YORE & YONDER / Red Dot Baroque

YORE & YONDER

Red Dot Baroque

The Arts House Chamber

Sunday (17 April 2022)

 

About ten years ago when I was giving a talk at one of the local music education institutions, a bright student asked me whether a period instrument group might come forth from the Singapore musical scene. My answer was certain: there was bound to be a musician or bunch of musicians interested in early music performance, who would pursue studies in specialist centres overseas and return to form such a group here. Just wait, and results will be seen in time.

 

Forward some ten years, that musician would be young violinist Alan Choo, and the group he formed was Red Dot Baroque (RDB). It gave its first concert at Esplanade Recital Studio in August 2018 to much acclaim and praise. In January 2019, RDB helped launch SingBaroque, the movement to make baroque music popular and mainstream in Singapore, by performing in a marquee event at CHIJMES. Also an ensemble-in-residence at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, the future looked rosy indeed.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic that swept the world in 2020 could have killed the young ensemble’s hopes and aspirations, but RDB persevered by producing excellent digital concerts for an Internet audience, and later picked up on live events when it was socially safe to do so. Within all of this, Alan Choo shuttled between Singapore and the United States of America, where he was   concertmaster at the Grammy-winning period instrument group Apollo’s Fire based in Cleveland, Ohio. Choo had moved on from playing Franck, Hindemith and Khachaturian to the likes of Biber, Vivaldi, Locatelli and Frescobaldi, while Singapore now proudly boasts of its first and only professional period instrument ensemble.

 

This very enjoyable 75-minute long concert was a “Thank You” and fundraising event for Red Dot Baroque’s supporters through these few heady years, with a selection of performances from defining past concerts, which would constitute a perfect “Greatest Hits” sampler. The following photographs amply illustrate that Red Dot Baroque has a wider repertoire than the just Brandenburg Concertos, Four Seasons or Messiah, but so much more.

The concert began in total darkness with cellist
Leslie Tan playing, later joined by the other members
of RDB until the whole band assembled to
improvise on the old English tune Paul's Steeple. 

The Vivace movement from J.S.Bach's
Trio Sonata in D minor.

The Cantabile movement from
Vivaldi's Flute Concerto "Il Gardellino"
with flautist Rachel Ho.

Two Christmas carols, or Noels,
by Marc-Antoine Charpentier gave
the proceedings a festive flavour.

Whoever thought that local Malay folksong
Chan Mali Chan (arranged by Edmund Song)
could sound baroque?

Soprano Joyce Lee Tung joins RDB in
Tornami a vagheggiar from Handel's Alcina.

The RDB string quartet plays the finale
from Haydn's Joke Quartet, and the audience fell
for his joke, by applauding before the work ended.

 

A perennial favourite, Summer from
Vivaldi's Four Seasons, with Gabriel Lee as soloist.

A spot of dramatics, involving a lovelorn
Gabriel Lee with actress Rachel Ho.

Something happy Se l'aura spira
by Girolamo Frescobaldi.

A joyous end to the sparkling concert.

Take a bow, Red Dot Baroque!

 

Here’s to many more good years for Red Dot Baroque. One thing is certain: in a further ten years’ time, RDB will not be the only period instrument group in Singapore. But it will always be the first one.