COLOURS & VARIATIONS
KAREN TAY Harp Recital
Esplanade Recital Studio
Friday (23 August 2024)
METAMORPHOSIS
Duo Tarenna & Friends
Esplanade Recital Studio
Saturday (24 August 2024)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 August 2024 with the title "An exciting showcase of Singapore musicians and composers".
Over the past weekend, this reviewer has had the fortune and privilege of witnessing the world premieres of works by two young Singaporean composers, performed by young local professional musicians. Like the newly commissioned works recently unveiled by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at the National Day Concert, this should be part of a healthy norm, rather than an exception.
The first was New York-based Singaporean harpist Karen Tay performing London-based Lim Kang Ning’s Tenebroso. Its title relates to many shades of darkness in contrast with light, both in mood as well as musical textures. Possessed with a restless energy, it opened with buzzing ostinatos, operating on both high and low registers of the instrument. Darker hues predominated before culminating in a series of sweeping glissandi, concluding an eventful 6 minutes which did not overstay its welcome.
The solo recital, presented by Kris Foundation, was mostly of 20th century works, where an outsized virtuosity was requisite despite eschewing outward showiness for its own sake. British composer Benjamin Britten’s varied five-movement Suite and American harpist-composer Carlos Salzedo’s colourful Scintillation, displaying varying levels of dissonance, were complementary companions for Lim’s creation.
On a lighter side, Tay’s elegant and understated virtuosity brought polish to Frenchman Marcel Tournier’s impressionist Sonatine and American Brandee Younger’s popular music-inspired Unrest I. Transcriptions of familiar music by Domenico Scarlatti and J.S.Bach, and an encore of her mother Magdalene Wong’s delightful Forever completed a highly eclectic and accomplished recital.
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| Karen Tay with Kris Tan and Lim Kang Ning. |
The following evening saw the premiere of Ding Jian Han’s hreeviFruowT for flute and string quartet, part of the Composer’s Drawing Board commissioning project presented by Duo Tarenna (violinist Tan Tiag Yi and violist Cindy Ow). Joined by violinist Farah Wu, cellist Chan Sihan and flautist Paul Huang, the atonal work employed the flute and piccolo as both solo and ensemble instrument.
Huang had the most expressive moments, including uttering fragments of themes and using percussive slap-tonguing and purring flutter-tonguing techniques. Ever-shifting contours through its busy 12 minutes kept the listener guessing what comes next and how it would end. Due to the demanding entries exacted, the work was conducted by Ding himself.
This made for an ideal companion for Lee Jia Yi’s Eclipse for violin & viola (Tan and Ow) which was shorter but exhibited a similar restlessness, with screeching harmonics and slithering glissandi being par for the course.
The balance of the 75-minute concert was less demanding on the ears. Joseph Kosma’s Autumn Leaves, arranged for string quartet by Toru Takemitsu, saw the famous melody emerge from Ow’s viola. Its relationship to two movements from American Chinese composer Anthony Cheung’s modern and dissonant The Real Book of Fake Tunes seemed tenuous.
The opening Allegro movement from Danish composer Friedrich Kuhlau’s Flute Quintet in D major (Op.51 No.1) was the concert’s most traditional work, while Death of an Angel by Astor Piazzolla (arranged by Tan) headily combined tango and counterpoint. British composer Thomas Ades’ Tango Mortale from his quartet Arcadiana was a brief essay on darkness and violence.
To quote the young conductor Adrian Chiang who had recently conducted a concert wholly of local works, “If we do not support Singaporean composers, then who will?”
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