TRAMPLED SOULS
T'ang Quartet
Armenian Church
Sunday (30 July 2017)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 August 2017 with the title "T'ang's mellower take on dark subjects".
Has
it already been 25 years? It seemed a short while ago when four young string
players from the Singapore Symphony Orchestra became Singapore's first
professional string quartet. Their news-making stunts like posing topless for
an Eight Days photo-shoot and or playing garbed in Ermenegildo
Zegna suits brought notoriety, but these belied their total commitment and
seriousness as an ensemble.
One
will not find Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven quartets in a typical T'ang
programme. However Shostakovich, Schulhoff and Bright Sheng made it, in a 2005
concert at London's Wigmore Hall. True to form, its 25th anniversary
was commemorated with music by Leos Janacek, Aulis Sallinen and Marjan
Mozetich.
Unusual
themes form the basis of T'ang Quartet concerts, including darker subjects
involving murder, mayhem and the macabre. At least two of these featured here,
beginning with Czech composer Janacek's First String Quartet,
inspired by Leo Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata. In
it, a woman who falls for another man gets killed by her jealous husband, the
passion developing over Beethoven's eponymous chamber work.
Strained
emotions were captured immediately in the quartet's entry, terse and severe,
and answered by ominous replies. The 2nd movement's folkdance-like
strains do little to relieve the tension, instead the wiry, metallic sounds of sul
ponticello (bowing near the bridge) add to the unease. The opening theme
is reprised in the finale, but the backlash is precipitous with the music
tapering off to a dead end.
Just
as dramatic, albeit differently, was Finnish composer Sallinen's Third String
Quartet. Cellist Leslie Tan, the quartet's spokesman, was his usual
chatty and engaging self. Prefacing each work with wry humour, he did much to
break the ice. However, making sense of the title “Some Aspects Of
Peltoniemi Hintrik's Funeral March”, the quartet's
sub-heading required more than mere words.
The
work was a phantasmagorical set of variations on a droll children's song,
opening with Ng Yu Ying's violin and Leslie Tan's cello unison, later sprinkled
with pizzicatos from Ang Chek Meng's violin and Lionel Tan's viola. Getting
more surreal with each variation, the quartet kept a straight face and stayed
the course, mopping up each “special effect” as they came.
Contemporary
Canadian composer Marjan Mozetich's Lament In The Trampled
Garden, written in 1992 and the same age as the quartet, was not as grim
as the title suggested. Opening in G minor, the 14-minute work took on a
leisurely pace, working up anguish and a mild catharsis but never reaching the
hysterics of a Shostakovich or Schnittke quartet.
In
a short note by the composer who considered “dwelling on hurt a fruitless
endeavour”, the music took on a casual and jazzy turn corresponding to his
exhortation to “immerse in surrounding beauty...where your soul can only gain”.
With this gentle benediction, T'ang Quartet - which has recorded an album of
the same programme - let the audience off lightly. The foursome has mellowed,
and perhaps so have we.
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