DAL SEGN0 1825 / Resound Collective & Chamber Music & Arts Singapore / Review

 

DAL SEGNO 1825

Resound Collective & 

Chamber Music & Arts Singapore

Victoria Concert Hall

Saturday (8 November 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 November 2025 with the title "A joyous outing by Chamber Music & Arts Singapore, Resound Collective".

What happens when the two most important chamber music forces in Singapore join hands? While operating independently, Singaporean violinist Tang Tee Khoon’s Chamber Music & Arts Singapore (CMAS) and local impresario Mervin Beng’s Resound Collective have set the Singapore chamber music scene alight in recent years. Their collaboration, in a collegial spirit of partnership to make music, was inevitable.

Opening the evening was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor (K.466) with Hungarian pianist Zoltan Fejervari as soloist and British violinist Candida Thompson (of the renowned Amsterdam Sinfonietta) as leader. Although none of the performers onstage subscribe to the period instrument philosophy, some practices were in place.

Fejervari performed with his back to the audience, and played chords and accompanying figurations during the orchestral introduction, even before his solo entry proper. This practice harked back to a time when the keyboard was part of ensemble rather than a disparate entity. His playing was freshly minted, liberally dressed up with tasteful ornamentations, particularly in the central Romanze.

Photo: Clarence Aw

Solo cadenzas, including one by Ludwig van Beethoven for the first movement, was a reminder that Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) was still passionately in place. The finale’s shift into the key of D major was also a show of unfettered joy.

Photo: Clarence Aw

Only orchestral strings remained for the concert’s tour de force that was Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge (Great Fugue, Op.133). Originally written as a finale for his Op.130 String Quartet, its sheer dissonance and radically modern outlook saw it being cast aside for something more palatable. Standing on its own, it is still Beethoven’s toughest nut to crack, for both players and listeners.

Photo: Clarence Aw

Thompson and her 22 charges tore into its thorny thickets like persons possessed. The unison playing impressed with its fearlessness, togetherness and voluminous heft, fully aware that one false step would mean total chaos. The fugal entries came quick and fast but nobody missed a cue as the evening’s most intense quarter-hour drew the first half to an impressive close.

Felix Mendelssohn’s String Octet in E flat major (Op.20), composed at 16, is a miracle of precocity besides being a favourite of chamber festivals. Bringing together two string quartets, usually of different origins and countenances, as a harmonious whole is a secret to its success.

Photo: Clarence Aw

All the eight players, violinists Thompson, Tang and Yang Shuxiang (Singapore) and Liv Hilde Klokk-Bryhn (Norway), violists Julianne Lee (USA) and Ida Klokk-Bryhn (Norway), cellists Eckart Runge (Germany) and Cho Hang-oh (South Korea), sounded as if they had been playing as close partners all their lives.

Such unity was affirmed on its outset, the opening movement buzzing with activity, contrasted with the slow movement’s moving lyricism. The familiar Scherzo flew with the lightness of fairies’ wings, while the fugal finale with its quote of “And He Shall Reign Forever” from Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus became a ringing refrain. There can be no better advertisement for the joy of chamber music such as this.

Photo: Clarence Aw

KIAN SOLTANI AND AMSTERDAM SINFONIETTA / Review

 

KIAN SOLTANI AND 

AMSTERDAM SINFONIETTA 

Esplanade Concert Hall 

Tuesday (11 March 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 March 2025 with the title "Cellist Kian Soltani evenly matches orchestra in cello concerto".

The glut of excellent chamber concerts that began last week continued with the Singapore debut of Amsterdam Sinfonietta, presented by Esplanade Theatres on the Bay. Led by British violinist Candida Thompson, this 23-member string ensemble offered an unusual but highly enjoyable programme of music that spanned the baroque era to the present.

Although not a period instrument group, it brought out light and buoyant sonorities in Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach’s Sinfonia in G major (Wq.173) for its three-movement fast-slow-fast schema. Sound textures were evenly homogenous and exquisitely crafted with much care and finesse. 

Order and form gave way to more fluid thoughts in contemporary British composer Thomas Ades’ Shanty – Over The Sea (2020), with the use of sliding, microtonal pitches and harmonics. The result was other-worldly, sometimes ethereal but deliberately off-kilter as if the sea-shanty’s singers had imbibed too much rum. To break from stereotype, this was not some merry sailor’s jig. 

Photo: AlvieAlive

The concert’s selling point came in its only familiar work, with Austria-born cellist Kian Soltani as soloist in Joseph Haydn’s popular Cello Concerto No.1 in C major. The lovely sound he coaxed from the cello was commensurate with the ensemble’s size, never overbearing in nature yet well-projected, rising just above the massed strings. 

Photo: AlvieAlive

The slow movement provided unalloyed pleasure, its singing line crafted with seamless beauty, and one wished it would never end. The furious finale saw Soltani cast off fetters, with a flighty solo that matched the ensemble’s every cut and thrust. The perfect partnership brought out a standing ovation, followed by an encore of his own composition Persian Fire Dance, a drone-filled and rhythmically vibrant tribute to the land of his forebears. 

Photo: AlvieAlive

Soltani was not done yet, returning in three German lieder arranged for cello and strings, all love songs. Felix Mendelssohn’s Suleika and Franz Schubert’s An die Musik (To Music) and Du bist die Ruh (You are the Peace) were slow works showcasing more of his luscious tone. Truly songs without words. 

A refreshing departure from the umpteenth performance of Tchaikovsky or Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings from a visiting orchestra was the Singapore premiere of British composer William Walton’s Sonata for Strings (1970). This was a rescoring of his String Quartet in A minor (1947) specially for Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. 

Its four movements provided a virtuoso show from start to finish, combining the intimacy of its quartet origins with an outsized sonority of a symphony. From its opening bars and other sections throughout the work, the foursome of violinists Thompson and Catherina Lee, violist Georgy Kovalev and cellist Tom Posner held sway, like soloists in a modern concerto grosso. 

Walton’s combo of melodic richness and biting wit established its opening, contrasted with the Presto second movement’s typical con malizia (with malice) jibes and the slow movement’s lyrical largesse con malinconia (with melancholy). The finale’s vigorous romp completed a stunning show, capped off with another English delight, an encore of Frank Bridge’s elegant Waltz-Intermezzo.