CHAMBER MUSIC
RESIDENCY CONCERTS
Chamber Music & Arts Singapore
Objectifs Chapel,
155 Middle Road
Saturday (13 June 2026)
Friday (19 June 2026)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 June 2026 with the title "Two evenings of resonant programmes by Chamber Music and Arts at Objectifs chapel".
Befitting a premier arts organisation, Chamber Music & Arts Singapore (CMAS) founded by local violinist Tang Tee Khoon aims to promote chamber music performance at highest possible levels. To this end, its Chamber Music Residency programme saw young Singaporean musicians mentored by leading international classical artists, and performing alongside them.
Two showcase concerts of French music were fruits of their labour. On Saturday (13 June), Gabriel Faure’s Piano Quartet No.2 in G minor (Op.45) was given a rare airing. Violinist Yang Shuxiang, who is concertmaster of re:Sound, was partnered with violist Joelle Hsu, pianist Tay Shu Wen and British cellist Jamie Walton.
The historic chapel of Objectifs, formerly the Middle Road Church in the 1890s, has reverberant acoustics well-suited for chamber music. From the outset, all four instruments could be distinctly heard on their own and in ensemble. This made for a rich unified sound in the music’s passionate opening pages, sustained as the tempo was further upped in the breathless Scherzo.
The true heart laid in the elegiac slow movement, where Hsu’s viola sang its plaint, backed by Tay’s bell-like chords. This oasis of respite was the calm before the finale’s storm of rapidly surging triplets, which made for an exciting end.
Maurice Ravel’s masterly Piano Trio in A minor followed without an intermission, performed by the musical mentors themselves, violinist Tang, cellist Walton and Scottish pianist Alasdair Beatson. Despite adopting a somewhat deliberate opening tempo, the ensemble very rapidly ratcheted up the tension and volume, rising to the venue’s highest reaches.
All four movements were united by a common theme, so well-disguised as to be almost imperceptible. The second movement’s Pantoum was influenced by the metre found in the Malay pantun, its syncopations contrasted by the varied slow chants of the ensuing Passacaille (passacaglia), a set of variations on a bass theme. As in the Faure, the finale went for broke, where all caution was thrown to the wind for a rapturous close.
Friday (19 June) evening’s concert began with Faure’s La Bonne Chanson, an exquisite nine-movement song cycle with texts by French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. Locally-based British soprano Kezia Robson was accompanied by string quartet (violinist Yang and Isabelle Ong, violist Hsu and cellist Cho Hang-oh), pianist Tay and double-bassist Kuek Jia Xin.
Over muted strings, Robson cast a spell of mystique over the opening song Une sainte en son aureole (A Saint In Her Halo), her spirits later soaring with the piano’s entry in Puisque l’aube grandit (Since Dawn Is Rising). The verses take a darker turn with fear and anxiety expressed, well captured by all aboard, before closing with the hope of love in L’hiver a cesse (Winter Has Ended).
Very different was Ernest Chausson’s Concert for violin, piano and string quartet (Op.21), a four-movement masterpiece conceived like a symphony but with the intimacy of chamber music. Violinist Tang and pianist Beatson were backed the same string foursome, but gloves were off for the most dramatic of first movements, built on an ominous three-note motif.
A full gamut of emotions was run through a clothes wringer, the insouciant elegance of sicilienne-based second movement sharply contrasted with the moody yet intensely passionate dirge of the third movement aptly marked Grave.
The breathless and ecstatically charged finale saw the most acute of responses, with all six musicians playing as if their lives depended on it. The packed chapel erupted with vociferous praise. That is what truly moving chamber music in closed spaces elicits, and nothing less.
