A PIANO JOURNEY: FROM BOHEMIA TO BROADWAY / KAREL KOSAREK Piano Recital / Review

 

A PIANO JOURNEY:

FROM BOHEMIA TO BROADWAY

KAREL KOSAREK Piano Recital

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (4 July 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 July 2025 with the title "Delightful programme of Bohemian and jazz selections".

The Singapore International Piano Festival has come and gone, but the piano music continues. This weekend, Victoria Concert Hall hosted another two fine pianists. The first was veteran Czech pianist Karel Košárek, replacing his young and prodigious compatriot, the indisposed Jan Schulmeister.

Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884)

Performing on a Czech-made Petrof Monsoon grand piano, Košárek’s delightful programme of dance and song began in his homeland of Bohemia before crossing the Atlantic to the United States of America. Coaxing a rich yet mellow sound, without being over-bright in upper registers, Bedrich Smetana’s Skocna (Hop Dance) from the second book of Czech Dances was a virtuoso study of light touch and vibrant rhythm.

Photo: Guan Ziwen

This was in the same popular vein as the well-known dances from his opera The Bartered Bride. Just as nationalistic was the Fantasia on Czech Folk Songs, which displayed a Lisztian level of technical prowess. This was well-articulated, with emphasis on crisply detached notes and no smudging of textures by over-pedalling.

By way of contrast, two of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt’s Petrarch Sonnets (Nos. 104 & 123) from the Italian Book of his Years of Pilgrimage were oases of lyricism, dressed up with the filigree of florid cadenzas. Still from Bohemia, the well-travelled and highly cosmopolitan Bohuslav Martinu’s Three Czech Dances of 1926 – the Obkrocak (Stepping Dance), Dupak (Stomp Dance) and Polka - were eclectic, with spicy dissonances, quirkily kinetic rhythms and jazz influences that reflected 20th century trends but without forsaking their folk roots.

All this set the stage for Košárek’s second half, which opened with six Preludes by George Gershwin. Did the American song-writer and jazz legend not compose just three of these? The inclusion of three posthumously published pieces was a revelation and provided pure aural pleasure. It was hard to dislike the playful insouciance of Novelette in Fourths, contrasted with the Chopinesque vibe of Rubato and the bluesy languor of Sleepless Night. The original three Preludes were performed idiomatically and with clear rhythmic insight.

More virtuoso-oriented were the musings of Austrian pianist Friedrich Gulda, who worshipped Bach and Beethoven but regularly moonlighted as a jazz pianist, sometimes playing in the nude. His Exercise No.9 from Play Piano Play was pure fun, then launching into the syncopated Bachian tribute that is his wild and anarchic Prelude and Fugue, later popularised by Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Photo: Guan Ziwen

The main work of the half was Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Although he performed the published solo version which had some cuts, Košárek tore through its pages with a fearless abandon, raising a huge cheer from the clearly enthused audience.

His well-received encores included Lou Busch’s riotous boogie-woogie arrangement of Aram Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance and a welcome return to Bohemia with the simple unadorned beauty of Smetana’s Poetic Polka No.2 in G minor (from Op.8).

A FOLKLORIC JOURNEY: MELODIES OF THE HOMELAND / Donald Law, Gabriel Lee & Zoi Yeh / Review

 

A FOLKLORIC JOURNEY: 

MELODIES OF THE HOMELAND 

Gabriel Lee (Violin) 

Zoi Yeh (Cello) & 

Donald Law (Piano) 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Thursday (31 October 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 4 November 2024 with the title "Chamber concert an enjoyable study of musical nationalism".

The idea of home and homesickness in music mostly came about during the Romantic era, largely due to composers traveling away from their lands of birth and the rise of nationalism. This chamber concert was an enjoyable study of musical nationalism and how composers poured their hearts out when reminded of their origins. 

The evening opened with pianist Donald Law performing Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Dumka (Op.59) for solo piano. While he was considered too Western in style and taste by the “Mighty Handful” of Russian nationalist composers, Tchaikovsky nevertheless carved out a virtuoso showpiece from its brooding subject (Dumka comes from the Ukrainian word duma, which is a “lament”). 

Law coped well with its series of short variations and mastered its dizzying cadenza with aplomb, with its brusque concluding C minor chords echoed in the next work, Taiwanese composer Tyzen Hsiao’s Capriccio In Hakka Melody. Taiwanese cellist Zoi Tzu-Jou Yeh, who is Hakka herself, recalled hearing this tune being sung in market places during her youth. Like the earlier Tchaikovsky, its heart-rending melody, performed with much warmth and feeling, evoked genuine nostalgia. 

For solo cello was young London-based Singaporean composer Toh Yen Ee’s Ode To The Sun (2022), inspired by a painting (of the same title) and violin work (Kuang Xiang Qu) by Cultural Medallion recipient Kam Kee Yong. Its all-too-short depiction of sunrise, midday and sunset received a luminous reading from Yeh. 

Violinist Gabriel Lee accounted for two popular violin works, opening with the second piece from Bohemian composer Bedrich Smetana’s From The Homeland. Alternating between G minor and major keys, its Slavonic dance rhythms found sympathetic advocates in Lee and Law, who completed the concert’s first half with Hungarian composer Bela Bartok’s Romanian Folkdances. In the third dance (Pe Loc or On The Spot), Lee eschewed its stratospheric harmonics for an earthier sound more closely resembling Romanian gypsy fiddling. 

The concert’s major work was Smetana’s Piano Trio in G minor (Op.15), which occupied the whole second half. If one found the first half a tad polite and restrained, all three musicians went for broke in this passionate work which hit the evening’s highest points. Huge fortissimo chords on the piano were balanced by the cello’s rich expressiveness and violin’s virtuosic turns of phrase. 

The central movement delighted in syncopations and the quaint folksiness found in ethnic dances, while the finale’s rapid fire was guaranteed to send pulses racing. Smetana still had one big tune up his sleeve, which was first lovingly heard on cello, and finally milked for all its worth for a spectacular close. 

As an encore, the trio performed what could now be considered a Singaporean folksong - Dick Lee’s Home. Arranged in G major by Sulwyn Lok, any fuzzy and warm feelings engendered should not be considered embarrassing. It just means one is a dyed-in-the-wool local!

CD Review (The Straits Times, November 2018)

SMETANA Festive Symphony

The Bartered Bride: Overture & Dances

Berlin Radio Symphony / DARRELL ANG

Naxos 8.573672 / ****1/2

At the rate he is going, Darrell Ang could well become the most recorded Singaporean conductor of all time. His recorded repertoire has been diverse and this disc features the music of Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884), hailed as the “Father of Czech music”. Although very well known for his symphonic poem cycle Ma Vlast (My Country) from the 1870s, his early Festive Symphony of 1854 is virtually unknown.

As a loyal subject of the Habsburg empire, he quoted the Emperor’s Hymn (popularised by Joseph Haydn in his “Emperor” String Quartet, Op.76 No.3) in three of its four movements. The work runs to almost 43 minutes, and almost outstays its welcome amid grand fanfares and martial postures, culminating in the Hymn blared out at its triumphal and grandstanding conclusion.

Only in the dance-like 3^rd movement does one hear Smetana’s nationalism at play, looking forward to Dvorak’s popular Slavonic Dances to come. The fill-up in this album are the Overture and three fast dances – Polka, Furiant and Dance Of The Comedians - from the nationalist opera The Bartered Bride. 

These, rather than the symphony, constitute vintage Smetana and represents his best music. Darrell Ang and the excellent Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra offer lively performances, comparable with the best recordings in the catalogue. For the rarely heard and seldom recorded symphony, they have the field to their own, so do have a listen.