ALBERT TIU PLAYS CHOPIN / Orchestra of the Music Makers / Review

ALBERT TIU PLAYS CHOPIN

Orchestra of the Music Makers

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (22 August 2021)

 

The Covid pandemic has altered concert life in Singapore in many ways. While audience numbers are strictly limited, with only vaccinated and those tested negative for Covid admitted, ensemble sizes have also been reduced, with not more than 30 performers on stage. Performers travelling from overseas are subject to quarantine, which caused the change of programme in this concert by the Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) led by its Music Director Chan Tze Law.

 

Cellist Qin Li-Wei was to have performed the solo part in Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, but recent changes to stay-at-home notices meant that he had to miss this concert. No worries as fellow Conservatory colleague pianist Albert Tiu gamely stepped in to perform Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto, memorising it within three weeks of the concert date.

 

Tiu is the finest performer of Romantic piano music in Singapore bar none. In Chopin, his artistry encompassed every facet of early Romantic piano writing – cantabile passages inspired by bel canto singing and florid ornamentations, gestures of impetuosity in fantastic flourishes – all came together in a heady mix. This was a virtuoso concerto, written as Chopin’s calling card, but was also exquisite chamber music writ large. This was no better illustrated in the nocturne-like Larghetto slow movement, where discreet strings accompaniment and principal cellist James Ng playing a counter-melody to Tiu’s piano proved truly sublime.   

 

With the exclusion of all blown instruments (double woodwinds, horns, trumpet and trombone), the string arrangement adapted from Chopin’s string quintet version worked extremely well. One hardly missed winds in the big tuttis, and during the climatic pause in the finale, when the French horn’s call was substituted by Wang Dandan’s solo viola, she stood up to be counted. The scintillating end was greeted with appreciative applause, and the encore was a reprise of those precious final minutes from the Larghetto. Just perfect.

 

The programme’s second half was devoted to a string orchestra arrangement of Schubert’s String Quartet in D minor (D.810), better known as Death and the Maiden. Mahler himself penned a version of his own, but the version heard this evening was a rearrangement of an arrangement. Whatever the differences may be, it worked very well too. What strikes the listener is the sheer sumptuousness of the string sonorities, where the original group of four is multiplied manifold (up to 29 players in total). In this arrangement, there was division of labour too, with concertmaster Zhao Tian’s violin and James Ng’s cello providing solos that stood apart from the rest.

 

The omission of exposition repeat for the first movement was astute and well-founded, lending a tautness to the music’s narrative flow. The second movement’s variations on the lied Das Tod und das Mädchen (the subject being the piano introduction of the eponymous song, and not the song itself) were the highlight of the performance, with the ensemble responding magnificently to each change of dynamics. The ensuing Scherzo was decidedly short-winded but well handled before the finale’s swirling tarantella rhythm provided a sweeping close to an energised performance which can only be a product of youth and vitality. One cannot imagine another group of strings other than the national orchestra’s that could have conjured a reading of such vivaciousness and immediacy.

 

OMM’s next concert on 1 October at the same venue will be a showcase of the orchestra’s winds, brass and percussion. One can hardly wait.