TRIO PHOENIX / Review

TRIO PHOENIX

Esplanade Recital Studio

Monday (29 June 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 July 2015 with the title "Impressive debut of trio".

Formed by three postgraduate students of the Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore, Trio Phoenix made its first appearance two nights ago at Esplanade Recital Studio. Two of its members would have been familiar to local audiences, as Singaporean violinist Alan Choo and Thai pianist Akkra Yeunyonghattaporn were active performers as undergraduates at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory. Completing the threesome is Taiwanese cellist Tzu-Jou Yeh.

Their programme was a diverse one, combining music from the Baroque, Romantic and modern eras. It opened with an arrangement of three movements from Jean-Philippe Rameau's Pieces de Clavecin en Concert No.5, originally for harpsichord, violin and viola da gamba. While authenticity (or the lack of) was never an issue here, the trio strived to replicate the baroque feel in the three dances, each named after a personality of the times.

The strings eschewed vibrato while the piano traipsed lightly, and there was much to admire in the transparency in textures. The first movement (La Forqueray) highlighted counterpoint, the second (La Cupis) sang like an operatic aria, while the third (La Marais) was an upbeat and jolly dance.

After this palate cleanser, the more serious business took the form of Alfred Schnittke's Piano Trio (1985/1992). Schnittke (1934-1998) was the most important Russian composer of the post-Shostakovich era, and  his supposed compositional style was known as polystylism, a bewildering mix of the new and old, and everything else in between. This very dark and inward-looking work  in two connected movements was built upon an inversion of a theme resembling the ubiquitous Birthday Song.

Instead of good cheer, the music plunged into depths of unrelieved gloom, with braying dissonances and “wrong notes” littering its path. The trio traversed its thorny pages with intense concentration, veering between concord and discord within a split second and back, all through its disquieting and schizophrenic course, before closing with Choo's violin imitating terminal tinnitus.

The patient audience's reward was a rare performance of Mendelssohn's Second Piano Trio in C minor (Op.66), a welcome departure from its often-programmed predecessor (Op.49). Yet both works have remarkable similarities in four movements, beginning urgently and passionately before settling to a seamless song without words in the slow movement.

All three musicians were well balanced in the hall's somewhat boomy acoustics, and that was largely down to pianist Akkra's utmost sensitivity in supporting his partners without overwhelming them. Cellist Yeh lapped up all her cantabile moments, a perfect foil to Choo's incisiveness and scintillating piano runs. 

The mercurial Scherzo was a case in point, which flew on feathery wings, followed by a gratifying Finale which dovetailed two divergent melodies – in minor and major keys – for a brilliant conclusion. The second melody, a Lutheran hymn also known by Anglophones as The Old Hundredth is regularly heard in Protestant churches here as a doxology of thanksgiving.

Trio Phoenix's encore was a reprise of Rameau's La Cupis, a fitting benediction to a most impressive of debuts. 

CELEBRATIONS! 4th Singapore Chamber Music Festival / Review

CELEBRATIONS!
4th Singapore Chamber Music Festival
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall
Saturday (12 February 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times

on 14 February 2011 with the title

"Classical camaraderie"

The 4th Singapore Chamber Music Festival has come on so surreptitiously that one easily confuses it with the event-packed Conservatory concert calendar. Its celebration concert featured Conservatory faculty, students and alumni performing alongside their counterparts from Baltimore’s Peabody Institute of Music.

A hugely enjoyable evening began with four lady students from the Conservatory String Quartet in Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade. There was nothing student-like about the performance, which besides being immaculate, radiated the warmth of its sunny string writing and spontaneous lilt. Their excellent deportment was also a source of pride.

Schubert’s popular “Trout” Quintet, named after his Lied Die Forelle (The Trout), was next. Here the playing was a little uneven, possibly from short of rehearsal time, but there was no denying the palpable camaraderie between musicians. The pianist was Bernard Lanskey, taking time off responsibilities as Conservatory Director, whose leadership also extended to turning pages for his string players.

Violinist Ye Lin and cellist Qin Li-Wei were all eyes, blending beautifully, while violist Jiang Hansong and bassist Yang Xun provided able support. Ye and Jiang, both alumni, are now Singapore Symphony Orchestra musicians. Initially tense, the playing soon settled to a comfortable congeniality, typical of “hausmusik” (literally “home music”) between friends, boosting the feel good factor by several pints.

Conservatory students yield nothing to their professional seniors. Evidence was the totally commanding performance of Debussy’s late Violin Sonata in G minor by Rose Hsien, with sensitive pianism from Akkra Yeunyonghattaporn. Besides a ravishing tone and spotless intonation, Hsien’s playing had depth, myriad shades and that elusive element of fantasy to fill volumes. She is clearly a star in the making.

The final work was the early Piano Quintet in C minor (Op.1) by Hungarian composer Ernö Dohnanyi, with an unmistakeable debt of influence to Brahms. That rich and dark texture, urgently voiced, was well brought out by the ensemble which featured three guests from Peabody, pianist Kuan Sheng-Yuan, violinist Luri Lee and cellist Michael Kannen.

Magyar spices indelibly flavoured the rhythmic Scherzo, while Fan Ran’s viola sang unabated in the opening for the nocturne-like slow movement, easily the work’s highlight. With violinist Zhao Yi completing the handful, the energetic finale pulsed ever so delightfully, despite the academician in Dohnanyi throwing in a fugue for good measure.

This festival continues for over a month, with more musical treasures lie awaiting.

The 4th Singapore Chamber Music Festival is organised by the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.

Leon Fleisher Masterclass @ Yong Siew Toh Conservatory

LEON FLEISHER MASTERCLASS
Tuesday evening, 10 March 2009

The octogenarian American pianist Leon Fleisher gave two masterclasses at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory. The first class on Tuesday was greeted by a sizeable audience and its two and a half hours passed ever so swiftly. All photos by Jonathan Wong.

First up was Abigail Sin (Singapore) who gave a very clear-headed and accomplished performance of Bach’s Toccata in C minor (BWV.911), one which showed much awareness of its contrapuntal possibilities.

Fleisher gave the first poser, “Do you have any questions, doubts or frustrations?” which came unexpectedly. About the work’s introduction, a recitative on the right hand, he looked for simplicity in response to its declamatory and rhetorical character. He felt it could have been more direct and played less fast, and there was no need to find variety so soon in the piece. Also, he gave more emphasis to the off-note, while playing down the need to find extra voices when these were not written. He played the entire passage with his left hand and did so quite perfectly too!

In Baroque music, he felt that the temptation to introduce Romantic devices should be resisted, remarking that people often “got tired of simplicity and injected their own neuroses” to the music. On the fugal subject, he observed syncopations to be special events, and deserved to be supported, that is to linger that slight bit longer on the held note. He also helped Abigail shape the voice of the theme, so that it sounded less literal and less metronomic.

In the reprise of the fugue theme with the right hand decoration, he reiterated the importance of these extra notes as a means of variation. For a very short while, he also rested his hands on Abigail’s shoulders and the top of her head, indicating “don’t move excessively!” There is enough in the music for the pianist not to respond physically. So keep it simple, was his message.

The burly Akkra Yeunyonghattaporn (Thailand) played the first movement of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto in C minor (Op.37), accompanied by his teacher Thomas Hecht on second piano. It was big and blustery, as expected, but one filled with unusual sensitivity as well.

At the first instance, Fleisher reminded the young virtuoso to always acknowledge his orchestra ie. the accompanist. He described performing to be a complex activity. A musician is three persons at once: the first plans the performance in advance, the second does the playing, and the third listens and judges, and tells the second how to attain the goals of the first. This was according to him, an “ideal state of schizophrenia”, combining a microcosm (the purpose of each note) and a macrocosm (the grand vision of the work, from the first note to the last).

About the performance, he wanted the pianist’s entry to be more than just scales, a mini-eruption if possible. He gave the analogy of fast-acting yeasts, and how they achieve a rising quality immediately. On the scintillating descending arpeggio passage, he thought it could be achieved with one hand. “You’re too good a pianist to do it with two hands!” he joked, quite seriously. Again, he exhorted the young person to experience the music inside him, and not to be “physically active”.

Fleisher brought up the association between music and mathematics. He felt music to be closer aligned with physics – direction, forces and momentum – especially with its irresistible and inexorable drive. Thus, even a simple scale should not sound like a flat typewriter but rather a force that swells, and “takes the listener by the lapels”. He also noted that pianists are at an enormous disadvantage compared with their string and wind counterparts. They need to constantly create and recreate the illusion of continuity with their instrument. Finally, he discussed pedalling and the effect of senza sordino (without dampers), which he concludes to be with the sustaining pedal after all. He however warned that this effect “offends certain people, mostly Republicans.”

The third pianist to perform was Nattapol Tantikarn (Thailand), whose choice of Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole seemed like a self-indulgent one. One wondered what Fleisher might have to say. What is there to be gained by bringing Balakirev’s Islamey to Arthur Schnabel, for example?

Fleisher, impressed by the flashy pianism, quipped, “That was a lot of piano playing,” and went on to help the young man work on his colour. “Silence, or air space, is often underestimated” he added and got him to take his foot off the right pedal. The effect was startling, as the amorphous mass of sonority had become so much better defined. Finding the right accents and effects amid the dotted rhythms also helped to make Folies d’Espagnole sound more orchestral. As to achieve pianissimo, Fleisher questioned him about not using the middle (sotto voce) pedal. “Why?” he asked. About Spanish music, Fleisher advised him not to be too sentimental as the “Spanish danced with straight backs”, adding that “bullfights were a ritual of blood and sand.”

Fleisher finally described music to be “a horizontal activity with vertical events”, and all musical activity to be “an adventure in anti-gravity”. He emphasised the need for a lift or a spring forward after the keys have been played, and not “hammering coffin nails”. He also asked the pianist to “go for a direct ending”, that is to be off the stool and off the stage before the sound dies out. With that, he leapt off his seat - to the appreciative applause from all who attended.