BENNETT & DUKE VIOLIN CONCERTOS + TCHAIKOVSKY 4 & 6 / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

BENNETT VIOLIN CONCERTO
AND TCHAIKOVSKY 4
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Friday 13 October 2023
Esplanade Concert Hall

DUKE VIOLIN CONCERTO
AND TCHAIKOVSKY 6
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Friday (27 October 2023)
Esplanade Concert Hall

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 October 2023 with the title "Forgotten works ably revived in recording project". 

 

The latest recording project of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra showcased the revival and Asian premieres of long forgotten violin concertos by two 20^th century American composers better known for their work in popular and stage music. These were showcased in two concerts with British violinist Chloe Hanslip and SSO’s former principal guest conductor Andrew Litton, coupled with two Tchaikovsky symphonies.

 

Robert Russell Bennett (1894 to 1981) is remembered for his orchestrations of Broadway musicals including The Sound of Music and South Pacific. His four-movement Violin Concerto from 1941 straddled between serious and light music. Opening like an outtake from Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride, the solo violin’s confident entry was however a show of serious intent.

 

Hanslip’s prowess was amply displayed in a serious old-school cadenza, and exciting perpetual motion later exhibited in the third and fourth movements. The latter possessed the same frenetic energy and pace in the finale of Samuel Barber’s famous violin concerto. The beautiful slow movement, with lush orchestral strings, hinted strongly that this was glorified film music.   

 

The following Friday saw the 1943 Violin Concerto by Vladimir Dukelsky (1903 to 1969), better known by his Americanised alias Vernon Duke. Composer of popular jazz standards like April In Paris and Taking a Chance on Love, his three-movement concerto was a longer work made of sterner stuff. To borrow a metaphor, Duke’s was chalk to Bennett’s cheese.

 

It was hard to discern what key the concerto was in, its dissonant and chromatic idiom defying attempts, but the virtuosity was never in doubt. Hanslip had to dig deep into a long and thorny cadenza midway through the first movement. The second movement was a waltz, but not anything like Strauss. Its mock sentimentality and elusive melody put paid to all pretense, besides it closed with three abrupt and bumpy chords.  

 

The imaginative theme and variations finale echoed modern German composer Paul Hindemith’s astringency, leading one to conclude that composers had be taken seriously if they sounded like neo-Bachian Hindemith or atonal Schoenberg, preferably both. Whose concerto would better stand the test of time, Bennett or Duke? Judging by these performances, the deeper and more substantial Duke would edge the lighter and more entertaining Bennett.     

 

About Tchaikovsky, one would scarcely have encountered a more passionate reading of his Fourth Symphony in F minor. Its opening “Fate” motif was brilliantly nailed by the brass in imperious form, summing up its gripping narrative on a whole. Rachel Walker’s solo oboe stood out in the slow movement while massed pizzicato strings swamped the Scherzo with a wall of sonority. The hell-for-leather ride in the blistering finale made it all the more memorable.

 

 

More melodrama came in the Sixth Symphony in B minor, or the Pathetique, one week later. If there were a composer’s suicide letter, this would be it. Unrelieved gloom enveloped its opening, conductor Litton’s vision ensured its grim message was understood by all. The furious fugato of a development was gripping, contrasted by the faux gentility of the second movement’s bittersweet waltz.

 

The Scherzo's relentless march was crafted as the ultimate study in crescendo (that is until Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony almost 50 years later) and a quickening of pace made it even more thrilling. As if to forestall inappropriate premature applause, the finale’s Adagio lamentoso followed without a break, and the composer’s desperate descent into despondancy became complete. Performed by the orchestra with knowing sympathy and requisite pathos, there could be no more gut-wrenching finality to a symphony such as this.  

A review of the 13 October 2023 concert as published on Bachtrack.com:

Robert Russell Bennett’s Violin Concerto revived in Singapore | Bachtrack

SOUVENIRS DE FETE / SEIKA ISHIDA PLAYS MOZART / Review

SOUVENIRS DE FETE

Miyuki Washimiya, Piano Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday (29 November 2022)

 

SEIKA ISHIDA PLAYS MOZART

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Wednesday (30 November 2022)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 December 2022 with the title "Japanese pianists Miyuki Washimiya and Seika Ishida in fine form."

 

In an interview, internationally renowned Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa once gave reasons why there were so many women pianists in Japan. Japanese society dictated that men went into stable and profitable professions like medicine, law, engineering and civil service, while women were encouraged to pursue music and fine arts. She also suggested that should the women not make their careers, marriage was still an option.

 

Two very fine lady Japanese pianists were heard on consecutive evenings last week. Keyboard veteran Miyuki Washimiya has regularly appeared here in concerts presented by Kris Foundation, both as soloist and in collaboration with young local musicians. The Paris-trained pianist opened her recital with Mozart’s Sonata in F major (K.280), displaying crispness of articulation and a fluid technique to bring out the music’s lyricism.

Photo: Kris Foundation

 

The major work was Francis Poulenc’s Les Soirees de Nazelles (The Evenings Of Nazelles), rarely played because of virtuosic demands and myriad intricacies in moods and dynamics. Its eight variations, each with fanciful French titles, were vignettes of close personal friends. Quirky, humourous but ultimately congenial, these found a sympathetic interpreter in Washimiya’s resolute yet sensitive fingers.

 

Young Singaporean composer Lim Kang Ning’s two piano pieces were also revealed as miniature masterpieces. The highly-spirited Flower Visages was coloured by Chinese influences, contrasted with A Japanese Poem - receiving its world premiere - which was more formal, subtler and possessing darker shades. Both works repay further listening.

Photo: Kris Foundation

 

Rhythmic works by three Latino composers - Alberto Ginastera’s wildly exuberant Three Argentinian Dances, Federico Mompou’s gentler Song & Dance No.6, and the sweeping chords and glissandi of Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance - completed Washimiya’s recital on a high. Her encores of Sakura-Sakura and Poulenc’s Homage To Edith Piaf were also very well received.

 

Miyuki Washimiya with
Kris Tan and Lim Kang Ning.

Photo: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

From the younger generation is Seika Ishida, who performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor (K.466) with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra under former Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Litton. This was a performance that had everything; the sturm und drang (storm and stress) of outer movements salved by the central Romanza’s tenderness and beauty. Even this had its fair share of upheaval, with tension at its heart finely balanced on a knife-edge.

Photo: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

 

SSO’s was an ever-discreet partner to Ishida’s every line and phrase, allowing her freedom to flex every muscle and fibre of musicality. Cadenzas were delivered with big-boned sonorities, and if one felt the first two movements a tad restrained, no apologies were made going for broke in the finale, turning urgency into joie de vivre. Her encore was also special, a Chopin-influenced little gem that is Russian composer Anatol Liadov’s Prelude in D flat major (Op.57 No.1).

 

Photo: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

 

Equally splendid was the rest of the programme, beginning with short-lived American composer Charles Griffes’s Poem, featuring SSO principal flautist Jin Ta as soloist. Tired of hearing Debussy’s Prelude To The Afternoon Of The Faun? This was the perfect antidote, with an even more fleshed-out solo part. Its dreamy languor backed with lush orchestral colour, and solos from French horn, trumpet and viola, made this an ideal overture.   

Photo: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

 

Closing the memorable evening was Tchaikovsky’s Suite No.3 in G major, a rarity compared with his symphonies. Although light-weight in character, its four movements had a balletic feel which made it impossible to dislike. Strings were in fine form for the opening Elegie and melancholic Waltz, while chirpy woodwinds simply ruled in the whimsical Scherzo.

Concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich
gets the plaudits from conductor Andrew Litton.

 

Most substantial was the finale’s Theme and Variations, eventful as it was inventive. SSO former concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich had a plum solo, worthy of the best minutes in Swan Lake, delivered with stunning aplomb. Concluding with a most rousing of polonaises (the Polish dance of nobility), both conductor Litton and the orchestra had the audience roaring for more.  

 

ANDREW LITTON AND CHLOE HANSLIP / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

ANDREW LITTON AND CHLOE HANSLIP

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (4 March 2022)

An edited version of this review was first published in Bachtrack on 7 March 2022. 

This is possibly the worst time to celebrate things Russian, so the Singapore Symphony Orchestra discreetly amended the title of its latest concert from “Resonating Russia” to the generic and less incriminating “Andrew Litton and Chloë Hanslip”. This could have been confusing since the concert the week before had the title “Serenades with Andrew Litton and Chloë Hanslip”.

 

Music should never be a pawn of politics or cancel culture but human factors have made this inevitable. Witness the recent dismissals of Russian artists Valery Gergiev and Denis Matsuev, known associates of Vladimir Putin, from all Western concert posts and engagements for not speaking up against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On the other hand, other Russian artists like pianists Evgeny Kissin and Alexander Melnikov, and conductor Daniel Raiskin have rightly condemned this atrocity. All power to them.

 

It is no exaggeration to postulate that both Dmitri Shostakovich and Pyotr Tchaikovsky, if they were alive today, would have been staunch opponents of the present Russian regime. Shostakovich had campaigned covertly against Soviet communism and Stalinism in his specially coded music, while Tchaikovsky would scarcely be sympathetic to Putin’s anti-LGBT agenda. So there is no reason to cancel their music in any concert.   

 

Shostakovich’s only Violin Sonata was composed in 1968 as a 60^th birthday gift for David Oistrakh. This orchestral version with strings and percussion from 2005 by Michail Zinman (strings) and Andrei Pushkarev (percussion) almost constitutes a third violin concerto. Dark as the first two concertos (also written for Oistrakh) were, this one was positively painted in pitch black.

 

Soloist Chloë Hanslip, attired in a ruby-red tinselled gown, gave a searing performance as if carved out from blocks of solid granite. Her voluminous and incisive violin tone also weaved in and out of opaque string textures, and the work soon resonated like those Shostakovich chamber symphonies (fashioned from his string quartets by Rudolf Barshai) than an actual violin concerto. The brooding that opened the first movement gave way to a stiff poker-faced dance, but the oppressive mood was just as unyielding all the way till its close.

 

The violent central Allegretto movement was thought to have been Shostakovich’s response to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and brutal suppression of Prague Spring. Some things never change whether its 1968 or 2022, and the players responded with the outright vehemence the music deserved. Doing the honours on percussion was principal Jonathan Fox, who had his hands full in this explosive movement. The finale’s Passacaglia will rank as one of Shostakovich’s most morbid movements. Hanslip’s trenchant pizzicatos paved the way for a procession of mourning. There were  moments of lyricism and radiance in her playing, also mirrored in the string accompaniment but these would wind down in a terminal decrescendo. This could only mean one thing: the slow but inexorable road to death.    

 

From the doom and gloom of Shostakovich to the sun-drenched vistas of Tchaikovsky might prove inconceivable to some, but the Singapore Symphony strings led by Andrew Litton shifted gears almost effortlessly. Grey clouds had been dispersed by fulsome string sonorities of Souvenir de Florence, the string sextet now writ big in its string orchestra arrangement. The first movement soared with barely bridled passion, contrasted with the slow movement’s graceful waltz. As if plucked from one of his ballets, the music swelled with significant solo contributions from violist Zhang Manchin, cellist Yu Jing and concertmaster Kong Zhao Hui.

 

The titular Florence had more to do with where Tchaikovsky wrote this music rather than any overt Tuscan influences. The third and fourth movements were Slavic in melodic inspiration, while retaining a Mediterranean glow and warmth. The finale was whipped to a fine frenzy without losing its focus, culminating in a busy fugue, before all forces converging into the most joyous of conclusions. 

On this fascinating coupling of Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky, one question however remained: how could a land and people that gave forth music of such wealth of feeling and humanity be so callous and heinous with the lives of fellow human beings?  

 

This review is dedicated to our Ukrainian friends in Singapore, violinist Nikolai (Mykola) Koval (who played in this concert) and pianist Kseniia Vokhmianina, and their families in Kyiv and Kharkhiv. Wishing them strength and courage, and may peace prevail.

 

Star Rating: *****

SERENADES WITH ANDREW LITTON AND CHLOE HANSLIP / UNHEARD / Review

SERENADES WITH

ANDREW LITTON AND CHLOE HANSLIP

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (25 February 2022)

 

UNHEARD: CELEBRATING

SINGAPOREAN FEMALE COMPOSERS

The Arts House

Sunday (27 February 2022)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 March 2022 with the title "Women musicians get chance to shine". 

It is no secret that classical music is male-dominated. Women musicians, especially composers (and conductors), have found it difficult to break this stranglehold. This is beginning to change as more  accomplished women are increasingly being recognised on par with their male counterparts.

 

One of Britain’s most prodigious violinists, former child prodigy Chloe Hanslip, returned to perform Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade for Violin, Strings & Percussion with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in a fundraising concert. Despite the deceptive title, it is a full-blown violin concerto, which received a blistering performance.

 

A petite physical stature was no impediment to Hanslip’s full-bodied and rich tone. With perfect intonation and ample projection, she easily cut through thickets of textures from supporting strings and a battery of percussion. Alternating between austerity and levity, she also revelled in its rhythmic elements, not least in the final movement’s jazzy swagger, bringing on a chorus of cheers. Interestingly, the 2004 Singapore premiere of this work, was given by another woman: Kam Ning.      

 

The balance of the concert led by SSO Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Litton featured two popular and familiar serenades. The elegiac quality of Elgar’s Serenade for Strings was contrasted with a robustness of approach to Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, both revealing more facets to the string section’s virtuosity.

 

Unheard is a concert series founded by soprano Rachel Lim in 2019 to showcase the music of women composers, with seven Singaporean women represented in its latest edition. Their disparate voices showcased varieties of styles from popular film music influences (Sandra Lim’s Morning Memories), impressionism (Wynne Fung’s In A Quiet Grey), both works for violin with Brenda Koh accompanied by piano, and ethnic modes (Syafiqah ‘Adha Sallehin’s Fantasia Of Home for solo piano), to more modern and avant-garde trends.

 

Art song is a strong suit of local composers, including Koh Cheng Jin’s The Fungus (heard in an audio recording) and Time And Again, sung by soprano Akiko Otao and tenor Jonathan Charles Tay respectively. Food Street and Back Street Barber from Tan Yuting’s Chinatown Song Cycle were realised by Rachel Lim herself in evocative and idiomatic Mandarin. All’s the pity that words and text translations had not been made available.

 

One important aspect of Unheard was the mentorship provided by more senior composers to younger colleagues, with Young Artist Award recipient Emily Koh guiding Lee Jia Yi in the crafting of a new commission. Both composers’ works were performed, opening with Koh’s Chronoma for saxophone, piano and percussion, with Samuel Phua on alto and soprano sax as its leading voice and protagonist.

 

The piece de resistance had to be Lee’s emanate for two pianos, percussion and electronics, receiving its world premiere. It was curious to see pianists Jonathan Shin and Pauline Lee, and percussionists Eugene Toh and Ramu Thiruyanam all gathered around to tinkle and strike the insides of a grand piano. The overall effect ranged from ethereal and mysterious, to jarring and downright disturbing. New music is always fresh and thought-provoking, and local women composers showed they can equal or surpass the best of creative spirits.

Photo credits: Pianomaniac (SSO), Jamie Chan (Unheard) 

FETE MUSICALE / MOZART'S DON GIOVANNI / Review

FETE MUSICALE

A MUSICAL CELEBRATION

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Wednesday (10 March 2021)

 

MOZART’S DON GIOVANNI

Singapore Lyric Opera

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (12 March 2021)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 March 2021 with the title "Hand Puppets in opera a nice touch." 

The Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Litton continued to display his prowess on the piano, this time by leading a scintillating performance of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major from the keyboard. In a work that headily mixed influences from Basque music, Mozart and New World jazz, he had all these disparate styles down pat with a combination of deft fingerwork and rocking syncopations.

 

Excellent solo work from orchestral musicians also contributed greatly to the success, not least David Smith’s tricky trumpet blasts, Gulnara Mashurova’s sweeping harp cadenza, and Elaine Yeo’s plaintive cor anglais in the sublime slow movement accompanied by Litton’s fine filigree. While Ravel was bold and brash, fellow Frenchman Debussy provided a more restrained face in his Petite Suite, orchestrated by Henri Busser.   

 

Much of its four movements were a showcase of examplary woodwind playing, backed up by svelte strings. Only a heart of stone would reject the niceties of this Belle Epoque creation, with flowing lyrical lines in En Bateau (On A Boat) and three jaunty dance movements that followed. This suite was a perfect mirror held up to Beethoven’s relatively brief Eighth Symphony, his only symphony  without a slow movement.

 

Lightness and buoyancy was the result, and under Litton’s firm guiding baton, nothing sounded hectic or rushed in its four movements. The ensemble responded with much unity and immediacy, and while this symphony seemed puny alongside the mighty Seventh and monumental Ninth, this lively reading made it stand tall.

 

While resembling an opera school production, Singapore Lyric Opera’s latest take on Mozart’s Don Giovanni still had much to recommend. Performed in Italian by singers from the company’s Artists’ Training Programme, an abridged edition of the three-hour long opera ran breezily just under two hours without intermission. Gone was the orchestra, but tireless pianist Aloysius Foong stood in as an excellent substitute.

 

Baritone Daniel Fong sang the serial philanderer, and opposite him was baritone David Tao as his long-suffering valet Leporello. The chemistry between master and serf was totally believable, with many moments of comic relief as the duo negotiated a series of romantic escapades. They were well supported by veteran baritone William Lim (a guest doubling as the Commendatore and Masetto), tenor Jonathan MacPherson (Don Ottavio), sopranos Zhang Jie (Donna Anna) and  Joyce  Lee Tung (Zerlina) and mezzo-soprano Chieko Sato (Donna Elvira).

 

All the famous arias, duets and ensembles were included and the numbers flowed coherently under Tang Xinxin’s direction. The novel use of hand puppets to suggest intimate scenes during these times of social distancing provided literally a nice touch. The set and costumes were kept to the minimum, but enough to aid the storytelling. With big budget productions attended by big audiences are no longer sustainable because of the Covid pandemic, this commonsense approach - where musical considerations come first - is the way to go.

MARK CHENG IN RECITAL / THE TROUT / Reviews

MARK CHENG IN RECITAL

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday (3 March 2021)

 

THE TROUT QUINTET

Andrew Litton & SSO Musicians

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (5 March 2021)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 March 2021 with the title "Pianists venture off the beaten path".

More pianists are venturing off the beaten path to perform works outside the core repertoire. Bored of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, why not build a programme around sonatas by Czech composers Jan Dussek and Leos Janacek, or the Russian Nikolai Myaskovsky? That was the mandate of Mark Cheng, lawyer, piano teacher and Singapore Dance Theatre’s Company Pianist, whose recital dwelled on the theme of mortality.

 

Within 90 minutes of simmering melancholy, brooding catharsis and violent death throes, Cheng emoted with a wealth of shades and emotions, even if these ranged from dark grey to jet black. The Sonata No.24 in F sharp minor or Elegie Harmonique by Dussek, a contemporary of Mozart, sounded so modern and decadent that it could have come from late Romantics.

 

Dies Irae, medieval chant of the Day of Judgement, possessed two works; reclusive Frenchman Charles-Valentin Alkan’s Morte and Myaskovsky’s Second Sonata. While done to death in Liszt’s Totentanz and Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody, this ubiquitous theme still insinuated itself into fraught situations which Cheng handled with utter self-confidence and understated virtuosity.

 

Some familiarity came in Enrique Granados’ Love And Death from Goyescas, inspired by Francisco Goya’s paintings, and Janacek’s Sonata I.X.1905, a powerful work that memorialised a worker’s murder at a demonstration. Cheng’s recital became acutely relevant given two million lives lost to Covid and more needless deaths in Myanmar’s civil unrest. His majesterial encore, the Funeral March from Chopin’s Second Sonata, said it all.          

 

Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Litton took centrestage as pianist alongside the orchestra’s principal string players in an hour-long programme of Viennese chamber music. Gustav Mahler’s very early Piano Quartet, a single-movement teenaged effort, received a rare hearing.

 

It relived idioms of older composers Schumann and Brahms, with the morose subject from Litton’s solo setting the tone. Beneath its veneer of serenity laid a hotbed of neuroses gradually came to bear. After the piano’s outburst of octaves, tension and rage inexorably surfaced before Chan Yoong Han’s violin settled the nerves for a disquieting end. Little wonder this was used in the psycho-thriller Shutter Island starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

 

Dark clouds gave way for the sunshine of Schubert’s Piano Quintet in A major, popularly known as the Trout Quintet. The quartet of Litton, Chan, violist Guan Qi and cellist Ng Pei-Sian were joined by bassist Yang Zhengyi for this perennial favourite. Its five movements radiated a congenial warmth, led by Litton’s ever-busy part. While supporting the strings’ lyrical lines, it also had a fair share of outward virtuosity.

 

Particularly enjoyable was the fourth movement’s Theme and Variations, based on Schubert’s song Die Forelle (The Trout), hence the work’s nickname. Despite being familiar, the music never outlived its charm, boosted by five players who relished the sense of occasion, bringing the concert to a gemutlich (the Viennese adjective for being carefree) and delightful close.