BRENDAN GOH Cello Recital / Review

BRENDAN GOH Cello Recital

with KSENIIA VOKHMIANINA, Piano

Gallery, The Arts House

Sunday (4 October 2015) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 October 2015 with the title "Young cellist wows with richly layered offerings".

Fact: 16-year-old Brendan Goh is the youngest Singaporean cellist to have recorded his own CD album. Actually he has two CD recordings; the first was made when he was 12. After receiving a very favourable review from the prestigious British discophile journal Gramophone, his hour-long solo recital, part of the Homecoming Series in the Singapore International Festival of Music, demonstrated all this was not just hype.

Beginning with Luigi Boccherini's Cello Sonata in A major, the Vienna-based student displayed all the hallmarks of sound musicality and good teaching. He produced a clean, clear and lush sound on his 1844 J.B.Vuillaume cello, which just sang in the slow opening movement before flexing the musculature in the fast movement that followed.

He was just warming up, and soon the cellist's full armamentarium was on show for Russian cello virtuoso Carl Davidoff's Allegro De Concerto, the sort of showpiece that gains entry into conservatories and wins competition prizes. The apparent nonchalance and unfazed manner in which the lanky youth picked up tempo and threw off all its thorny challenges revealed that technique comes naturally to him. 

The work that proved interpretatively the most difficult was also the longest. Brahms' Second Cello Sonata in F major (Op.99) is a supreme test even for cellists double or triple his age, but the manner in which he launched into its passionate pages suggested that he had little to fear from its vaunted reputation. It is such a work that one begins to reveal a maturity of thought and expression that comes beyond the notes.

Interpretations will grow with time and repeated performances, but the moment to savour its richly layered offerings is now. With Ukrainian pianist Kseniia Vokhmianina, who lives in Singapore but brought in as a last-minute collaborator, Goh forged an immediate chemistry that was palpable in its four movements.

The slow movement was languorous in its long breathed lines, with which Goh thoughtfully luxuriated before pulling all stops in the fiery third movement. More rehearsal time would have reaped further dividends but the present result was still hugely impressive as the work wound to an ecstatic conclusion.

Without milking the applause, which was tempting enough, Goh performed three encores. The final two saw a cameo appearance by his former teacher Qin Li-Wei, linking a Vivaldi slow movement with Viva La Vida (part of the repertoire of the group 2 Cellos), in a show of cameraderie between cellists and an obvious joie de vivre. 

Have we just witnessed the debut of who might possibly become Singapore finest cellist?

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, April 2015)

BRAHMS Piano Concerto No.2

MAURIZIO POLLINI, Piano

Staatskapelle Dresden 

Christian Thielemann, Conductor

Deutsche Grammophon 479 2384 / *****

This 2013 live recording of Johannes Brahms' Second Piano Concerto completes Italian virtuoso Maurizio Pollini's third recorded cycle of the German Romantic's piano concertos, and it is also his best. At 71 and despite rumours of ill health, there is no diminishing of his physical abilities or interpretive powers. Playing for 47 minutes, the four movements reveal supreme faculties at work, where strength of projection is finely balanced against sensitivity of touch. The monumental first movement and imposing Scherzo that follows do not betray a hint of labouriousness, instead offer a wellspring of youth and vitality.

The orchestral partnership in integral in this “symphony with piano obbligato”, providing an unwritten tension that challenges yet abets the pianist at every turn. The tuttis are magnificently hewn, and on the solo front, French horn and cello acquit themselves perfectly at the opening and slow movement respectively. Brahms eventually lightens the Atlas-like load for the finale half, but there is no let up for Pollini, with startling swings of dynamics in the Andante and lightness of skating-on-ice distinguishing the jocular finale. Is this the dream version of an often-elusive masterpiece? It might very well be.    

MOMENTS OF YOUTH

BRENDAN GOH, Piano

Reinhard Schobersberger, Piano

Ars Production 38 752 / ****1/2

Brendan Goh is a 15-year-old Singaporean cellist studying in Vienna, where he was recently accepted by the Konservatorium Wien University. His teachers have included Qin Li-Wei of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory and Pierre Bartolomey, Principal Cellist of the Vienna Philharmonic. His second CD recording is a quantum leap from his debut album at 12, with playing of depth and maturity. His artistry is immediately discerned in Bach's unaccompanied Cello Suite No.3 in C minor (BWV.1009) where he coaxes a lush, full-bodied tone from his 1842 J.B.Vuillaume cello, and positively revels in its dance movements.

This recital also showcases a wealth of responses in diverse repertoire. The lyricism of Schumann's Fantasy Pieces Op.73 prepares the way for the impassioned plaints of Fauré's Elegie. The heartfelt playing here truly moves, regardless of age. His phrasing in a slow movement from Haydn's Concerto in D major is simplicity itself, contrasted with the hot-blooded moves and swagger in Gaspar Cassado's Requiebros and Astor Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango. For sheer pyrotechnics, look no further than the transcription of Paganini's Caprice No.9, which is simply astounding. The mind boggles at what he will come up with at 18.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, February 2012)

A BRAND NEW DAY
BRENDAN GOH Cello Recital

with Shane Thio, Piano / ****

Are CD recordings by child prodigy musicians a cause for celebration or cynicism? In either case, any performance by a 12-year old should be viewed as a milestone in the progress of an artist rather than something definitive. Young Brendan Goh, whose parents are a cellist and dentist, exhibits much sensitivity and musicality in his début album. First listen to his unaccompanied Bach Suite No.1 in G major, which is natural and unforced, yet bearing the hallmarks of good teaching. His grasp of the idiom is sound and there is neither pretence nor artifice in the playing.

The balance of the disc is filled with popular encore pieces, accompanied by veteran pianist Shane Thio. Despite the processed sound quality, there is much to enjoy in “simple” bonbons like the Irish melody Danny Boy, the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria, Elgar’s Salut d’Amour, Saint-Saëns’s The Swan , Grieg’s Solveig’s Song (from Peer Gynt) and quite appropriately Dvorak’s Songs My Mother Taught Me. Whichever path he takes, Goh who performs on a 1720 Paolo Testore cello has achieved something to be proud of.

The CD retails at $25 and all proceeds go to the Business Times Budding Artists Fund.

ALBAN BERG
EMI Classics 9072112 (2 CDs) / ****1/2

However one may regard the Second Viennese School founded upon the uncompromising principles of Arnold Schoenberg, there will always be a soft spot for his disciple Alban Berg (1885-1935). Berg’s compositions represent the “friendly” and human face of twelve-tone music, because of his ultra-romanticised and aesthetic approach to breaking rules of harmony. Begin with his single-movement Piano Sonata Op.1, surely the rightful successor to Franz Liszt’s late utterances, performed with authority by Peter Donohoe. Then tune in to his Seven Early Songs (with Danish soprano Sine Bungaard), with its lush poignant lyricism that isn’t miles away from Richard Strauss.

The Three Orchestral Pieces Op.6 (Bamberg Symphony with Ingo Metzmacher), last performed in Singapore by the Berlin Philharmonic, continue where Mahler had left off. Berg’s crowning glory was the Violin Concerto, written in memory of Manon Gropius (daughter of Mahler’s widow Alma), which poignantly merges atonality with Carinthian folk music and a Bach chorale. Its bittersweet musings find a sympathetic voice in German violinist Frank Peter Zimmerman. This was ironically also his final work, dying tragically from septicaemia following an insect bite. This two-disc anthology is an ideal introduction to Berg’s rarefied but short-lived genius.