TURNING THE PAGE: FROM SCHINDLER TO FIDDLER / re:Mix / Review

TURNING THE PAGE:

FROM SCHINDLER TO FIDDLER

re:Mix & Foo Say Ming (Violin)

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (6 February 2022)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 February 2022 with the title "Rich exploration of Jewish music".

 

The Covid-19 pandemic had wreaked havoc on the activities of many arts groups. One of the victims was string ensemble re:Mix, which had not performed live since February last year at the Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts. For self-presented events, one has to go back further to April 2018.

 

There was thus a sense of anticipation when its players took to the stage, followed by its director-leader violinist Foo Say Ming, to perform a programme wholly devoted to Jewish music. Foo led from the violin, with his seated charges surrounding him on three sides, straight into Simchas Torah (Rejoicing) from Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch’s Baal Shem Suite. It is also known by its sub-heading Three Pictures of Chassidic Life.  

 

Ironically, this was the most cheerful music to be heard tonight, a reflection of care-free and happy times. Even this was tinged with nostalgia, as if the celebration and gaiety displayed were in the past. It was also interesting to note that the movements of the suite had been reordered to fit a narrative arc within the three linked chapters of the concert.

 

Next was Vidui (Contrition), prayer-like in its beseeching quality, followed by its longest movement Nigun (Improvisation). This is repertoire that Foo positively revelled in, where long-breathed elegiac strains found the greatest resonance in his playing. His tone is full and rich, sometimes wandering into rougher edges which suited this earthy music best.

 

In this string arrangement by Dominic Sargent, the ensemble backed Foo’s solos with much sympathy and warmth. Just as good was Chen Zhangyi’s arrangement of John Williams’ familiar Suite from the multiple Oscar-winning feature film Schindler’s List. About the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Krakow, the music that accompanied the Steven Spielberg-directed Holocaust movie is tear-jerking yet life-affirming.

 

Its main theme in the minor key provided the DNA of the music to come, its inherent sadness later ratcheted into profound depth of feeling in Remembrances. Here, Foo’s totally heartfelt reading channelled memories of Jewish-American violinist Itzhak Perlman, who performed in the original soundtrack. With another reordering of movements, Jewish Town – with its sinuously lilting Klezmer dance – was played last in order to better align with the concert’s final work.

 

That was a short medley from Jerry Bock’s broadway musical Fiddler On The Roof, about life in a Jewish shtetl (village) in turn of the century Russia, as arranged by Julian Wong. The eponymous fiddler, famously depicted in Marc Chagall’s painting Green Violinist, is the classic representation of the heady Klezmer tradition. Foo’s irrepressible free-wheeling now paid tribute to another Jewish-American violinist, one from an even older generation: Isaac Stern.

 

A pity it had to end so soon, but Foo had one last ace up his sleeve, an encore that came like a breath of fresh midnight air: Li Jinguang’s Ye Lai Xiang (Fragrance Of The Night), a promise of better times to come.        

Photo: Pianomaniac

Photographs by Regina Setiawan, courtesy of re:Mix.