PRUSSIAN WINDS / Music At An Exhibition / Review

PRUSSIAN WINDS

Music at an Exhibition

National Museum of Singapore

Tuesday (27 August 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 August 2013 with the title "Music like fresh summer's breeze".

There is a painting by Adolph Menzel called The Flute Concert of Frederick the Great that describes the perfect setting for a concert such as this. It depicts the Prussian monarch standing and playing the flute, surrounded by adoring subjects and musicians in the glow of candle-lit chandeliers in his Potsdam palace of Sanssouci. This was the mid-18^th century, the “Age of Enlightenment” when a warrior king could also be a Renaissance man, composer, consummate artist and patron of the humanities.

Among his entourage counted Johann Joachim Quantz, his flute master, and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, his harpsichordist, who both assumed highly salaried positions in his court despite being humble servants. This concert was an imaginative recreation of such a soiree, with paintings from the Royal Collection of Liechtenstein as the opulent backdrop.

Baroque music, which does not get enough of an airing here, was served with an intimacy and immediacy that had its audience enraptured. Flautist Roberto Alvarez and oboist Audi Goh were the contrasted woodwind players, supported by the basso continuo of cellist Leslie Tan and harpsichordist Yang Tien. There were six sonatas in total, each short enough to make up an hour’s worth of royal entertainment.

All the sonatas comprised four movements each, in the slow-fast-slow-fast form known as the sonata di chiesa or “church sonata”. Incidentally, five were set in the minor keys, but the mood was anything but sombre. Quantz’s (left) Trio Sonata in A minor opened the evening, and the flute’s mellow timbre stood out from the oboe’s more piercing and piquant quality. These were the two voices which traded melody and counterpoint through much of the music.

Also interesting to note was the cellist performing in the manner of the baroque, using softer gut strings and cradling the instrument with his thighs, rather than resting on its spike. His sound, eschewing the usual vibrato, was lovingly complimented by the subtly plucked strings of the harpsichord.

Although the accusation that much baroque music sounded alike is noted, there was much to enjoy in the individualities of each work. Handel’s Flute Sonata in E minor had a most virtuosic solo part, echoing the florid runs in his flashy operatic arias. Telemann’s Trio Sonata in D minor saw flute and oboe in comic chattering repartee, and its finale had an earthy country dance with bagpipe-like drones from the cello as a short interlude.

The Flemish composer Jean-Baptiste Loeillet was the interloper in this company, having died long before Frederick rose to the throne. His very short Trio Sonata in E minor was distinguished by an aria-like opening Largo and a jig-like finale. CPE Bach’s (right) Oboe Sonata in G minor concluded with a delightful theme and variations.

The concert closed with Quantz’s Trio Sonata in D major. A cheerful work with a sunny, pastoral feel, it ended in a bounding Tempo Di Menuet with an enjoyable lilt and kick in its step. Seldom has an hour of music, delectably performed, passed like a fresh summer’s breeze.  

FACULTY AND FRIENDS CONCERT II / School of the Arts / Review

FACULTY AND FRIENDS CONCERT II

School of the Arts

SOTA Concert Hall

Tuesday (14 May 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 May 2013 with the title "Yellow Pages with Caribbean beat".

The School of the Arts (SOTA) Concert Hall has truly become a boon for the performance of chamber music within the city. Time and again, its capacious yet intimate space allows for instrumental sounds to bloom, regardless of the size of the performing group, as it proved in this evening’s concert of 20^th century music.

The evening began with two works for harpsichord and small ensemble. Despite the title, Spanish composer Manuel de Falla’s 1926 Harpsichord Concerto is a virtuoso vehicle for all six instrumentalists, not just the keyboardist. Drawing inspiration from the baroque as well as Stravinsky’s spiky neoclassicism, violin (played by Chan Yoong Han), cello (Leslie Tan), flute (Roberto Alvarez), oboe (Audi Goh) and clarinet (Li Xin) all had vital parts to play in its piquant and kinetically charged short movements.

Project themselves they did, however it was in the expense of Yang Tien’s soft-focused and mellow-toned harpsichord, her complex figurations barely rising above the busy throng. The admixture of textures was somewhat better in Samuel Adler’s Acrostics, subtitled Four Games for Six Players (1985). The four movements played on varied timbres, colours and moods, afforded by the same combination of instruments and fuelled by an anarchic spirit of bantering fun. 

The second movement and its direction to play “with a great deal of charm” summed up the exercise. Pointillist and with short spurts of sound interjected at different intervals, its laugh-a-minute atmosphere then into dissipated into a droll, ghostly waltz. A second hearing of this unusual work could do wonders.

A grand piano was wheeled in place of the harpsichord for the second half, and close to perfect balance was restored. This is not a slur on the performers but rather because the piano’s plangent sound disperses into the air better than that of a dainty harpsichord’s.

Spaniard Salvador Brotons’s Mixed Sextet (1992) was as the title suggested. It pitted the sonorities of paired woodwinds with those of paired strings, against the percussed instruments – namely Lim Yan’s piano and Mark Suter’s marimba and three assorted drums. The music traversed a melange of styles, including a fugue and romantic gestures before its single movement escalated to a climatic close.

The final work was also the most entertaining. The American Michael Torke’s brand of minimalism in the three-movement Telephone Book (1995) incorporated popular styles and not a little humour. How else could his Yellow Pages be suffused with an infectious Caribbean or Latin American beat?

Blue Pages employed a syncopated bass clarinet as its beat, transporting listeners into a smoky Manhattan jazz club, while the perpetual motion of White Pages revelled in a succession of intoxicating riffs. Flashy and energetic, this clearly enthused reading from the five performers on stage - three of whom played the entire concert - was something to call (or text) home about.