TRANSCENDING THE ORDINARY / Tang Tee Khoon Grand Series / Review

TRANSCENDING THE ORDINARY

Tang Tee Khoon, Violin et al

Esplanade Recital Studio

Thursday (28 May 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 May 2015 with the title "Welcome a new string quartet of maidens".

When the National Arts Council's prized 1750 J.B.Guadagnini violin was loaned to young Singaporean violinist Tang Tee Khoon some six years ago, one of the conditions was that she performed it regularly here in concert. She has more than fulfilled that role of violin ambassador and now has her own line of recitals called the Tang Tee Khoon Grand Series, featuring guest musicians from around the world.

The first pair of concerts in this series was Transcending The Ordinary, focusing on the late chamber works of the Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828). The Viennese composer had lived in the looming shadow of Beethoven and was better known for his songs or lieder. Much of his later and more ambitious works where discovered and published after his premature death.

The works performed on the first evening date from 1824 to 1827, beginning with Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata in A minor, composed originally for the obsolete guitar-like instrument with frets called the arpeggione. Today's cellists claim it as their own, including the Briton Colin Carr who brought out all the singing qualities on his Goffriller cello. His tone was warm and sumptuous, seamlessly gliding between passages of absolute cantabile and blissful elation in its three movements.

Never producing a harsh tone too was pianist Sam Haywood whose support was close to perfection, and the stakes were upped in the Fantasy in C major for violin and piano. This is undoubtedly Schubert's most virtuosic work for these two instruments, from its hushed dreamy opening with pianissimo tremolos to soaring highs filled with octaves and running scales. Tang and her Guadagnini made their entrance, not so much as boldly but sensitively, fully aware of the music's innate poetry.

Playing for almost half an hour, the work traversed peaks and valleys, best exemplified in the central variations on the Schubert's lied Sei mir gegrusst (I Greet You) which had all the nuances one could hope for, before a reprise of the opening's reverie. The work closed on an exuberant high with the big strides of one of Schubert's most happy melodies.

For the second half, Tang was joined by violinist Yuki Kasai, violist Mariko Hara and cellist Olivia Jeremias, musicians all based in Germany, for Schubert's String Quartet in D minor, also known as “Death And The Maiden”. All the ladies are experienced chamber musicians, and one could tell by their immediacy in the way they launched into its dramatic first movement.       

A common sense of purpose united the foursome through the music's heightened tension, and this electricity never flagged in the work's 40 minutes. Even in the slow movement's variations on the chordal piano theme from the lied Der Tod Und Das Mädchen, the accompaniment provided for Kasai's pleading solos was sprightly and alert.

The brief and prickly Scherzo served as a prelude to the finale's furious tarantella rhythm. Here the unision playing in high tempos, far more tricky than it sounds, was delivered with stunning accuracy. There was to be no tiring as the quartet raced to a breathless finish, that was greeted by a near-capacity audience with loud acclaim. It was after the fact that this reviewer learnt that the four virtuosas were playing together in concert for the very first time.

A question remains: what should this very talented new string quartet be called? The name Tang Quartet has already been taken, so what about Schubert's Death And The Maidens? 

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP / Tang Tee Khoon & Friends / Review

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

Tang Tee Khoon (Violin) and Friends

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday (24 September 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 September 2014 with the title "Chamber music treat from virtuosos".

Local musicians are the mainstay in Singapore’s active chamber music scene, but once in a while, it is good to have foreign musicians inject variety and diversity to the list of usual suspects. Singaporean violinist Tang Tee Khoon, presently based in London, has forged successful partnerships with British musicians and their performances here have never been less than sterling.

Her latest collaboration, with pianist Sam Haywood and cellist Matthew Huber, focused on the close interwoven lives of Felix Mendelssohn, Robert and Clara Schumann, and the young Johannes Brahms. Here was a meeting of the giants of musical Romanticism, which got the requisite response from a trio of young virtuosos they deserved.

The moment Huber’s 1685 Francesco Ruggieri cello sang the opening phrase in Schumann’s Three Fantasies Op.73, one knew it was going to be a musical treat. His use of gut strings ensured a mellowness of timbre that was simply gorgeous, and his singing tone rode through the music’s melting lyricism with rapturous fervour.

Haywood’s control of pedalling on the Steinway grand was close to perfection in the sometimes over-reverberant acoustics of the Recital Studio, and he blended ideally with both Huber and Tang, who performed Clara Schumann’s Three Romances Op.22. Her 1750 J.B. Guadagnini, on loan from the National Arts Council, shone prettily in the tender moments of these rarely-performed miniatures.

How Clara Schumann was able to maintain a semblance of hope and optimism in 1855, when her beloved husband was dying a slow death in an asylum for the insane, was testimony to her fortitude and dignity. Her spirit was buoyed by the presence of Brahms, who remained a close confidante till their deaths in the 1890s. All this was detailed in the helpful programme notes that accompanied the evening’s marvellous programme.

The main works on show were two of the greatest piano trios of the classical canon. Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No.1 in D minor is regularly played here, but rarely does one find a performance that radiated such warmth and true feeling as this evening’s outing. The overall balance was excellent, with both stringed instruments raising their stakes to meet the piano’s multitudes of notes.

The Scherzo flew on fairy-wings, and there was an audible gasp of delight from the audience as the music simply evaporated into the ether. The ardency and passion on display carried the outer movements which stormed and stressed, but there was never a moment of impetuousness or misplaced power.

Brahms’s Piano Trio No.1 in B major, in its revised version, provided even greater scope for expression and an emotional outlet. The broad opening melody, one of his most memorable, received a grandstanding treatment, contrasted with the Hungarian-inflected Scherzo, the slow movement’s longeuers and the finale’s breathless rush to the finish post. Performances like these leave listeners craving for more, and Tang with her friends will return in May next year with the late works of Franz Schubert, which should be an exciting prospect.        

Photographs by the kind permission of Tang Tee Khoon and Friends.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, April 2014)

LISZT AT THE OPERA

LOUIS LORTIE, Piano

Chandos 10793 / *****

Make no mistake, this is about the greatest disc of opera transcriptions by Franz Liszt since Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s mid-1990s anthology on Decca. There is some duplication of works but in the big showpieces, French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie holds his own against the best in the catalogue. In the Wagner Tannhäuser Overture which opens the set, he commands an orchestral-like sonority, including the spectacular echoing effects of the Pilgrim’s Chorus. For his sheer sweep, no one need miss Moiseiwitsch, Cziffra or Bolet now.

The Reminiscences de Don Juan after Mozart’s opera builds upon the duet La ci darem la mano before riotously dispatching the Drinking Song with gay abandon. The ad-libbed bits to the Waltz from Gounod’s Faust are also deliciously crafted. For contrasts, there are also quieter pieces, including the Romance to the Evening Star (Tannhäuser), the Spinning Chorus from Wagner’s Flying Dutchman and the best bits from Tristan and Isolde. The latter take the form of a feverish Liebestod (Love-Death) and Lortie’s own transcription of the Prelude. In terms of stunning pianism, this one is hard to beat.

ISSERLIS Piano Music

SAM HAYWOOD, Piano

Hyperion 68025 / ****1/2

Julius Isserlis (1888-1968) was the grandfather of British cellist Steven Isserlis. Born in Chisinau (now present-day Moldova), he was schooled in Kiev, Moscow and in Western Europe. His teachers included Puchalski (who taught Horowitz), Taneyev (Tchaikovsky’s favourite student) and Widor (of organ Toccata fame). Emigrating from Austria to England before the Anschluss in 1938, he was spared from the Nazi holocaust. He wrote mostly short works for the piano, proudly bearing his Russian heritage. These are heard here in very attractive and idiomatic performances by young British pianist Sam Haywood.

Listen first to his Ballades Op.3, their Chopinesque titles belying a debt of influence to the young Scriabin and Rachmaninov. The E flat minor Ballade shares a theme rather similar to Rachmaninov’s Elegie (Op.3 No.1), also in the same key. His shorter Preludes, several of which have sequestered and “lost” in Russian archives, are equally enjoyable. Also distinctive are the orientalisms in the Prelude Exotique and virtuoso writing in Toccata in Fourths, Flight of the Swallow and The Bumble Bee, all of which make lovely encores. Steven Isserlis makes a cameo appearance in the Ballade in A minor for cello and piano, 9 minutes of Tchaikovskyan melancholy. Well worth exploring.

RUSSIAN COLOURS / Tang Tee Khoon & Sam Haywood / Review



RUSSIAN COLOURS

TANG TEE KHOON, Violin

SAM HAYWOOD, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday (19 March 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 21 March 2014

Some items of historical significance may be classified as national treasures. One such treasure is a 1750 J.B.Guadagnini violin, purchased by an institutional benefactor and donated to the National Arts Council. Its exclusive use has been designated for Singaporean violinists making their mark in the international scene. Having previously toured the world with Siow Lee Chin, it now rests in the deserving hands of 30-year-old Tang Tee Khoon.

Tang is a living treasure of sorts herself. Having won the grand prize for all-round best musician at the 1993 National Music Competition at the age of 9, she has gone on to fulfil the vast potential predicted of her, as a chamber musician of the highest order. Her latest concert, one centred on Russian music, also showed she has matured beyond raw prodigious talent to something truly transcendent.

Despite her petite and slender built, she exuded a big and brawny tone on the violin, one capable of cutting through plangent piano textures and capaciously filling the hall. In Prokofiev’s Second Violin Sonata, she alternated between its bittersweet reminiscences and mercurial dervishes, so expertly and confidently without as much as breaking into a sweat.

Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher (Memory of a Beloved Place), three pieces which progress from serious melancholy to salon lightness, she brought out the requisite shades and nuances truly defined by the concert’s title, Russian Colours. Through these, an unfailingly singing tone happily co-existed with an iron-clad technique and razor-keen responses.

British pianist Sam Haywood was much more than mere accompanist, a partner in true music-making whose crisp and clearly-defined fingering enhanced the entire aesthetic experience of chamber music. 

His solo segment offered two pleasant but short Preludes by Julius Isserlis, the Russian-Jewish grandfather of the renowned cellist Steven Isserlis (both seen left), which hail from the Slavic sound world of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. In the latter’s Preludes in G minor and B flat major (from Op.23), the same ones performed by Lang Lang in a solo recital seven years ago, Haywood showed himself to be a far more sensitive and superior musician.    

The concert closed with the duo indulging in the fantasy world of Stravinsky’s Divertimento, adapted from his ballet The Fairy’s Kiss after Hans Christian Andersen, which itself is a tribute to Tchaikovsky’s dance treats. Elements of the Russian’s neoclassical style mixed with Romantic lushness and modernistic gestures defined its four connected sections which flowed very pleasingly.

This was in large part due to the duo’s gift of musical storytelling, highlighting the music’s emotions peaks and troughs, while filling in the details with strong characterisations. The many virtuosic turns which pepper the score seemed like child’s play, thrilling and astonishing the listeners.

However one just wished that the audience did not behave like some 18^th century mob, clapping inappropriately between pauses and short breathers, thus disrupting the music’s natural flow. Their sincere enthusiasm was rewarded with another Russian gem, more heart-on-sleeve emoting in Rachmaninov’s ethereally beautiful Vocalise.  



Sneak Preview of RUSSIAN COLOURS / Tang Tee Khoon & Sam Haywood @ Steinway Gallery Singapore

 

One of  Singapore's finest young violinists, Tang Tee Khoon, gave a short sneak preview of her concert Russian Colours, on the afternoon of Sunday 16 March 2014 at Steinway Gallery Singapore. She was partnered by British pianist Sam Haywood. The duo will perform a full programme at Esplanade Recital Studio on Wednesday 19 March 2014 at 7.30 pm . 

The full programme includes:

TCHAIKOVSKY Souvenir dun lieu cher

PROKOFIEV Violin Sonata No.2

STRAVINSKY Divertimento

RACHMANINOV Préludes (Selections)

J.ISSERLIS Préludes (Selections)

Tickets are still available at SISTIC outlets and the www.sistic.com, and do enjoy a 10% discount when you use this code: Tang Steinway 

Tang and Haywood first performed the 1st movement from Tchaikovsky's Souvenir dun lieu cher, a slow piece which was originally the middle movement of the Russian composer's Violin Concerto in D major. This was, of course, discarded in favour of the Canzonetta we know and love today. Tang brought out a beautiful but striking tone on the 1750 J.B.Guadagnini violin on loan by the National Arts Council.

Sam Haywood added a couple of solo pieces of his own,
Chopin's Nocturne in D flat major Op.27 No.2
and Rachmaninov's Prélude in B flat major, Op.23 No.2.

The duo also spoke briefly how their partnership came about,
and what Russian music meant to them.

The short programme concluded with the last section
of Stravinsky's Divertimento, which is an adaptation
from his ballet The Fairy's Kiss. 

Tee Khoon meets with young pianist Liew Ai Xin
from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.