QUANTUM STATE / TO Ensemble / Review

 

QUANTUM STATE

TO Ensemble

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (1 March 2026)

This review was published on 3 March 2026 with the title "TO Ensemble explores what humans are made of in entertaining programme".

Concerts by TO Ensemble have traditionally been founded on futuristic stories. Dystopian worlds, interstellar travel and speculative fiction are par for the course, but its latest offering was more down to earth: science and what we are composed of.

Led by composer and jazz pianist Tze Toh, his quartet on this occasion was formed by Wu Bingling (violin), Lazar T. Sebastine (Carnatic violin) and Teo Boon Chye (alto saxophone), performing an enjoyable 75-minute concert without intermission. Within this configuration, the players and their instruments represented respectively space, humanity, nature and science / technology.

Photo: Sebin Lazar Reena

What are the elements that make us human? The movements that transpired pondered on the building blocks that make up music itself. A simple Prologue of piano tremolos ushered in Carnatic violin and sax, and in the manner of Minimalism built up a pattern of mood music by repetition and constant variations. That was the basis of Memories of Time, which unfolded slowly but never outliving its welcome.

I Am The Air (Io Sono L’Aria) opened with birdsong and trills from solo piano in the upper registers, over which both violins carved out a duet. If one wondered whether this music was composed or improvised, the answer: both. Wu’s Western violin had its part fully written out while Sebastine’s Carnatic violin was almost wholly improvised.

In Longing, the evening got its first big melody, with Teo’s sax doing the honours. This love song was gradually built up from something simple, an efflorescence much like how life on earth evolved from molecules to cells and then living organisms.

Photo: Sebin Lazar Reena

Similarly, Architecture of Human Civilisation opened with Wu’s Bachian violin solo, single line arpeggios, then double stopping, over which Teo began his improvisation. Tze’s piano joined the fray as did Sebastine’s violin, and a mighty edifice was constructed seemingly from scratch. The movement closed as it began, with Wu’s plaintive solo.

How can science describe emotions like love? The harmonic progessions of Autumn relived the music of Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, admittedly one of Tze’s idols, while both violins brought out different responses in an impassioned duet.

LHC (Large Hadron Collider) was the concert’s only fast piece, befitting CERN’s particle accelerator in Switzerland. Here, rapid piano figurations and saxy riffs churned out the musical equivalent of anti-matter in a kinetically charged atmosphere. In a word, breathtaking.

Photo: Sebin Lazar Reena

Memories of Space returned to the premise of the earlier piece, Memories of Time. This time, the building blocks were canons, the repeating bars of music that distinguished J.S.Bach’s Goldberg Variations and the finale of Cesar Franck’s famous violin sonata.

The closing number The Swan had nothing to do with Saint-Saen’s cello masterpiece, but was based on a raga where the Carnatic violin opened. Tze described it as a piece depicting grace and growth, appropriately in the key of G major, which also echoed the Goldbergs. Here, raga met Bach and jazz in a heady awakening of sorts. What will Tze and Co think of next?

A PIANO CONCERTO EVENING NOT TO MISS: LEGACY - THE NEXT PIANO GENERATION on 17 March 2026

Here is an evening of piano concertos not to miss. The pianists are DAVID CHEN and ROMAN BLAGOJEVIC, both grandsons of the great pianist Martha Argerich, who will be performing piano concertos with the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Dario Ntaca.

DAVID CHEN is the son of Argerich's eldest daughter Lida Chen-Argerich. His father is Vladimir Sverdlov-Ashkenazy, the nephew of Vladimir Ashkenazy. He will be performing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1.

ROMAN BLAGOJEVIC is the son of Argerich's third daughter Stephanie, director of the documentary movie Bloody Daughter. Her maternal grandfather is the American pianist Stephen Kovacevich. He will be performing J.S.Bach's Piano Concerto in F minor, BWV.1056.

Both pianists are partnered with the excellent Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, making its Singapore debut, conducted by the Argentine Dario Ntaca. Besides the concertos, TPO will also be performing Brahms' Academic Festival Overture and Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture.

Music runs in families.

Full programme:

BRAHMS Academic Festival Overture

TCHAIKOVSKY Romeo and Juliet Overture

J.S.BACH Piano Concerto in F minor, BWV.1056

TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No.1 

   in B flat minor, Op.23

Victoria Concert Hall

Tuesday 17 March 2026 at 8 pm

Get your tickets here:

Legacy: The Next Piano Generation • Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra

This concert is presented by Altenburg Arts

A YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE - TRADITIONS IN BLOOM / Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra / Review

 

A YOUNG PERSONS GUIDE – 

TRADITIONS IN BLOOM

Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Sunday (8 March 2026), 4 pm

Singapore is literally growing orchestras by the year, and in this concert, one got to witness what happens in the nursery. The children of the Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra (SYPO) were joined by Year 3 orchestral pedagogy students of Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in an hour-long concert that served as a harmonious classroom lesson for both students and their parents.

SYPO players stand up to be counted.

The SYPO students dressed in hong bao red t-shirts formed the bulk of the strings, while YST students in black occupied the principal seats and almost all the woodwind, brass and percussion sections. Together they made a joyous noise, conducted by YST alumnus Luo Wei.

The concert begin with familiar strains of the Chinese New Year favourite, Mao Yuan’s Joy of Spring (Xin Chun Le), with just the strings of SYPO. There was a rawness to the sound, but that was overshadowed by the sheer enthusiasm invested in the playing. It just got better with the older students joining in for the two popular works influenced by folk music.

Liu Tie Shan and Mao Yuan’s Dance of the Yao People needs little introduction, as it was performed in SYPO’s last concert as well as the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s inaugural concerts in 1979. Beginning slow, it soon gathers in pace. The main theme recurs as in a rondo, but gets faster and more voluminous with each run. Woodwind solos shine as the dance is ornamented, and very soon the merry-making erupts through all the ranks. It was a joyous reading, and one can say that the sound generated has already surpassed that of the SSO during its early years.

Photo: Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra

Roughly the same formula was repeated in Georges Enesco’s Romanian Rhapsody No.1. The slow opening involved solo clarinet and oboe in a call and response routine, and very soon the strings join the fray. If the Chinese dance was vigorous, this one was energy multiplied manifold, and there is always a thrill hearing cascading strings move through the orchestra, with rising strings emerging at the other end. The final dance was an exciting hora, bringing the enjoyable piece to a virile close.

The major work in the concert was Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, also known as Variations on a Theme by Henry Purcell, the subject being the Rondeau from Abdelazer. The showpiece involved all the sections of the orchestra, as well as impressive solos from each of the instruments. Narration was provided by engaging host Lai Chong, and cartoon visuals were projected on the large screen above. For the many parents in the audience, there was now no excuse for mistaking one instrument from another, besides learning how an orchestra functions.

The students created a big sound for the tuttis, while the many tricky solos were handled with ease by the conservatory students. The closing fugue was a tour de force of virtuosity, and there was no shortage of spirit and verve as the work wound to a suitably rousing and rowdy conclusion. 

It has been a pleasure to witness these young musicians at work under the uniting baton of Luo Wei. While only a fraction of them will become professional musicians in the long run, there is little doubt that all of them will become lovers of music for life.

Photo: Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra

Photo: Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra

GO LOCAL! HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR CONCERT 2026 / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

 

GO LOCAL!

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR CONCERT

Ding Yi Music Company

Chinese Cultural Centre Theatre

Friday (6 March 2026)

Chinese New Year has officially ended with Chap Goh Mei (night of the fifteenth moon) behind us, but that was no reason for Ding Yi Music Company not to celebrate the new spring season and the year of the horse. Its annual Chinese New Year concert, led by Resident Conductor Dedric Wong had that well-tried and tested formula of celebratory music, virtuosic concertante works and a sassy singer to spice things up.

The evening opened with Hong Kong composer Alfred Wong Hok-Yeung’s Music Roaming By The Bay, an overture that was upbeat and rhythmic. High spirits ruled in this jaunt, which depicted the dramatic scenery to be had at Shenzhen Bay (Deep Bay), presumably viewed from the New Territories side of the water.

Wang Rui’s Blooming Flower was a slow and meditative number, which showcased the lovely string tone of erhu soloist Ding Yi’s Chen Ning. More familiar was Lu Wenchen’s Autumn Moon Over a Calm Lake, a Cantonese melody where xiao soloist Ho Siu-cheong from Hong Kong’s Windpipe Chinese Ensemble held court. It was interesting to note that Yang Chun Lin’s arrangement had some decidedly Western harmonies.

The most spectacular concertante work was shared by three composers, with Yang Ming, Jiang Chun Yang and Jin Sha’s The Bamboo and the Pine. Not sure how composition by committee (such as the infamous Yellow River Concerto) actually worked but this symphonic poem with obbligato parts was legitimately brilliant and exciting. Wang Yan (erhu) and Xue Qing (daruan) from Sichuan’s Charisma Ensemble (the Chinese instrumental section of the Sichuan Symphony) did the honours, with no little panache and virtuosity.

Quite different from the works that preceded it was Malaysian composer Chow JunYi’s Contempo, which employed a modern drum-set manned by Low Yick Hang. This was a modern showpiece, updated to 21st century popular styles. Jazzy it was not, but bristling with virile energy it certainly was with George Lam’s Wong Fei Hung martial arts theme being quoted.

No Ding Yi CNY concert is complete without some young and good looking singer closing the show. That was the remit of Mediacorp radio station 933 deejay Gao Mei Gui, who was once a song competition participant and percussionist. 

Her bantering with conductor Wong was a tad endearing, while her contributions of Jerry C’s Xiao Xing Yun (A Little Happiness), Tanya Chua’s Wo (I) and Joseph Khoo’s Zhu Fu Ni (Blessing You) added the light-hearted spark needed for an ebullient finish.

There was some half-hearted audience contribution to the singing and the final song closed with a lusty “huat ah!” by all in attendance. 2026 is already looking like a bleak year for world peace, but there is little harm in hoping for fortunes to turn the right way.

Huat ah!!!

HUAT AH! DING YI MUSIC COMPANY CELEBRATES CHINESE NEW YEAR

HUAT AH! That's what we Chinese (Hokkiens in particular) shout as a cheer in a hope of fortune and prosperity. That was the ringing refrain as Ding Yi Music Company celebrated Chinese New Year with a traditional lohei (tossing of the raw fish / yusheng salad). Ding Yi has always had this informal celebration at the Chinese Cultural Centre, with a summary of the past year's events and highlights, and its traditional Chinese New Year concert. This year was no different.

Ding Yi chairman Lau Kam Yuen
gives his welcome address.

Ding Yi Resident Conductor Dedric Wong speaks.

Ding Yi's new General Manager Tay Zhi Wen
is introduced for the first time.

Ding Yi board members with musicians
Chen Ning (erhu), Wong Wai Kit (ruan)
and Bekhzod Oblayorov (cello)

Lohei begins. The ingredients are added.

The tossing begins. Huat ah!

Soon the concert will begin.

Review of the concert here:

pianomania: GO LOCAL! HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR CONCERT 2026 / Ding Yi Music Company / Review