DANCE WITH THE FOUR / T'ang Quartet / Review

 

DANCE WITH THE FOUR 

T’ang Quartet, Ning An & Albert Tiu 

Conservatory Concert Hall 

Tuesday (29 October 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 31 October 2024 with the title 'T'ang Quartet shows Shostakovich and Piazzolla share common love for Bach".

The T’ang Quartet as we knew it in 1992, its inaugural year, does not quite exist any more. An ensemble-in-residence at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, its remaining founding members violinists Ng Yu Ying and Ang Chek Meng now perform concerts with guest musicians. A former student, Korean cellist Cho Hang-oh, joined it for this concert as did fellow faculty member violist Zhang Manchin for a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G minor (Op.57). 

Arguably the most performed 20th century piano quintet, it had inspirations from the Baroque, notably Johann Sebastian Bach. Pianist Ning An’s big opening chords on the newly-gifted Fazioli grand was a statement of intent in the Prelude, from which a probing exposition sprouted and grew. The very tight ensemble continued into the lengthy Fugue, where individual voices and contrapuntal lines stood out with illuminating clarity. 

Photo: Faezah Zulkifli

With formality out of the way, the group let down its collective hair for the madcap Scherzo, its biting irony and vitriolic humour in tandem with a swinging beat. Sparks flew for a short but scintillating course, its irreverent tone giving way to the Intermezzo’s walking-paced passacaglia, yet another Baroque form. 

Seriousness would be called to question with the Finale’s levity and faux-cheeriness soon taking over. One might be puzzled by the volte-face, but the players’ determination in keeping tongues lodged in cheeks held firm, through a manic march to its ambiguous close. The Soviet regime was flummoxed, even awarding Shostakovich the coveted Stalin Prize in 1941. 

After the interval, the T’angs were joined by conservatory student violist Huang Yi and pianist Albert Tiu for a second half of tangos by Argentine composer / bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla. One might inquire what on earth Shostakovich and Piazzolla had in common. 

The answer would be found by just listening: a shared love of Bach. 

Fuga y Mysterio, which began an enjoyable run of half a dozen tangos, was built upon a fugue. Tiu, who crafted these nifty transcriptions, opened with a highly syncopated piano subject, with string voices joining in sequence. Percussive beats were provided by striking of wood (on cello and piano) and short-and-sharp bowing near the bridge. Old J.S. would have been proud of the mastery of counterpoint involved. 

With Soledad (Solitude), Piazzolla had one of his most achingly beautiful slow movements. And how Ng’s violin sang, followed by Huang’s warm and duskily burnished tone on viola. In Concierto Para Quinteto, a progression of descending notes formed the bass over which all instruments took their turns, essentially a passacaglia in disguise. Where did we hear that before? 

In Oblivion, another classic slow movement, solo viola and Cho’s cello came to the fore, poignantly so. La Muerte del Angel (The Death of Angel) was another busy fugue, infectious in its frenetic rhythm and the concert closed with Le Grand Tango, originally written for cello and piano. Here the parts were equally shared by all five players, who clearly enjoyed driving to its intoxicating and rapturous close.

SINGAPORE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL 2024: AOI TRIO. NING AN & FRIENDS / Review

SINGAPORE CHAMBER 

MUSIC FESTIVAL 2024: 

AOI TRIO 

NING AN & FRIENDS 

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall 

Saturday & Tuesday 

(27 & 30 January 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 February 2024 with the title "Chamber Music Festival's successful return with Aoi Trio and pianist Ning An".

After a hiatus of about twenty years, the Singapore Chamber Music Festival has returned with a flourish. The week-long event, organised by re:Sound Collective, included music workshops and coaching sessions involving 28 local and overseas chamber groups and four evening concerts. 

The first evening showcased the youthful Aoi Trio from Japan, winner of the 2018 ARD International Music Competition in Munich, Germany. Its varied programme traversed the history of the piano trio genre, with pianist Kosuke Akimoto, violinist Kyoko Ogawa and cellist Yu Ito putting the shine on Mozart’s Piano Trio No.1 in B flat major (K.254). 

The piano’s dominance is evident in such an early example of the form, with violin providing decorative touches and cello merely simple accompaniment. Despite this imbalance, the performance was one of aural beauty and aesthetic balance. 

Trio (2013) by Japanese contemporary composer Toshio Hosokawa (born 1955) could not have been more different, with its espousal of Zen minimalism. Quiet long-held notes, static near-silences, prolonged trills and eerily-sliding glissandi all contributed to the music’s elusive mystique. There was a gradual stirring to breach the void but its twelve minutes closed on an uneasy calm. 

The evening’s highlight was Dvorak’s Piano Trio No.3 in F minor (Op.65) where the trio’s strengths – perfect intonation, ensemble cohesion, concentration and passion – came to the fore in four movements playing for almost forty minutes. By now, all three instruments were equal partners, the music’s Brahmsian gravity balanced by a folksy Slavonic rusticity. The trio’s Mendelssohn encore delighted like a song without words. 

The second concert formally introduced American-Chinese pianist Ning An as Yong Siew Toh Conservatory’s latest faculty member. The new associate professor opened his showcase with three late works by Chopin. The Berceuse (Op.57) highlighted right hand filigree over the left hand’s unchanging bass, while the Barcarolle (Op.60) delighted in a seamless cantabile, this being a Venetian gondolier’s love song. The melancholic Mazurka in F minor (Op.68 No.4) was Chopin’s last composition, performed as a tribute to his teacher, the late American pianist-pedagogue Russell Sherman. 

An was joined by the conservatory’s head of piano Albert Tiu in Rachmaninov’s Suite No.2 (Op.17), arguably the most popular work in the two-piano repertory. Both pianists were well matched in virtuosity and temperament, launching fearlessly into the imperious chord-laden opening Alla Marcia, then taking flight in the vertiginous Waltz. The slow Romance oozed sensuality as it built to a steamy climax, while gloves came off thrillingly for the final Tarantella. 

While the duo featured closely knitted ensemble, rightly considered chamber music, chamber music of the more conventional kind returned with An helming the piano part of Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E flat major (Op.47). Partnered by fellow teaching colleagues Qian Zhou (violin), Zhang Manchin (viola) and Qin Li-Wei (cello), the foursome gave a tautly cohesive perfomance that did not stint on poetry and lyricism. 

While the opening movement made big Beethovenian statements, the fast and impish second movement was a study in fast yet accurate playing. One will be hard put to find a more ravishing melody than in the slow movement, first heard on Qin’s cello before being shared by the rest. This was a true musical love-in, a loving respite before the finale’s busy contrapuntal lines closed on an energised high. 

Cheered on by an enthused audience, the quartet was joined by Tiu in his quintet arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s tango La Muerte del Angel (The Death of Angel). The surprisingly upbeat encore, despite its sombre title, was clearly enjoyed by all in attendance.

HEROIC TALES OF RICHARD STRAUSS / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

HEROIC TALES OF RICHARD STRAUSS

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Thursday (5 October 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 October 2023 with the title "SSO's take on Strauss' Don Quixote warmly received".

 

After the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s magnificent reading of Richard Strauss’s tone poem Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) in July, it seemed appropriate to follow up with an entire evening dedicated to more of the German late Romantic composer’s music. Just 16 years separated the three works on show, but it was fair representation of Strauss’ enormous compositional range.

 

Led by music director Hans Graf, the concert opened with the Serenade in E flat major (Op.7, 1881) for thirteen wind instruments. Two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, four French horns and one contrabassoon accounted for this brief and mellow Andante. If the orchestra is famed for its strings, the winds also deserve plaudits in this lyrical showing which displayed both innate virtuosity and immaculate deportment.

 

Hans Graf spoke to the audience
about Richard Strauss' many heroes
and their deaths as portrayed in music.

Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks (1895) was a tone poem about the eternal jokester of German folklore, who goes to town on a serial trail of mischief. Its “once upon a time” opening and introduction of the ribald French horn, helmed with confidence by principal Austin Larson, immediately set the tone. Dressed in indelible orchestral colour, its vivid characterisation all the way to Till’s execution, with ominous drumrolls and brilliant clarinet solo, made it a performance to remember.

 

The big piece on show was Don Quixote (1897), almost three times as long as Till. Prone to rambling, Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes’ far more complex anti-hero had a more diffuse characterisation. Not strictly a cello concerto, it nonetheless revelled in a major cello obbligato part helmed with much sympathy by SSO principal Ng Pei-Sian. Introduced with him was principal violist Zhang Manchin who performed within the rank and file besides playing the squire Sancho Panza.

 

As with Till, Graf and the orchestra’s attention to detail was exemplary, this despite the profusion of ideas and events, and appropriately for the subject, frequent flights of fancy. After a lengthy introduction, Ng’s entry was nuanced rather than outrightly heroic, the cantankerous subject having to traverse ten “fantastic variations on a theme of knightly character”.

 

His tone was warm and commanding, well complemented by Zhang’s viola, which was sufficiently garrulous. The duo’s chemistry in closely intertwined adventures made the work’s longeurs all the more worthwhile. Adding a further layer, the vision of Dulcinee (the Don’s delusion of the idealised woman) found fruition in concertmaster Markus Tomasi’s violin.

Photo: Chris P. Lim

 

The battle with the sheep (Variation II) exploited woodwind and brass dissonances to startling effect, while the imagined flight in the air (Variation VII) employing a wind machine while firmly pegged on a pedal point in D was pure fantasy. Best of all was the Epilogue, with the cello’s pure voice unencumbered by further distractions, as the Don breathed his last, expiring with a glissando to the nether reaches.

 

There have not been many Don Quixotes performed in Singapore over the years, but this one garnered the most cheers.                                          

The review of the same concert on Bachtrack.com:

Singapore Symphony principals helm a memorable Strauss Don Quixote | Bachtrack

CHAMBER OF HEROES / KOICHIRO HARADA & FRIENDS / Review

CHAMBER OF HEROES

T’ang Quartet

Victoria Concert Hall

Tuesday (29 August 2023)

 

KOICHIRO HARADA & FRIENDS

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Thursday (31 August 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 September 2023 with the title "T'ang Quartet and Koichiro Harada played two gripping chamber music programmes". 

 

It is good to see T’ang Quartet, Singapore’s longest standing professional chamber group, going back to basics. Founding violinists Ng Yu Ying and Ang Chek Meng with new members violist Dandan Wang and cellist Jamshid Saydikarimov have settled nicely as a cohesive outfit, evidenced by this serious and non-gimmicky programme.

 

Haydn was the “father of the string quartet”, yet his Quartet in C major (Op.20 No.2) is not so familiar. The foursome brought out its congeniality, displaying taut ensemble work yet with ample room to breathe. The composer’s originality came in its Adagio slow movement, unusually titled Capriccio. Its caprice had to do with unexpected tonal austerity and stark unison passages, handled with keen intent, later switching modes for the much lighter minuet and concluding fugal finale.     

 

The concert’s major work was Beethoven’s Quartet in E flat major Op.74, nicknamed "Harp" because of series of pizzicatos, resembling those of the plucked instrument. Although belonging to his "middle period", there were hints of the German's ethereal late style. The slow movement's long-breathed solo line was memorably helmed by violinist Ng, later contrasted by the scherzo's tempestuous raves and finale's breezy theme and variations.  

 

Wedged in between both classical heroes was the Singapore premiere of contemporary American composer Caroline Shaw’s Plan & Elevation: The Grounds Of Dumbarton Oaks (2016) in five short movements. Inspired by the historical estate in Washington D.C., each movement was named after different aspects of its renowned garden, premised upon a simple motif, over which layers of sound were added. The quartet brought from the quasi-minimalist music a nervous edge which regularly egressed into rarefied beauty. This concert showed that old and new music could be equally engaging when astutely juxtaposed.

 

The feast of chamber music continued with a piano quintet concert at the Conservatory led by Japanese violinist Koichiro Harada, founding member of the legendary Tokyo String Quartet and this semester’s visiting Ong Teng Cheong Professor of Music. He was partnered by faculty members Qian Zhou (violin) Zhang Manchin (viola), Qin Li-Wei (cello) and Ning An (piano) in two great contrasting works of the medium.

 

Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat major (Op.44), set in classical four-movement form, is famous for its expressive beauty. The German’s effulgent romanticism overflowed from the outset, with Harada as de facto leader and unifying force keeping all five players together. The ensemble was water-tight throughout, resolute in the opening movement’s expansive themes, while weathering storms of mood and tempo changes in the central movements.  

 

It was the finale’s tour de force of counterpoint, where multiple lines could easily get tangled, which impressed the most. The valedictory fugue was so adroitly handled that it seemed scarcely possible at that high speed. Hearing is believing, with the quintet concluding in a triumphant romp.     

Koichiro Harada is an inspiring leader.

  

Franco-Belgian composer Cesar Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor is a formidable work that takes no prisoners. Lasting almost 40 minutes, all three movements brooded with frightening intensity. Over a drone from lower strings in its opening, Harada’s violin came like an impassioned high-pitched groan. All through the piece, he carried important melodic lines, like some pleading soul in search for a voice of reason.

 

A robust opposing force was the mighty piano from An, recently appointed Associate Professor in piano studies, whose part waxed and waned between pure lyricism and raw-knuckled brawn. This tug-of-war between strings and piano, engaged over the work’s recurring motifs, was so absorbing as to render time illusory. Not for faint hearts, the finale’s harrowing close of sheer vehemence brought an uneasy mix of ecstasy and relief. The loud cheers said it all. That was what gripping chamber music on two evenings was supposed to do.    

10TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT / More Than Music & Friends / Review

10TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT

More Than Music & Friends

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (19 March 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 23 March 2023

 

About ten years ago, a violin and piano duo called More Than Music was formed by two young alumni of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, with their first concert presented by Kris Foundation. It was the intention of violinist Loh Jun Hong and pianist Abigail Sin to present classical music as accessible and unstuffy, yet without needing to dumb down.

 

Their unqualified success led to concerts involving more members of the musical community, including violinists, violists, cellists, and the odd guitarist and trumpeter. During the height of the Covid pandemic in 2020, they invited fellow musicians to present all ten of Beethoven’s violin sonatas in a series of digital concerts. 

More Than Music’s tenth anniversary concert featured some more musical partners, but it was Loh and Sin who opened with Brahms’ Scherzo in C minor. Part of the four-movement F-A-E Sonata crafted by three composers for the violinist Joseph Joachim, its recurrent motif of three short stabs and one long note was reminiscent of Beethoven’s famous Fate theme.

 

Its sheer insistence, placated by a swooning lyrical melody, provided cuts and thrusts of this short impactful movement. Both players were in one mind throughout, bonded by a chemistry developed over the past decade, making for an impressive opening.  

 

Ironically, that would be the duo’s last outing for the evening, with Sin joined by fellow Conservatory colleague Albert Tiu in Rachmaninov’s Second Suite for two pianos (Op.17). Its inclusion also marked the 150^th birth and 80^th death anniversaries of the popular Russian composer. The first movement’s Alla Marcia, with quick successions of chords could have made for heavy weather, but their response was both crisp and devastatingly accurate.

 

Split-second razor reflexes ruled in the mercurial Waltz, dispatched with almost nonchalant ease, while the Romance simply oozed sensuality from every pore. The finale’s swirling Tarantella could have been even more scintillating had they gone absolutely for broke. Cooler heads prevailed, but the outcome was still a satisfying one.

 

As the pianists retired, Loh was joined by violinist Yang Shuxiang, violists Zhang Manchin and Wang Dandan, and cellists Ng Pei-Sian and Jamshid Saydikarimov (the latter four all Singapore Symphony musicians) for Tchaikovsky’s String Sextet in D minor (Op.70), also known as Souvenir De Florence.

 

This has to be the usually-morose Russian composer’s most cheerful and uplifting work, the music filled with Mediterranean sunshine and high spirits. From the outset, all six players bathed the hall with a warm sonorous glow, with each and every part distinctly discerned. Passion was in full flow for the fast outer movements, balanced by playing of true finesse in the slower second movement.

 

Here, pizzicato strings laid the way for a love-in between Loh’s violin and Ng’s cello, their parts so closely intertwined as to delight the inner voyeur of every music-lover. Most of all, it was the unbridled joy of music-making exhibited between friends which was the essence and lifeblood of chamber music. May we have many more years of More Than Music.  

 

An impressive wall of posters
from past concerts 2013-2023.