CD Review (The Straits Times, December 2016)

NEW YEAR'S CONCERT 2016

Vienna Philharmonic / MARISS JANSONS

Sony Classical 88875174772 / ****1/2

75 years of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's patented New Year Concerts have yielded over 319 different works by the Strauss family and other composers of festive light music, and more are added every year to this delectable smorgasbord of confections and lollipops. 

The 2016 edition conducted by Latvia-born Mariss Jansons throws in eight more works not previous heard in the Golden Hall of Vienna's Musikverein. Heading this list is Robert Stolz's United Nations March, composed as recently as 1962 and the most “modern” work ever performed in this series.

Also heard for the first time are Waldteufel's España (using the same tunes as Chabrier's España), Hellmesberger's Ball Scene, Ziehrer's Viennese Maidens, Eduard Strauss' Out Of Bounds, and three other Johann Strauss II rarities, all agreeable fare for the occasion. 

The familiar favourites also return, such as the Emperor Waltz, Treasure Waltz, Pleasure Train, Josef Strauss' Music Of The Spheres, and the sine qua non obligates - The Beautiful Blue Danube and Johann Strauss the Elder's Radetzky March - with synchronised clapping from the audience. Like all things Viennese, old habits die hard, and older pleasures ever more so.  

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, December 2015)

NEW YEAR'S CONCERT 2015

Vienna Philharmonic / ZUBIN MEHTA

Sony Classical 88875035492 / ****1/2 

Another year passes, and another New Year's Concert by the Vienna Philharmonic thrills its well-heeled audiences and is recorded for posterity. The 2015 edition was Bombay-born conductor Zubin Mehta's fifth time on the podium, and the theme was programmed around the 200^th anniversary of the founding of the Imperial & Royal Polytechnic Institute in 1815. That explains the engineering-themed works including Johann Strauss the Younger's Accelerations Waltz (Op.234), Electromagnetic Polka (Op.110), Perpetuum Mobile (Perpetual Motion, Op.257), Explosions Polka (Op.43) and his younger brother Eduard's Mit Dampf (At Full Steam).

Studious keepers of the tradition, the orchestra performs with refinement, precision and energy. This concert also unveiled five first performances at the New Year's Concert, including the inevitable Student Polka (Op.263) and An Der Elbe (By The Elbe, Op.477), the last waltz to be premiered by Johann himself. A tribute to conductor Mehta's origins also takes the form of Fairy Tales From The Orient (Op.444), which hardly sounds exotic, to be honest. Traditions die hard, so the orchestra shouts its new year's greeting before finishing off with the Blue Danube Waltz and Radetzky March. Very enjoyable and entertaining, as usual.

BOOK IT:

ZUBIN MEHTA AND THE

ISRAEL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

80TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT

Esplanade Concert Hall

7 January 2016, 7.30 pm

Limited tickets available at SISTIC

ECHOES OF CHINA

SUSAN CHAN, Piano

Naxos 8.570616 / ****1/2

There are three World Premiere recordings in this survey of contemporary Chinese piano music by Hong Kong-born pianist Susan Chan. Zhou Long's Pianobells (2012) is a play on tintinnabulation, simulating the sound of bells in ceremony and nature. Bass strings of the piano struck by the hand make startling contrasts with the tinkling of high treble keys. His Mongolian Folk-Tune Variations (1980) are more conventional in idiom, employing traditional Chinese melodies as is his wife Chen Yi's Northern Scenes (2013).

Macau-born Doming Lam's Lamentations Of Lady Chiu-Jun (1964) is an arrangement of an ancient Lingnan melody in variation form with the piano mimicking Chinese instruments like the guzheng and pipa. Canadian-Chinese Alexina Louie's Music for Piano (1982) and Tan Dun's Eight Memories in Watercolor (1979) are already fairly well-known and regularly programmed. Both are suites of short character pieces that are engaging and ear-catching.

Louie's pieces are impressionistic in feel but with pedagogy in mind, while Tan's are childhood reminiscences based on folk songs and dances from his native Hunan, bringing to mind similar compositions by Bartok. Pianist Chan is a persuasive colourist who brings a wide range of nuances from the keyboard, and this anthology deserves to be heard for its variety.  

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, December 2014)

ESCAPE TO PARADISE

DANIEL HOPE, Violin

Royal Stockholm Philharmonic 

Alexander Shelley, Conductor

Deutsche Grammophon 479 2954 

*****

It has been said that the Second World War and rise of Nazism during the 1930s helped fuel the Hollywood film music industry. Persecution of European Jewry meant that many talented composers from Austria, Germany and Central Europe fled to the free world of America where they settled to compose and teach. This album by British violinist Daniel Hope celebrates the exodus and legacy of composers like Erich Korngold, Miklos Rozsa, Franz Waxman and others who helped define the romantic Hollywood sound we know and love.

The central work is Korngold’s well-loved Violin Concerto, which recycles music from four movies including The Prince And The Pauper. Hope’s sweet tone and broad sweep is a winner from start to finish. The Hungarian Rozsa is represented by themes from Ben Hur, El Cid and Spellbound, while the Italian Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco makes an entry with his popular Sea Murmurs. The latter was the teacher of John Williams, whose Theme from Schindler’s List has become ubiquitous in film-themed anthologies.

The raspy-voiced Sting makes a cameo in The Secret Marriage, which is an adaptation Hanns Eisler’s An Den Kleine Radioapparat (To A Portable Radio), a number from his Hollywood Songbook. The collection closes with an unaccompanied violin meditation on Herman Hupfeld’s Everybody’s Welcome, now better known as As Time Goes By from Casablanca. This album in a word: delicious.

NEW YEAR’S CONCERT 2014

Vienna Philharmonic 

DANIEL BARENBOIM, Conductor

Sony Classical 88883792272 (2CDs) 

****1/2

Every conductor who leads the Vienna Philharmonic’s legendary New Year Concerts tries to leave his mark on the proceedings by means of astute programming of works that best reflects his preferences and personal “credo”. In Daniel Barenboim’s second run on the podium, his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (which he co-founded with the late Edward Said in Palestine) was referenced. A number of works were broad hints on peace and reconciliation like Joseph Strauss’s Friedenspalmen (Palms Of Peace) and Johann Strauss the Younger’s Seid Umschlungen, Millionen (Receive My Embrace, Ye Millions), the latter being a quote from Schiller’s Ode To Joy. Also included was Johann’s Stormy In Love And Dance, a fast polka and the pseudo-Middle Eastern chanting in his Egyptian March. 

There is also a not-so-veiled tribute to his wife Elena in Eduard Strauss’s Helenen-Quadrille which recycles melodies from Offenbach’s operetta La Belle Helene. Biases aside, there is much to enjoy in favourites like Tales From The Vienna Woods and first performances of the Moonlight Interlude from Richard Strauss’s opera Capriccio and the Pizzicato from Delibes’s Sylvia. As usual, the Blue Danube Waltz and Johann Strauss’s the Elder’s Radetzky March closes the proceedings, which no good Neujahrskonzert at the Goldener Saal of the Wiener Singverein can do without. Wallow and enjoy!

BOOK IT:

NEW YEAR’S EVE CONCERT

The Philharmonic Orchestra 

conducted by Lim Yau

School of the Arts Concert Hall

10 pm, Wednesday 31 December 2014

Tickets available at SISTIC   

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, August 2011)

SUMMER NIGHT CONCERT, SCHÖNBRUNN 2011
Vienna Philharmonic / Valery Gergiev
Deutsche Grammophon 476 4211 / ****1/2

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s annual concert on the grounds of Schönbrunn Palace is the summer counterpart to its New Year’s Day Concert. This year’s edition paid tribute to Franz Liszt’s bicentenary with a rip-roaring reading of his symphonic poem Les Préludes, uncannily aligned with last year’s programming of the Second Piano Concerto. The other tribute was to victims of the Japanese tsunami and earthquake, where gorgeous strings made Sibelius’s Scene with Cranes from Kuolema (Death) all the more poignant.

Not everything was this serious. There is a special place for Fritz Kreisler’s Concerto in one movement, a high-cholesterol rearrangement with lots of whipped cream added, of the first movement from Paganini’s First Violin Concerto. It’s terribly vulgar but German violinist Benjamin Schmid glides through its thick morasses of saccharine sweetness with great aplomb. Consistent with the theme of Virtuosic Pictures, Russian maestro Valery Gergiev helms a suitably opulent version of the Mussorgsky-Ravel Pictures At An Exhibition, with brass a-blazing in the Great Gate Of Kiev. Concluding with a Johann Strauss polka as encore, the Viennese lap it up. And why not?

CD Review (The Straits Times, September 2010)

SUMMER NIGHT CONCERT
SCHÖNBRUNN 2010
Vienna Philharmonic / FRANZ WELSER-MÖST
Deutsche Grammophon 476 3793
****1/2

This year’s Vienna Summer Night Concert under the stars had a decidedly celestial twist. The theme of Moon/Planet/Stars necessitated inclusion of music from John Williams’ film score for Star Wars. The iconic Main Title, Princess Leia’s Theme and Imperial March posed little problem for the orchestra better known for the classics and Johann Strauss. They performed those numbers as if they were Wagner, the March being the perfect counterpart to Holst’s Mars, The Bringer Of War from The Planets. Also in the heavenly realm were Josef Strauss’s (the younger brother of Johann the Younger) Music Of The Spheres, Joseph Lanner’s Evening Stars and Otto Nicolai’s Moonrise from The Merry Wives Of Windsor, all receiving plum readings.

A somewhat more earthbound choice was Franz Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto, performed with gusto and brilliance by Yefim Bronfman, who gamely included an encore in Liszt’s flashy Paganini Étude No.2. Strauss’ nostalgic Winer Blut (Vienna Blood) completed the evening’s fare. The DVD adds a few more encores, vistas of Vienna by night, shots from the Hubble telescope, and plenty of superfluous crowd scenes. Take your pick.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, January 2009)

TCHEREPNIN
Symphonies / Piano Concertos
NORIKO OGAWA, Piano
Singapore Symphony / LAN SHUI
BIS 1717/18 (4 CDs) / Rating *****

Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977) may be said to be the first truly cosmopolitan composer. Born in Tsarist Russia, he lived for varying periods in Paris, the Caucasus, China and Japan before settling in America. He was married to a Chinese pianist, and his music suitably reflects his eclecticism, encompassing late Romanticism, Stravinsky’s iconoclasm and neoclassicism, popular idioms, tinged with a modernist outlook and generous helpings of Orientalism. The ten major works in this budget boxset (retailing at under $30) include four symphonies and six piano concertos. The shorter pieces include Magna Mater, Symphonic March, Symphonic Prayer, and Festmusik (a 4-movement suite from opera The Wedding of Sobeide).

Arguably the best among these are the Chinese influenced works – the Third Symphony and Fourth Piano Concerto, subtitled “Fantaisie”. The latter’s movements have descriptive titles – Eastern Chamber Dream portraying Wu Song’s vanquishing of the killer tiger, royal concubine Yan Kuei Fei’s Sacrifice, and the rondo-like Road To Yunnan – and are so accessible as to make one wonder why it isn’t more regularly heard or performed. Pianist Noriko Ogawa is the fearless and swashbuckling soloist in these highly demanding concertos, while SSO in its first project with BIS (dating from 1999) performs with total conviction. Lan Shui and our national orchestra have the field to themselves, and are unlikely to be challenged in this repertoire for decades to come.

STRAVINSKY Symphonies
Berlin Philharmonic / SIR SIMON RATTLE
EMI Classics 2076300
Rating ****1/2

The three symphonies by Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) on this disc date from the 1930s and 40s, and are in his neo-classical style of composition. Gone are the lush sounds of his early ballets, in its place one finds sparer and astringent textures, and complex contrapuntal set pieces. The music nevertheless retains Stravinsky’s love of syncopation and the idea of multiple rhythms going on simultaneously. 

The best known is the choral Symphony of Psalms (1930), which finds the Berlin Broadcasting Chorus hale and hearty of voice, alternating reverence with exuberance. The orchestra is the undoubted star throughout, driving the kinetically charged music, especially the outer thirds of the Symphony in Three Movements (1942-45), and making the underrated Symphony in C (1940) sound like a true masterpiece. These “live” performances are well worth catching.

NEW YEAR’S CONCERT 2008
Vienna Philharmonic
GEORGES PRETRE
Deutsche Grammophon 478 0034
Rating ****1/2

There is a French angle to this quintessential Viennese event helmed by veteran conductor Georges Pretre, the first-ever Frenchmen to direct its proceedings. No French composers here but the Strauss waltz family’s French-themed works. Johann the Younger’s Napoleon March opens the festivities with pomp; his father’s Paris Waltz and Versailles Gallop adding to the merriment, with the former slyly quoting La Marseillaise, then outlawed in Austria. The Orpheus-Quadrille is a potpourri of melodies from Jacques Offenbach’s hit operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, which begins and ends inevitably with the ubiquitous cancan. 

Not everything is French, as the son and father try their hands in a Russian March and Chinese Gallop, although one will be hard pressed to tell one from the other! The usual favourites Emperor Waltz, Tritsch Tratsch Polka, Blue Danube Waltz and Radetzky March give a familiar ring and rousing close. Happy New Year!