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?”

SETTS #2 / South-Eastern Ensemble for Today's and Tomorrow's Sounds / Review

SETTS #2

South-Eastern Ensemble for

Today's & Tomorrow's Sounds

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (24 January 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 January 2016 with the title "Madhatter's party with serving of afternoon tea".

The second concert by the South-Eastern Ensemble for Today's & Tomorrow's Sounds (SETTS), a new music ensemble formed wholly by professional musicians, was by far a less anarchic affair than its debut last year. It nevertheless occupies an important position for the performance of new local works once undertaken by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra's New Music Forum.

The 70-minute concert presented works by seven composers, including two world premieres and two Singapore premieres. Emily Koh's Implodex! (Singapore Premiere) for six musicians opened the proceedings. Conducted by SETTS co-founder Christoph Wichert, its configuration had strings (violin, viola and cello) placed onstage, complemented by offstage woodwinds (flute, oboe and clarinet).

Its title delves upon the origin of matter and anti-matter, with fragments of sound passed around the hall, the concordant alternating with the discordant. Its climax was a solo cadenza from oboist Joost Flach who went on to tear up pieces of paper, symbolic of a point of no return, before all the musical parts coalescing in a serene C major chord.

Receiving a World Premiere was full-time National Serviceman Tan Tiag Yi's The Quiet scored for string quartet (Christina Zhou & Nanako Takata on violins, Janice Tsai on viola and Lin Juan on cello) and marimba. Iskandar Rashid's mellow marimba strikes provided a gentle counterpoint to pizzicatos and bowing from the strings in this short movement, which revealed in its subdued mood the influence of Shostakovich.

Chen Zhangyi's Lost In Order was composed ten years ago, with the vastly contrasting timbres of Roberto Alvarez's flute pitted against Iskandar's assembly of four timpanis. The work began with the ennui of routine and repetition, escalated by an increasing urgency for the instrumentalists to break out from habit. They do so with an abrupt end to the piece.

Indonesian composer Ivan Tangkalung's Morning Call for solo bassoon was virtuosically tossed off by Wichert, with his instrument the channelling a cockerel's chanticleer and the urban sounds of a city readying for a day's busyness and business.

Zechariah Goh Toh Chai's Four Taiwanese Aboriginal Songs for wind quintet will be the most often performed work of all these. The reason is simple. Like a modern-day Bartok or Kodaly, its treatment of two songs and dances from the Pai-wan and Bei-nan tribes is both idiomatic and engaging. The performance by Alvarez, Flach, Colin Tan (clarinet), Wichert and Alan Kartik (French horn) will be hard to better.

Works by two Malaysian composers completed the show. Yii Kah Hoe's Cheers (Singapore premiere) was literally a madhatter's party, with Alvarez and pianist Shane Thio punctuating their solo parts with a serving of afternoon tea, complete with the clinking of teapots and teacups, noisy stirring of spoons, obligatory slurping and a toast of “cheers!”

The World Premiere of Wong Chee Yean's Six Sketches was a complete success. The full ensemble of strings, winds and percussion engaged in its short scenes from Greek mythology, drawn from Ovid's Metamorphosis. Among its movements involved the sinuous flute as Narcissus gazing at his own shadow, a beautiful duet for oboe and clarinet representing Orpheus and Euridice, a lively Dionysian scherzo, and a string fugue as Arethusa flees before transforming into a fountain to a wind serenade.

Inventive and surprising as before, SETTS #3 on 1 May at The Arts House is keenly awaited.