PORTRAIT
OF A COMPOSER / IKAN GIRL
Chamber,
The Arts House
Friday (21 October 2016 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 24 October 2016 with the title "Coherent fusion of Malay and Western music".
Malay musicians have long dominated the
popular music scene in Singapore
This concert was to have featured five
new chamber works including two World Premieres but logistical reasons
militated against that. It instead had a truncated first half that opened with
two solo piano works performed by Matthew Mak. Elegy was a short and sentimental pop-inspired piece, a student
work that could have come from a songbook anywhere in the world.
Syafiqah assured that no one died for it
to be conceived. More complex was Surviving
Love, which was also tonal but featured some dissonances, and a turbulent
central section that portrayed the trials and tribulations of her parents'
love. Played with feeling by Mak, all's well that ends well, as to be expected.
The first work with an authentically
local idiom was Anjakan Jiwa (Movements Of The Soul) performed by an
ensemble with Syafiqah on accordion, violinist Mukhriddin Sayfiddinov, flautist
Zaidi-Sabtu Ramli, pianist Nabillah Jallal and percussionist Ramu Thiruyanam.
With rhythmic ostinatos established on accordion and percussion, this was an
lively dance that lilted like the infectious nuevo tangos of Astor Piazzolla,
but with a distinctly Malay flavour.
The group conducted by Marlon Chen
performed the concert's main work Ikan
Girl. To prepare the audience, a Prelude
was crafted involving its main themes and presented as an attractive
stand-alone concert piece.
Ikan Girl, a dance-tableaux in
multiple short scenes, was adapted from a tale in the ancient Malay poem Syair
Bidasari. Here, a beautiful girl's life and soul is intertwined with that of a
magical fish. Producer Mohamad Shaifulbahri's conception was the eternal play
of good against evil, danced by eight members of the Bhumi Collective. Amin
Farid's choreography combined modern dance with Malay and Indian traditions, where
grace and violence found an equal footing.
Nur Azillah Abdul Rahman and Nadia Abdul
Malek mirrored each other's movements with seamless fluidity, their carefree
smiles finding an implacable antagonist in Rupalavanya Subramaniam's icy Queen.
Paralleling a similar plot in the Snow White story, the Queen seeks to destroy
the girl but is saved by the fish's dynamism and an unlikely lackey danced by
Amin.
This feel-good quotient would have come
to nought if not for Syafiqah's vivid music that closely followed the
narrative. Lively and high-pitched birdsong evoked a forest waking, while heavy
chords and stern harmonies represented the darker forces at work. A sense of
agitation filled the air in the abduction scenes while a violin's bittersweet
melody played out a happy resolution.
Like what Stravinsky's Petrushka did for Russian music over a
century ago, could Syafiqah's Ikan Girl,
an experimental but coherent fusion of Malay and Western classical music, be
this equally momentous landmark for local music?
 |
| Producer Mohamad Shaifulbahri, choreographer Amin Farid and pianist Nabillah Jalal were London-based artists, when they first collaborated with composer Syafiqah 'Adha Sallehin. |
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