject to resemble that patriotic French tune by Rouget de Lisle.

 

Ultimately it was Lewis’ more free-wheeling interpretation, which included skillful ornamentations and added piano chords in loud tutti sections, which tipped the balance in his favour. Law was, however, in no way a lesser musician. As an encore, Lewis’ choice of Schubert’s brooding Allegretto in C minor, lovingly voiced, was icing on the cake.

Photo: Chrispics+ / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Robert Schumann’s grand Third Symphony in E flat major, also known as the Rhenish, closed the concert with a bang. The German’s orchestration has long been criticised to be dense and overblown, resulting in musicologists calling for the score to be pared down and slim-lined. There was to be none of that this evening, with a plethora of sound filling the limited confines to near breaking point.

 

Near being the operative word, as conductor Spano coaxed from the ensemble playing of the most lively kind, possessed with a nervous cutting edge throughout, but never going over the top. Standing out was the chorale of brass which distinguished the solemn fourth movement, a glorious portrait of Cologne’s gothic cathedral. By the symphony’s rapturous end, loud cheers indicated that some things should be best left well alone. 

       

10TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION CONCERT Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra / Review

10^TH ANNIVERSARY 

CELEBRATION CONCERT

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Wednesday (4 September 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 September 2013 with the title "A shining showcase".

The two fixtures that have most transformed the Singapore classical music scene in the past decade culminated in a harmonious confluence with this evening’s concert. In 2003, both the Esplanade Concert Hall and the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory first opened its doors to musical excellence, and have not looked back ever since.

Maestros of YST: Chan Tze Law, Wang Ya-Hui & Jason Lai.

The Conservatory Orchestra has matured into a classy outfit, under the nurturing influence of conductors-mentors Chan Tze Law, Wang Ya-Hui and Jason Lai. Led by the eminent American conductor Robert Spano, the orchestra showed how the millions of dollars pumped into tertiary musical education at the National University of Singapore have been more than well spent.

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony was an unusual choice to showcase the ensemble’s strengths. It is his shortest symphony, comprising just a single movement which also happens to be his longest symphonic movement. Cast in humble C major, it is a paradoxical masterpiece that concentrated big ideas with astonishing compactness. It resounded with an epic breadth but was soon over in 21 short minutes.

Spano’s breathtaking view of its unfolding musical narrative was reciprocated by the young musicians with great responsiveness. The strings radiated a gorgeous sheen, one that blossomed with each crescendo, the warmth of which would be the pride of top professional orchestras. Brass and woodwinds shined at just the right intensities, always luminous but never overpowering.

The climactic wrenching string chord near the end came like an epiphany. The imagery was that of glacial ice, thawed by the sun’s rays, melting and becoming the source and sustenance of life itself. It was that sort of life-affirming performance that made the evening rather special.

Another true epic was Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, which at 50 minutes is the longest piano concerto in the active repertory. All too often, the piano solo becomes submerged by the orchestral forces. Thus the Conservatory’s piano studies head Thomas Hecht seemed determined to ensure that every note of his was clearly heard. 

With shoulders built like a lumberjack’s, he applied an overpowering heft to every chordal and octave passage in the opening two movements. It was arresting at first, often pungent and never bland, but the ears soon tired to a take-no-prisoners approach of piano as percussion. This was thankfully tampered by moments of filigreed lightness and poetry, which showed that Hecht was equally capable of utmost sensitivity.

There was a lapse of concentration during the Scherzo’s most frenzied page, but he recovered quickly. The best was reserved in the slow movement, where young cellist James Cowell’s beautifully sung solo set the mood for the emotional heart of the work, where the balance between piano and the orchestra’s marvellous support was close to perfection.

The mood then switched to jocularity for the finale, where the gaiety of Viennese waltzes and dollops of schlagobers (whipped cream) ruled to close the concert on a satisfying high. Hecht’s solo encore was also by Brahms, the “Edward” Ballade (Op.10 No.1), a summation of all the drama that had come and gone.

Two piano titans confer, Thomas Hecht with Albert Tiu.
("This Brahms' a bitch, you know!")

The loud cheers came from Thomas Hecht's piano studio.

A cell of cellists: Qin Liwei, Leslie Tan and Ng Pei Sian,
also known as The Cello Guys.
(from L to R, as if you didn't already know)