Breakfast Meeting of the Chopin Society of Hong Kiong / Another Breakfast with Jeremy Siepmann

BREAKFAST WITH JEREMY SIEPMANN

Breakfast Meeting of 

the Chopin Society of Hong Kong

YMCA Salisbury, Monday (31 October 2011)

As with previous instalments of The Joy of Music Festival, the Chopin Society of Hong Kong’s annual Breakfast Meeting was another meeting of minds, bringing people from all over the globe for a friendly and spirited pow-wow. Veteran writer, broadcaster and teacher Jeremy Siepmann was back with another erudite and thought-provoking lecture, with the unusual title From Sigh to Scream (or the Meter as Murderer).

He could have easily spoken for four hours on the subject on “Why music matters”, but he limited it to a quarter of that. Very often music can express what words cannot, but it can also mimic speech patterns, and that is the basis of how “music can imitate all the physical manifestations of emotional and spiritual life”. We are born with rhythm in our cells. The first thing we hear is the comforting heartbeat of our mothers. Even our heartbeat is not static and unvarying, but one in triple rhythm, possessing an upbeat, the momentary beat itself and an after-beat, the speed of which varies according to our mood and adrenaline status. Even a newborn’s first cry or scream follows in that pattern. These aspects, uniting life and music, are universal.

Early music was based on speech patterns, but with the advent of polyphony, the meter (hence bar-lines in musical notation) came into being. Siepmann lamented on how strict timing in all musical notation had “murdered” the natural rhythm and inflection of speech itself. Mister Alberti (of the Alberti bass) was named as the chief perpetrator and defendant on the dock. He gave several examples in Nigerian poetry, Lionel Hampton’s doodling on the keyboard, as well as how certain of his piano students could benefit from converting the played notes from a score into spoken poetry. He also touched on the limitations of music criticism, and how subjective views can get when listening to a same piece of music performed by different artists but heard in a different order.

This summary will never do justice to the actual event, and I cannot remember when the last time I heard a speaker pack in so much in such a short space of time. But now I do, it was Siepmann himself in the breakfast meeting three years ago! Here are some pictures of the lucky people who attended!

Jeremy Siepmann autographs some of his books.

Jeremy Siepmann gets an invitation from Singapore and Shanghai.

Piano Competition finalists:

 Tsai Min Hao, Ann Soo Jung and Sato Keina.

Drs Andrew and Anabella Freris

Peter Frankl, Gary & Naomi Graffman

Prof. Li Mingqiang and Dr Yeo Kuei Pin (Indonesia)

Hong Kong pedagogues, Mary Mei Loc Wu and Eleanor Wong.

William Chen and Gabriel Kwok.

Breakfast Meeting of The Chopin Society of Hong Kong

THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL 2010
Breakfast Meeting of 

The Chopin Society of Hong Kong
YMCA Salisbury
Friday (15 October 2010)

Thank goodness for Friday afternoon flights on JetStar, as this allowed me the time to attend The Chopin Society of Hong Kong’s annual breakfast meeting, held in conjunction with each The Joy of Music Festival. As before, this extremely informal event was a meeting of minds on the discussion of issues in music, and the subject on this occasion was about inspiration versus perspiration in musical composition. “How much of a composer’s work was an act of pure inspiration?” asked Dr Andrew Freris (above).

Thirty-seven Hong Kong composers were invited, but none attended (presumably there was neither monetary incentive nor publicity involved), however present were two composers – the Uruguayan Carlos Levin and the Malaysian Tengku Irfan.

According to Levin (above), inspiration was the least of a composer’s problems. He quoted Stravinsky who once remarked that composition was like living within a society – it is constrained by certain rules and social customs. A composer has to work within a narrow set of norms and utilising limited means. He does not create something out of nothing but brings together sounds and musical ideas, or what he refers to as “elements of original stimuli”. There is order in this self-limiting process, and anything that functions outside of this brings only a chaos of sounds.

It is thus more comforting for composers to work within form and a fixed framework, but they could be original, like the famous example of Haydn holed up for decades in Esterhaza, whom without distraction or influence was “forced to be creative”. Tonality itself effectively determines how a piece of music will eventually pan out. A classical triad of notes already predetermines how a melody would go. A composer just goes on to add a second line, turning monody to polyphony, and to build vertically, adding further notes that would alter the colour of the music. He demonstrated this on a piano, speaking in Spanish while the Andrew and Anabella Freris translated.

While this predetermination takes the “romanticism” out of composition, a creative composer is one who works well within these rules, developing his own ideas, elaborating and making variations. The most inspired of them go on to break with tradition and do something new.

Then Tengku Irfan was invited to demonstrate on the piano some of the ideas he had hatched in his recent compositions, which included a piano quintet and a symphony. Irfan is only eleven years old, and is already a celebrity pianist in his own nation, one who performs his own cadenzas in piano concertos. Immediately, he brought out an idea on the piano, a descending scale from his piano quintet and then went on to break it up into varying motifs and fragments, which became his exposition. Following that he played the opening movement of his symphony, much to the amazement of all around. He also spoke of his admiration of Mahler symphonies and their inspirations and looked forward to hearing all the symphonies played by the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.

Clearly he had understood a composer’s craft. Was it something innate or was it taught? Perhaps it was a bit of both, and he was encouraged to continue learning, listening and experiencing all forms of music and the arts without limitation or constraints. This young man is well worth watching out for in the years to come.

Pianomaniac gets to meet Carlos Levin.

whose chamber transcriptions of Chopin's piano concertos

were premiered at The Joy of Music Festival 2010.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, July 2010)

CHOPIN 21 Nocturnes

YUNDI, Piano

EMI Classics 6083912 (2CDs)

****

The Nocturnes of Frederic Chopin represent the French-Polish pianist-composer at his most personal and expressive. Taking the simple genre of a “night piece” created by the Irishman John Field, he transformed these into exquisite miniature tone poems. Most of these open in tranquillity but some take on darker and more turbulent overtones. Arguably the greatest of these is the tragic C minor Nocturne (Op.48 No.1) with its rapturous chords and tumultuous octave passages. Others revel in Chopin’s love for bel canto singing, none better realised in the seamless D flat major Nocturne (Op.27 No.2). Despite his recent onstage travails, Chinese pianist Yundi (who has now dropped his surname Li) is still quintessentially a Chopinist at heart. He finds beauty in these pages and his fingers do not fail him. The two discs are priced as one.

RESPIGHI Church Windows

Brazilian Impressions

Buffalo Philharmonic / JOANN FALLETTA

Naxos 8.557711

****1/2

The Italian Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) is best known for his sumptuous orchestral canvases, typified by his Roman Trilogy. Vetrate Di Chiesa (Church Windows) of 1925 follows in this grandiose tradition, an orchestration of his Three Preludes On Gregorian Melodies (originally for piano solo). The second movement St Michael The Archangel explosively depicts the shock and awe of an almighty celestial battle between good and evil. Brazilian Impressions evocatively paint scenes of a tropical rainforest, venomous snakes at the Butatan institute (the ominous Die Irae is quoted) and a Copland-esque Song And Dance. Alongside these exotic musical picture postcards, Rossiniana – a suite of Rossini’s dances - sounds staid by comparison. Lady conductor JoAnn Falletta, who conducted the Singapore premiere of Church Windows, directs these less familiar scores as if they were great classics.

CD Retail Therapy in Hong Kong

Make no mistake about it, Hong Kong is the best place in the world to buy classical CDs. In terms of range and price, there's no beating the former Crown Colony. Here are the CD shops I visited in my last trip, and a sample of CDs bought. Shop till you drop...

For the classical aficionado, 

Shun Cheong Records

at 8th floor Bank Centre, 

636 Nathan Road

at Mongkok is the place to be!

CDs bought:

Klavier Festival Ruhr 2009 (5 CDs)
at HK$ 550 (members get 10% off)

Win Win Shop at Tung Choi Street

is the best of the small CD shops at Ladies Market.

CDs bought:

Martha Argerich & Friends 2009

(3CDs, EMI Classics) at HK$138.

Volodos in Vienna (2CDs, Sony Classical) 

at HK$108

CD Warehouse, Langham Place at Mongkok.

Take a series of escalators to the very top floor.

CDs bought:

Van Cliburn in Moscow

(5CDs, Melodiya) at HK$485
Nathan Milstein Aristocrat of the Violin

(8CDs, EMI Classics Icon) at HK$279

Classical & Jazz section of CD Warehouse.

Percival Records, 35 Wing Kut Street

in Central district, Hong Kong island.

Small is good here!

CDs bought:

Prokofiev Operas by Mariinsky Opera

Valery Gergiev

(14CDs, Decca) at HK$532

Charles Ives Orchestra Sets (Naxos) at HK$45

If all else fails, there's always HMV,

the biggest store is on Hankow Road 

in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Always some mainstream CDs at bargain price.

CDs bought:

Mahler Symphony No.8 (Pentatone)

Schonbrunn Concert (Deutsche Grammophon)

2CDs at HK$ 189

Hong Kong's version of Sim Lim Square,

Golden Centre at Sham Shui Po.

Aim Video at Golden Centre, 

positively the best place
to buy made-for-China-market 

classical DVDs.

DVDs bought:

Itzhak Perlman Virtuoso Violinist 

(2DVDs) at HK$40

The Red Baton / Rozhdestvensky at HK$20

Van Cliburn A portrait at HK$20

Nocturnal Fantasies II: Piano Recital by ALBERT TIU / Review

NOCTURNAL FANTASIES II
ALBERT TIU, Piano
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall
Friday (20 November 2009)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 23 November 2009.

The piano music of Chopin (below) is universally loved, whilst that of Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) trails behind considerably, appreciated mostly by pianophiles, acolytes and mystics. Conservatory professor Albert Tiu’s coup in programming juxtaposed works of both pianist-composers, side by side and like for like, for comparison and contrast.

With tongue firmly in cheek, Chopin’s skittish Butterfly Étude (Op.25 No.9) prefaced Scriabin’s Mosquito Étude (Op.42 No.3), so named for its pesky triplet trills on the right hand. Never had comparative entomology and musicology so fortuitous a field day, boosted by Tiu’s rock secure technique and imaginative sense of shading.

Two Waltzes followed, both in the key of A flat major, Chopin’s exuberance balanced by Scriabin’s bittersweet musings. The Mazurkas, from different periods of the composers’ lives, struck a common vein of Slavic melancholy. Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasie (Op.61) and Scriabin’s Sonata-Fantasie (Op.19) were united by a declamatory opening gesture, one falling while the other rising.

Never a hint of academism, this was gorgeously sensuous music performing with obvious passion and conviction. The smouldering Andante of the Scriabin (left) sonata, with its multiple interweaving lines, issued forth whispers of hidden voices. Innuendo turned into full-blown consummation with the ensuing Presto and its carnal outbursts.

The second half followed along this path of pairs, with rapidly flowing Préludes, the bel canto seamlessness of Nocturnes (including Scriabin’s gem for the left hand alone) and the seemingly improvisatory manner of Impromptus.

The most monumental pieces were left for last. The march-like decorum of Chopin’s Fantasy in F minor (Op.49) and its rhapsodic development were the perfect foil for Scriabin’s Fantasy in B minor (Op.28), surging with brooding and seething disquiet. In their soft centers lay a wellspring of melody, which Tiu tapped like a prospector of liquid gold.

His encores included a morsel of Scriabin, of course, and the ultimate of graceful encores, Godowsky’s delectable transcription of Saint-Saens’ The Swan. The latter evoked for this listener the cherished memory of Shura Cherkassky (left) in his 1994 Singapore recital. When excellence of execution meets inspiration, the results are rarely forgotten.

THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL 2009: Breakfast Meeting of The Chopin Society of Hong Kong

THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL
BREAKFAST MEETING:
REFLECTIONS ON THE PROCESS OF MUSIC MAKING
Tom Lee Auditorium, Megabox (Kowloon)
Thursday (15 October 2009)

Breakfast meetings of The Chopin Society of Hong Kong are held once a year and take place during The Joy of Music Festival or Hong Kong International Piano Competition. Attended by locals and delegates from Southeast Asia, wide-ranging issues about music are discussed and aired. Guest speakers have included Gary Graffman and Jeremy Siepmann, but this year’s meeting featured two child prodigy pianists, 13-year-old Aristo Sham (Hong Kong) and 11-year old Tengku Ahmad Irfan (Malaysia), who improvised and played their own pieces.

Dr Andrew Freris, President of the Society, pondered on what possibly a young person can offer in musical composition, neither having lived, loved, gained nor lost in their very few years of life. He also mourned the loss of the art of the composer-pianist, citing Rachmaninov and Prokofiev as the last exemplars of this once-hallowed tradition.

Tengku Ahmad Irfan performs his original compositions.

Note that his feet barely touch the ground.

Irfan was set to prove him wrong with two original compositions. The first was Tarantella, a prestissimo showpiece which sounded like a melange from Chopin and Liszt’s own Tarantellas and the finale of Schubert’s Sonata in C minor (D.958). Gary Graffman pointed out that it was uncannily similar to the Schubert “in twenty places”, and I asked whether young Irfan had known or played the above works. To our surprise, he was unfamiliar with any of these! So what were his influences? The answer was not too surprising given the times we live in: youtube! What on youtube had he remembered? “Chopin and Burgmuller” was his modest reply.

His second composition was titled Introduction and Fugue. Written in C minor, the chordal opening suggested Chopin’s Prélude in the same key (Op.28 No.20) and then there was an improvisatory section in the enharmonic A flat major, played in the Romantic style. The subject of the fugue sounded like a promising one but he was not able to develop it beyond the first few bars. The loud emphatic ending also indicated he had heard Beethoven’s Appassionata and Hammerklavier Sonatas somewhere along the way.

Aristo Sham improvises on BACH-DSCH.

Then it was Aristo’s turn. He was asked to improvise on any theme posed by the delegates. I gave him 8 notes based on the motto themes of J.S.Bach and Shostakovich to chew on, essentially two of classical music’s most famous “four letter words”.

B flat - A - C - B minor -

D - E flat- C - B minor 

(BACH-DSCH)

What resulted was a 20th century styled piece, with the motto themes appearing in both right and left hands, as well as in bass octaves. It sounded more sophisticated (Aristo is after all 2 years older than Irfan) and something even Ronald Stevenson would have been proud of.

Irfan also improvised on a theme of D-F sharp-B flat-A provided by Dr Yeo Kuei Pin from Indonesia, and the result was a concert étude filled with Lisztian chords and octaves. He completed his morning with a performance of the Rondo from Beethoven’s early Piano Concerto in E flat major (WoO.4 from 1784), composed when he was only thirteen. Here was proto-Beethoven, assimilating all he had heard from Haydn, Mozart and the Bach brothers (CPE and JC). It was derivative for certain, but full of brio and even included a gypsy interlude in B flat minor thrown in for contrast. Aristo replied with the Rondo from the First Piano Concerto in C major (Op.15).

By this time, the delegation had seen and heard the craft of composition at the most organic stage. The boys (with Gary Graffman, left) had done exactly what a 13-year-old Beethoven did some 225 years ago: the process of learning, copying, assimilating, improvising and finally creating. Needless to say, it was a morning well spent.