GERMAN CLASSICS / ASIAN CONCERT TOUR 2023 / Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra / Academy of Taiwan Strings / Review

GERMAN CLASSICS

Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra

School of the Arts Concert Hall

Saturday (26 August 2023)

 

ASIA CONCERT TOUR 2023

Academy of Taiwan Strings

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (27 August 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 August 2023 with the title "Invigorating showcases by Braddell orchestra and Academy of Taiwan Strings".

 

 

After the tragic passing of music director Adrian Tan in 2021, Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra, Singapore’s oldest community orchestra, has found a worthy successor in conductor Leonard Tan. Leonard, who is no relation of Adrian, has an excellent track record of having helmed The Philharmonic Winds, Singapore’s leading wind ensemble, for some 15 years. He also continued in Adrian’s friendly manner of demystifying the classics by addressing the audience with simple, well-chosen words.

 

More important was the music-making, and straight off, Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture was possessed with tension and energy befitting its drama and tragedy. The opening chords were punched out with incisiveness and clarity, and soon the musical narrative sizzled.

 

Far more substantial was Brahms’ Second Symphony in a performance which highlighted the music’s expansiveness and sunlit vistas. The string playing stood out and if a symphony had a smile, this was it. From the lilting lullaby-like theme from the opening movement, the scherzo’s chattiness to the finale’s trail-blazing close, the results were invigorating.

  

In Dvorak’s masterly Cello Concerto in B minor, the orchestra partnered talented young cellist Theophilus Tan, Goh Soon Tioe Centenary Award recipient and founding member of the Concordia Quartet. His solo playing was one of much sensitivity, which occasionally got submerged by dense orchestral textures and over-enthusiastic projecting. It was passion which ultimately shone through, in the slow movement’s love song and finale’s irrepressible march.

 

Singapore was the first leg of the Academy of Taiwan Strings’ Asian tour, which also includes concerts in Kuala Lumpur, Taipei and Kaohsiung. Why it is considered an elite ensemble was immediately apparent by the sheer volume and richness of sonority generated in Elgar’s showpiece Introduction and Allegro, suggesting a group far larger than its 21 members.    

 

The major work in the 2-hour long concert was the World Premiere of Singaporean composer Tan Chan Boon’s newly commissioned Symphony For Strings. Tan is not one for half-measures, and his 38-minute long work relived the Mahlerian dictum that, “A symphony is like a world. It must have everything.” And the kitchen sink one might add, as its three movements got progressively longer.

 

The first two movements explored ethereal and otherworldly sound textures, including harmonics, slides, pizzicatos and other exotic devices. From the morass of the amorphous issued forth hints of melody, like a newly revitalised world emerging out of Covid-induced chaos. The final slow movement had Brucknerian ambitions, a hymn-like tune without worries or neuroses, later turning into some elegy for lost souls. Its life-affirming close saw a collective stomping of feet from all performers, a trickle turning into a torrential rainstorm.   

 

Applause from the small audience was fulsome but genuine, also accorded to the absorbing reading of Brahms’ Second String Quintet (Op.111) in its string orchestra version. Its charm and luscious melodies were gratefully lapped up by the players, leaving one wondering why it is not more often heard.   

 

Taiwan-based Japanese film composer Koji Sakurai’s Last Forever inspired by Eileen Chang’s novella Red Rose, White Rose was quasi-baroque in style. Reminiscent of a cross between Albinoni’s Adagio and Scarlatti’s “Aria” Sonata in D minor, this elegiac number tugged on the heart-strings like no other. Joined by eight string players from Singapore’s own chamber outfit re:Sound, the concert closed with two tangos by Astor Piazzolla, sultry and brooding Oblivion with violinist Cheng Tze Hsun as soloist and the ever-lively Libertango.

 

Encores were demanded even after the ensemble had left the stage, and who could resist enjoying that most quintessential of Taiwanese melodies, Teng Yu-Hsien’s Wang Chun Feng or Pining For The Spring Breeze?

GOH SOON TIOE @ 110 / AWARD WINNERS IN CONCERT / Review

GOH SOON TIOE @ 110

AWARD WINNERS IN CONCERT

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (18 April 2021)

 

Goh Soon Tioe is 110 years old this year! For those not old enough to remember the name, Goh Soon Tioe (1911-1982) was Singapore’s Western classical music pioneer, one who combined illustrious careers in violin performance, conducting, musical education and impresario work like nobody else had and nobody ever will. In our age of specialisation, his kind will never come again. His legacy lives on in his students, who have included the likes of Choo Hoey, Seow Yit Kin, Lynnette Seah, Lim Soon Lee, Kam Kee Yong and his three daughters (Vivien, Sylvia and Patricia), and the annual Centenary Award bestowed to deserving young string players that bears his name.

 

Since 2012, nine deserving young musicians have been awarded monetary grants (administered by the Community Foundation of Singapore) to further their musical studies and careers. Their names read like a young Who’s Who of music in Singapore today. This concert brought together six award winners in an enjoyable chamber concert,  reassuring one and all that the future of classical music in Singapore is in good hands.  

 

Kevin Loh (2018 winner) is the brightest guitarist to emerge from Singapore in many decades. Presently a Cambridge undergraduate, he helpfully reminded the audience that Goh Soon Tioe himself began his musical career as a guitarist. His studies had been sponsored by no less than Andres Segovia, who also served as mentor and guiding light. Kevin’s varied programme of transcriptions opened with J.S.Bach’s Prelude from Cello Suite No.6, characterised by rhythmic vigour and clarity of articulation. The Latino pieces were also well-contrasted, the vivacity of Albeniz’s popular Sevilla (originally a piano piece) alongside Astor Piazzolla’s slow tango Oblivion, a heart-felt portrayal of melancholy and untold tragedy.

 

Next came Italian opera composer Rossini’s Duet in D major for double bass and cello, composed for the great Domenico Dragonetti, who was hailed as “Paganini of the bass”. Bassist Julian Li (2013), who has served as principal in China’s Hangzhou Philharmonic and Guiyang Symphony, and Theophilus Tan (2015), cellist of the newly-formed Concordia Quartet, did the honours.

 

As with works by bass virtuosos, the orchestra’s largest instrument is no longer content with just providing mere accompaniment but having significant melodic lines of its own. Li showed himself to be very nimble in running passages, crowned by a melodic gift with bel canto qualities. The cello  also had melodic moments in the slow Andante molto movement, accompanied by bass pizzicatos, and the duet was completed with an enjoyable romp of the finale.

 

A much more familiar work was the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia, usually heard as a showpiece for violin and cello. In this instance, violinist Joey Lau (2017) and violist Joelle Hsu (2019) worked very well together, exhibiting good communication and the requisite “give and take” of chamber music performance while relishing in their virtuosic roles.  

 

Receiving a rare performance was Rachmaninov’s Trio Elegiaque No.1 in G minor, a teenaged work heavily influenced by Tchaikovsky, with violinist Helena Dawn Yah (2012, the inaugural awardee), cellist Theophilus Tan and guest pianist Jonathan Shin. In a short preamble, Shin explained that the trio’s main theme was in fact an inversion of the opening motif from Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. The work’s typically Slavic melancholy and dolour was very well brought out, oozing pathos from every pore.

 

The final work was by Austrian bassist and composer Johannes Matthias Sperger (1750-1812), whose highly congenial Quartet in D major in three movements had one guessing its various influences. Did it sound like Haydn, Mozart, or even the young Schubert? Sperger’s milestone dates indicate that he would have been familiar with the first two composers, while the instrumentation (with the violin replacing the original flute) suggests this was an example of hausmusik (household music) to be played by a group of musical-loving friends over schnapps.

 

As expected, bassist Julian Li had a lion’s share of melodic interest besides also having the most difficult part of all. He was excellent throughout, and well-supported by violinist Joey Lau, violist Joelle Hsu and a most busy cellist Theophilus Tan. Why don’t we ever get to hear this music with any regularity (instead of countless performances of the Trout Quintet)? At least one can trust and hope that the Goh Soon Tioe laureates, who are now a family of a kind, to revive the hausmusik movement sometime. Such an initiative led by these extremely talented young professionals will be most appreciated.   

Vivien Goh, daughter of Goh Soon Tioe

addresses the audience and

thanks the award winners.

CONCORDIA QUARTET @ HOME / Review

CONCORDIA QUARTET @ HOME

Streamed Live on the Internet

Friday (12 June 2020) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 June 2020 with the title "Hurdles aplenty, but quartet's first online concert a success."

  

The Concordia Quartet, Singapore’s latest professional chamber group, made its debut in February  at the Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre (Funan Centre) to critical acclaim. Its second public concert was another first, a live performance by four musicians on the Internet, separated physically by Covid-19 circuit breaker and social distancing rules.

Its players, violinists Edward Tan and Kim Kyu Ri, violist Matthias Oestringer and cellist Theophilus Tan, never had face-to-face rehearsals for this concert. Instead, they played from their own living rooms, united by nifty technology, employing the Jamulus audio software, high-tech headsets and microphones, and the ubiquitous Zoom app for visual cues.

Its audience was alerted via social media, and tuned into Youtube for the concert experience. While it seemed a surreal experience attending a concert remotely, one was spared of extraneous distractions like rustling programmes, fidgety children, and worst of all, coughs and sniffles.

Concordia’s programme was a compact one, just under half an hour of music, boosted by a question-and-answer session hosted by technical controller and Resound Collective’s founder Mervin Beng. These precious few minutes were however hard earned, given the logistical hurdles to overcome, but paid off handsomely.

There was a false start at the beginning with Mozart’s Divertimento in D major (K.136) which was quickly remedied. As there was a lag phase between visual and aural inputs for the musicians, it seemed a miracle they even came together at all. All that will be down to hard work getting used to the medium and how professional musicians adapt to each other’s music-making.    

Like in a jazz combo, a three-count from first violinist Tan was needed to start the music flowing, when a nod of the head used to suffice. The issue of balance surfaced for a short while in the lively opening movement, when accompanying low strings sounded over-emphatic but that was also corrected. The slow movement was lovingly coaxed, while the fast finale which necessitated pin-point accuracy was driven to a breathless close.

This was what viewers got to see at home.

Judging by positive live comments from its audience, this experiment was going to be a success. The heart of the concert belonged to Russian nationalist composer Alexander Borodin’s Second String Quartet. While some hoped to hear its popular and melancolic Notturno, the more meaty opening movement was performed instead.

By now, the quartet had more than warmed up and wearing heart on sleeve, this ultra-Romantic music’s passionate throes were milked for all its worth. For the online listener, this was as good as it gets. As a short encore, the world premiere of young local composer Jonathan Shin’s highly idiomatic arrangement of the Beatles hit-song Eleanor Rigby was the icing on the cake. Judging by positive live comments from its audience, this experiment was a success.

While live concerts witnessed by a live audience in a concert hall will not die an ignominious death, could online concerts such as this be a regular feature of the new normal?

You can view the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k14_9OQX4zA