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 200th
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.
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