DING YI CHINESE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL 2024 / Review

 

DING YI CHINESE CHAMBER 

MUSIC FESTIVAL 2024 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Friday & Saturday 

(13 & 14 December 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 December 2024 with the title "A feast of traditional and avantgarde music".

One of Singapore’s best-kept musical secrets is the biennial Ding Yi Chinese Chamber Music Festival, bringing together Chinese chamber ensembles from the Asia-Pacific and the homegrown Ding Yi Music Company. Three evenings of concerts are a showcase of ensemble music more diverse than the sonatas, trios, quartets and quintets that commonly define Western chamber music. 

The first evening opened with the senior citizens of Singapore Teochew Ensemble playing traditional tunes Lamps in Thousand Homes and Reminiscence in basic unison heterophony. This is the recreational music often heard in events like weddings and communal ceremonies. 

More sophisticated were Ding Yi Music Company’s presentations, a slick huqin quartet in Yao Min’s Picking Red Water Chestnuts and a full ensemble in Zhou Jiaying’s Twinkling of Bonfire Night conducted by Dedric Wong. The latter was impressionist in colour, with a quiet introduction developing into a swift celebratory dance complete with rhythmic foot-stamping. 

There were a couple of cheesy pieces using
Western instruments including one work with a
title sounding like Angry Horse Shaking Its Balls.

Windpipe Chinese Music Ensemble (Hong Kong) was the Festival’s first invited guest, impressing with Cantonese melodies, old and new. Whether playing in unison heterophony in Yan Laolie’s United We Go, Luk Wai Chung’s Lan Kwai Tang Fong and Drunken Lady Yang at Pavilion of Hundred Flowers, or the more contemporary pop-inspired approach taken in Cantonese Medley (arranged by Wang Chenwei), the virtuosity in fast numbers was clearly evident. 

Both Ding Yi and Windpipe were united for two concertante works. Xu Qiwei’s New Rendition of Early Cantonese Music conducted by Szeto Kin featured five Hong Kong soloists which performed adroitly as a concertino group, while Wang Jianmin’s The Charm of Tianshan Mountain conducted by Festival Director Yeh Tsung had Festival Artist erhu soloist Yang Xue do the honours in a spectacular concerto with exotic Central Asian influences. 

Music of a far more intimate kind featured on the second evening, from the awkwardly named “Bows and Strings’ Dance” Erhu (Huqin) Ensemble (Beijing) comprising four members, Yang Xue and three young students. Liu Tianhua’s Nocturnal Peace was an erhu duet, displaying a similar polyphony encountered in Bela Bartok’s Duos for two violins. 

Chen Yunyun’s more sentimental Red Velvet saw two erhus (Yang and Feng Xiao) accompanied by Ding Yi’s Tan Jie Qing on yangqin. Yang’s own Play for two erhus and zhonghu was a playful showcase of rapid fire virtuosity, as was the Brazilian Zequinha Abreu’s Tico Tico No Fuba in a faithful and delightfully polyphonic arrangement by Rui Xue. 

The ensemble as a full quartet presented more substantial fare in Ho Chee Kong’s Whispers of Spring, an impressionist fantasy with a pastoral feel, distinguished by drone effects and Yang’s superb gaohu solo. Li Bo Chan’s modernistic Bows and Strings, named after the group, was a series of songs and dances, that vividly exploited all kinds of instrumental possibilities. 

Nothing could be more different when C-Camerata (Taipei), a mixed ensemble comprising Chinese and Western instruments conducted by Chen Tai-chi, took to the stage. Atonality does not respect the countenance of instruments, only their timbral potentials. 

Chian Yi-cheng’s Tok for six players belonged to the “ping qualified by a thud” aesthetic where extended techniques were applied to instruments, including prepared piano, a metal rod placed between a violin’s strings, blowing directly on the pipes of a sheng, and a most unsettling rattling sound produced by a guzheng. 

Tung Chao-ming’s Behind The Sounds III with added percussion and dizi was similarly explorative and experimental, necessitating vocalisations from the players. American composer Oren Boneh’s Sprout completed this avantgarde showcase, beginning with a palpable beat from Kuo Jing-mu’s guzheng, then progressing into a relentless ostinato crescendo reminiscent of the violence of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. It made for a deafening cacophony that will clear the sinuses.