NOTES OF PASSION / More Than Music / Review

NOTES OF PASSION

More Than Music

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (17 June 2023)

 

Is there a professional chamber group in Singapore more active than More Than Music? Now in its 10^th anniversary year, the duo of violinist Loh Jun Hong and pianist Abigail Sin have already performed its third concert in six months. Partnered with the Singapore Symphony’s principal cellist Ng Pei-Sian, MTM came up trumps again with another attractive yet original programme that furthers the course of chamber music in Singapore.

 

Music has the ability to spark emotions, and this programme covered the full gamut. “What words cannot express, music does,” Loh described its music. Love could only be the inspiration for his opening piece, the central slow movement from Richard Strauss’ early Violin Sonata in E flat major (Op.18). Titled Improvisation, its lingering lyrical lines found a muse in Loh’s effulgent violin tone, with Sin’s piano accompaniment being the perfect complement. Virtuosity would come in the outer movements, but this music was all about beauty, and the listener was always reminded of it.

 

Sadness came next, in Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s Malinconia (Op.20) for cello and piano from 1900, with Ng joining Sin. The cello’s unaccompanied first bars had one scrambling to guess what key it was in, and following a series of sweeping piano arpeggios, the music settled in D minor. As Sin earlier explained, this was a heart-rending expression of Sibelius’ grief and anguish at the death of his daughter, a far cry from his nationalist scores composed around the same period (Finlandia and Second Symphony). The brooding brought out by Ng’s magnificent deep-breathed utterances would later remind one of another great Sibelius score of the time, the Violin Concerto (1904), also in D minor.   

 

The first half concluded with Giuseppe Tartini’s famous Violin Sonata in G minor, also known as the Devil’s Trill. Legend has the composer dreaming of the Devil himself fiddling at the foot of his bed, spinning off unbelievable feats of virtuosity. Waking up in a sweat, he attempted to replicate his experience only to fall short, but what Loh and Sin accomplished in this proto-Paganinian thriller was still admirable. No punches were pulled as Loh’s highly expressive account demonstrated, contorting his torso in seemingly impossible postures, fraying bow-hairs and all. The devil always gets all the best tunes and poses.   

 

The concert’s second half comprised just one work, a rare performance of Dvorak’s Piano Trio No.3 in F minor (Op.65) from 1883, in a sprawling four movements lasting almost 40 minutes. From its key and first bar of unison strings, the work shouted Brahms (specifically the early Piano Quintet), given its sense of tragedy and gravitas. However listening a little bit more and digging a little deeper, the composer’s Slavonic spirit is revealed.

 

Although less obvious as the Dumky Trio (Op.85), the sensation of folk music – its melodies and rhythms – came through, most indelibly in the second movement. The slow third movement was the work’s emotional heart, the lovely interplay between cello (who gets heard first) and violin being milked for all its worth. The lively finale had both Slavic and Brahmsian influences. Anyone who knows the finale of Brahms First Cello Sonata (Op.38) would go “Aha!” at its first notes, but Dvorak was no Brahms clone. His music – all passion with lots of heart and brain – was stirring, and well brought out by the threesome, driving to an exciting and invigorating close.   

 

One might conclude, from this concert, that More Than Music is Singapore’s finest chamber group bar none. More is to be expected from this dynamic duo and their equally talented friends soon.