LEE CHIN SIN, Baritone
with VICTOR KHOR, Piano
Yamaha Recital Hall, Marina Square
Saturday (27 April 2013 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 April 2013 with the title "Cordon bleu chef who sings with great feeling".
It is no secret that most of Singapore ’s talented young
singers hold daytime jobs unrelated to music. Tenor Melvin Tan is a wine
merchant, sopranos Teng Xiang Ting and Lim Yan Ting are lawyer and life
scientist respectively. So it is little surprise to learn that baritone Lee
Chin Sin is a cordon bleu chef who
co-owns a bistro.
Lee is not one of those booming-voiced operatic
baritones who spout Don Giovanni or Figaro at will, but a more intimate sort
comfortable with the parlando aspect
of singing, one closer to the speaking voice. As such, he was well-suited for
his selection of songs from the French Belle Epoque, a seemingly carefree era
of bourgeois musical charm with an innocence that was shattered by the mayhem
of the First World War.
He sang four groups of paired songs, beginning
with Emile Pessard’s Absence and Berceuse, which revealed a casual insouciance
that was easy on the ear. His dusky tone
gave Reynaldo Hahn’s Offrande and A Chloris, more commonly heard sung by a
higher voice, a slightly darker hue, but still communicated its love and
longing ardently.
Benjamin Godard is best remembered for his
popular Berceuse from Jocelyn. His songs Les Larmes (The Tears)
and Je ne veux pas d’autres choses (I Do Not Want Other Things) were both
interpretively and physically challenging, and Lee was made to strain a little.
Francesco Paolo Tosti was no Frenchman, but his ‘A Vucchella (A Sweet Mouth) and Non t’amo piu
(I Don’t Love You Anymore), both
Italian songs, were coloured by the same sensibilities. There was a nice
waltz-like lilt in the former, and how Lee tantalisingly hung on to the final
note of the latter as it rose into the air, as if he was sorry to end.
In between groups of songs, Lee’s
ever-perceptive accompanist Victor Khor had piano solos of his own, which
dovetailed into the programme seamlessly. These included three of six Gnossiennes by Erik Satie, Debussy’s Ballade and Claire de lune and Poulenc’s Improvisation
No.15, a homage to legendary French chanteuse Edith Piaf. Roger Branga’s
solo transcription of Ravel’s Bolero
closed the programme on a rowdy high.
And there were encores too. Lee’s was Edvard
Grieg’s Ich Liebe Dich (I Love You), sung in German rather than
the original Norwegian, while Khor had the final notes with Ravel’s Pavane for the Dead Infanta. This
well-attended event suggests that more recitals of this kind can become a norm
at this venue in time to come.
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