8 AT PLAY / Philharmonic Wind Ensemble / Review

 

8 AT PLAY 

Philharmonic Wind Ensemble 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Sunday (1 December 2024) 

Harmoniemusik refers to music for wind ensemble, typically with pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons and French horns, which was all the rage during the 18th century in Central Europe. These ensembles were typically employed by the aristocracy, performing serenades, divertimentos and music from the popular operas of the day for fun and profit. The Philharmonic Wind Ensemble, an elite group from The Philharmonic Winds, made its debut in this enjoyable 70-minute concert led by its music director Leonard Tan. 

The afternoon’s programme opened with Mozart's Overture to The Magic Flute, as arranged by Joseph Heidenreich. The music is familiar, with its solemn chordal Masonic opening in E flat major, followed by the fugal chatter which all of us have come to love. The playing was very well articulated with its contrapuntal lines coming through clearly from all parts. The ensemble could have played a whole concert of operatic overtures, and no one would have minded, but more later. 

A rare outing for Francis Poulenc’s Trio for oboe, bassoon and piano, from oboist Tay Kai Tze, bassoonist Daniel Aw Yong and pianist Chenna Lu, was alone worth the price of admission. As Tay waxed lyrical in his preamble, this was music of jollity and sadness as reflected in the Frenchman’s inimitable duality of idioms. The apt descriptions of “saint and sinner, monk and scoundrel” comes to mind. The performance was en pointe throughout, from the stark Stravinskyan opening, Parisian playfulness to the finale’s fast banter. As with much of his music, the moving central slow movement was contemplative, tinged with melancholy but the work’s beating heart. 

20th century American composer Vincent Persichetti's Parable for solo horn from French hornist Alan Kartik came like a bolt from the blue. Its atonality was more than bearable largely due to his clear-headed virtuosity, tonal warmth while delineating its themes with exacting clarity. It also helped by him indicating to the audience what recurrent motifs to listen out for. 

The concert’s major work was another relative rarity, Beethoven’s Octet in E flat major (Op.103). Its advanced opus number suggests it belonged to the same period as his late cello and piano sonatas, but this was a work of callow youth, dating from 1792. Its idiom is closer to Mozart’s Gran Partita (from 1781) and his youthful Septet (1799) than what we are more familiar with. So, no chest-thumping or fist-shaking, but much more fun, opening with a lively burst of energy. 

The depth and volume of this excellent ensemble was evident from first to last. The slow movement with its juicy operatic aria-like solo from oboe and bassoon solo was memorable to say the least. Even the Minuet with its quizzical motif of repeated notes was a departure from the usual courtliness, and a Trio with clarinet, horn and bassoon in sequence was part of LvB’s brand of humour. The finale romped with a rustic ebullience, led by the clarinets, and its irresistible oompah vibe has defined what is loveable about Harmoniemusik. 

Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance in C minor (Op.46 No.7), as arranged by Patrick Clements, very cheerful despite its minor key, closed the concert on a spirited high. This afternoon, I was privileged to be in the presence and company of Singapore’s finest wind players.

The ensemble comprised:
Oboists Simon Lee & Tay Kai Tze,
Bassoonists Daniel Aw Yong & Emerald Tan,
Hornists Alan Kartik & Joey Aston Lim,
Clarinettists Ralph Emmanuel Lim & Daniel Ong
& Bassist Sanche Jagatheesan.

DECONSTRUCTED / EDQ Wind Quintet / Review

DECONSTRUCTED

EDQ Wind Quintet

Esplanade Recital Studio

Thursday (11 September 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 September 2014 with the title "Award-winning quintet's joyful night of new-isms". 

While violinists and pianists get the most attention by general audiences here, it should not be forgotten that wind and brass players have made a quantum leap in furthering their art. The award-winning EDQ wind quintet, formed in 2011, is undoubtedly the most visible and active of professional wind chamber ensembles in Singapore.

Its 70-minute programme of 20^th and 21^st century music was a microcosm of the marathon concerts by the London Sinfonietta recently presented at the Singapore International Festival of the Arts. Hungarian composer György Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles (1953) were the most familiar pieces played this evening. These were transcriptions of piano pieces from Musica Ricercata, each movement based on a fixed number of notes in a chromatic scale.

Rapid reflexes were called for in the first piece, contrasted with the slickness of articulation in the third piece where Cheryl Lim’s flute smoothly glided over a sea of running figures. The spirit and influences of Bela Bartok hovered over each number, the solemn fifth piece being a memorial to the composer who regularly appended the word mesto (sad) to his music. The set closed with humour and cheek, the wit of which was ardently captured. 

Next, French horn player Alan Kartik gave an imperious solo display in Olivier Messaien’s Appel Interstellaire (Interstellar Call) from the massive 12-movement symphony Des canyons aux etoiles (From the Canyon to the Stars) of 1974. Playing in pitch darkness, the bell of the horn was directed into the grand piano, with the resonance of its strings adding a spectral echo to the impassioned and highly virtuosic brass soliloquy. 

In the world premiere of Singaporean Liew Kongmeng’s Partitional (2014), the five players were widely spaced apart. Oboist Leow Rui Qing and clarinettist Benjamin Wong played from behind the audience, creating an antiphonal effect with bassoonist Emerald Chee, Lim and Kartik on the floor stage. Long held single notes, sometimes in unison and often with narrow pitched intervals, permeated the air and the general mood was one of strange calm.

In Estonian Arvo Pärt’s Quintettino (1964), the emphasis was on generating a range of varied tonal splashes in its three very brief movements. Short repeated staccato bursts and slow sustained notes coloured the first two pieces, and the rhythmic finale ended with a musical in-joke, all the funnier when crowned with wrong closing cadences.

Guest pianist Nicholas Loh garnered the solo spotlight in four pieces from Makrokosmos Book II (1973) by the American George Crumb. Altering the piano’s timbre by placing paper on, manually strumming and striking the strings was all part of the pianist’s arsenal in a showing that would have made avant-gardist Margaret Leng Tan proud.

As if to repay the audience’s patience for sitting through a host of new-isms, the final work was not just gratifyingly tonal but unabashedly populist. Dutch composer Leo Smit’s Piano Sextet (1932) predates the far better known Sextet by Poulenc, but shares with it a similar warmth and congeniality. Its insouciance and gaiety were made light work by the industrious quintet and Loh in a performance that was lapped up by both players and audience alike. EDQ’s next outing should be worth waiting for.

EDQ! A Woodwind Quintet Recital / EDQ / Review

EDQ!

A Woodwind Quintet Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday (7 August 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 August 2013 with the title "Unfamiliar delights".

EDQ is an award-winning woodwind quintet formed by young professional musicians who were alumni of the Singapore National Youth Orchestra. Fresh from winning the contemporary music prize at the Henri Tomasi International Competition in Marseilles, its second public concert in Singapore was greeted by a full-house and a standing ovation.

Repertoire for woodwind quintet often involves different composers from those of standard chamber music programmes, usually peripheral figures unfamiliar to the public. Bohemian composer Anton Reicha (1770-1836), the acknowledged “Father of the woodwind quintet”, was a contemporary of Beethoven, but how many people know of his 24 quintets?   

The members of EDQ showed that his very well-crafted Quintet in D major (Op.91 No.3) was worth listening to because of its freshness and vitality. A slow introduction heralded a florid cadenza from flautist Jasper Goh, and the ensuing Allegro was launched with an energetic fervour. Veda Lin’s oboe and Goh provided the main melodic thrust in the four movements, well supported by their partners on lower pitched instruments.

Frenchman Jean Francaix (1912-1997) was a colleague of Olivier Messiaen but their music could not be more different. The former was the master of musical comedy, as his Wind Quintet No.1 (1948) proved. After a languorous opening, jazzy runs erupted in all directions, with side-splitting bellyaches from Alan Kartik’s French horn which almost stole the show. Neoclassical and mock-serious, this was music that spared no effort to entertain, and the performers reciprocated with every ounce of their wits.

Two works that utilised folk music followed after the interval. Hungarian Ferenc Farkas’s Serenade (1951) was short and pleasing, full of bucolic charm and Italianate warmth. The World Premiere of Singapore composer Zechariah Goh Toh Chai’s Four Taiwanese Aboriginal Songs (2013) was nothing short of a success. The way he dressed these simple melodies with unusual harmonies and counterpoint made them sound contemporary and relevant.

Opportunities were given for clarinettist Benjamin Wong and bassoonist Emerald Chee to bask in melody, while Goh briefly exchanged his flute for the piquant piccolo in the Dance of the Paiwan Tribe. The final Dance of the Beinan Tribe brought all five instrumentalists together for a grand tutti.

The final and longest work was the Sextet (1888) for piano and winds by the Austrian Ludwig Thuille (1861-1907), who knew Richard Strauss and was probably acquainted with Mahler. The first two movements breathed the same air as Brahms, the expansive themes rich with piano chords and figurations from guest artist Nicholas Loh. The music could have suffered from a surfeit of voices, but it was the clarity of articulation and individual mastery of each performer that saved the day.

As if effecting a change of heart, the music broke off from its shackles of convention with a jocular little Gavotte and finished with a sunny Tarantella in rapid triple rhythm. It was like the composer saying, “Enough of the serious stuff, and now let us have fun.” That spirit was clearly conveyed by the six musicians to all present, and the audience voted with its feet. Bravo all round.      

BRITTEN 100 / Wilson Goh and Friends / Review

BRITTEN 100

Wilson Goh & Friends

The Living Room @ The Arts House

Saturday (11 May 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 May 2013 with the title "Intimate Britten".

The celebration of Benjamin Britten’s centenary in Singapore has come in earnest, heralded by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s production of his blockbuster War Requiem in April, and now with local tenor Wilson Goh’s two-concert tribute of a more intimate kind. No composer has quite matched Britten in setting English texts to music, who so skilfully married poetic eloquence with a rarefied and austere beauty.

The first evening was devoted to Britten’s five canticles, song settings for tenor, various combinations of voices and instruments on inspirations of a biblical or spiritual kind. Performed straight through, these demanding works would have strained the endurance and concentration of musicians and audience, and so each canticle was prefaced by introductory statements that were both helpful and educational.

Counter-tenor Cyril Wong, an award-winning poet himself, spoke on the origins of the texts while Goh explained each piece with musical examples. Britten without tears or fears, it would appear, but this gambit worked a charm as it kept the small audience totally attentive and engaged. Then the music began.

Tenor Adrian Poon sang the First Canticle, entitled My Beloved Is Mine, with a spring in his step. The lightest of the five pieces, its yearning and melisma came through winningly, and one was allowed to ponder the words which seemed deliberately ambivalent. Was this agape love as espoused by organised religion or one of a homoerotic variety?   

The Second Canticle, Abraham And Isaac, was a duet uniting tenor Goh and countertenor Wong as Genesis father and son on the touchy subject of child sacrifice and unwavering faith. Their voices blended beautifully, Goh’s rich resonance with Wong’s guileless innocence. Again the conversations between mankind and creator suggested a kind of divine ménage a trois. Little wonder printed texts were not provided.

Alan Kartik’s evocative French horn added an element of drama and conflict in the Third Canticle, from the poem Still Falls The Rain by Edith Sitwell. Challenged by each brassy rebuke, Goh’s response was one of sonorous sobriety and ultimately solace. With both declamatory threads united at the last page, the piece sought comfort in the midst of tragedy.  

For the Fourth Canticle, Goh and Wong was joined by baritone Ong Kok Leong to enact an imagined scene by T.S. Eliot of the Three Wise Men on their journey seeking the newborn Jesus. This version was not all gold, frankincense and myrrh, but three grumpy old codgers bemoaning their difficult journey, and concluding the mission to be just “satisfactory”. The reading was more than satisfactory, it was better than good.     

The terminally ill Britten omitted the piano for his Fifth Canticle (another T.S.Eliot setting), a gesture symbolic of his impending death. So replacing the ubiquitous and ever-sensitive pianist Shane Thio was harpist Jana Ang Fries, who provided an ethereal accompaniment to Poon’s final submission. Here was Britten crafting his own epitaph, no longer a rebel but one peaceably submitting to the inevitable. This was a sublime way to close a concert of much subtlety and imagination.

A ROMANTIC REMINISCENCE / Singapore National Youth Orchestra / Review

A ROMANTIC REMINISCENCE
Singapore National Youth Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Thursday (28 July 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 July 2011 with the title "Conductor's energetic debut".

High-flying Singaporean conductor Darrell Ang (left) was appointed Music Director of the Singapore National Youth Orchestra (SNYO) late last year, but audiences had to wait some eight months before his first concert with his charges in that capacity. It was well worth it given the new found energy and vitality that possesses the ensemble.

The opening bars of Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture made its mark immediately. The turbo-charged pace from the outset seemed initially implausible, but this high wire act seemed to thrive on a surfeit of adrenaline. Stunningly accuracy at high velocity, with the strings singing with natural and unfettered ease, gave this opener the stamp of greatness.

More followed as the orchestra partnered local virtuoso Lim Yan (left) for Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto, a second performance of this rare gem within the space of two weeks. For certain, young Lim yielded nothing to the stupendous reading by Russian veteran Nikolai Demidenko with the Singapore Symphony a fortnight ago. Only the approach was radically different.

While Demidenko highlighted its tragedy with far slower tempos, Lim’s more sprightly account brought out the implicit irony and satire. When it came to the crunch of the gargantuan first movement cadenza and rapid-fire cascades of notes, the younger man matched blow for blow and came off with fewer misses. These two brilliant performances were the stuff of dreams.

In terms of instrumental achievement, the orchestra’s view of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony will have to take some beating. Conducting completely from memory, Ang honed a tight and urgently driven traversal, yet one that was never hectic or harried. Always allowing the music to breathe, there were long stretches of seamless beauty and utter coherence that held the work together.

Strings were particularly mellow, with a homogeneous refinement and suppleness that reminded one of the far more experienced SSO. Also highly confident were the wind and brass solos, with Alan Kartik’s French horn (left) in the slow movement being the pick of the crop.

The valedictory final movement summed up the group’s enormous potential. No longer were notes being dutifully churned out but actually breathed and cherished, and the nail-biting lead up to the triumphant climax had a feverish quality never previously realised. A strong SNYO can only mean a better future for classical music in Singapore.