CHAMBER MUSIC RESIDENCY CONCERTS / Chamber Music & Arts Singapore / Review

 

CHAMBER MUSIC 

RESIDENCY CONCERTS

Chamber Music & Arts Singapore

Objectifs Chapel, 

155 Middle Road

Saturday (13 June 2026)

Friday (19 June 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 June 2026 with the title "Two evenings of resonant programmes by Chamber Music and Arts at Objectifs chapel".

Befitting a premier arts organisation, Chamber Music & Arts Singapore (CMAS) founded by local violinist Tang Tee Khoon aims to promote chamber music performance at highest possible levels. To this end, its Chamber Music Residency programme saw young Singaporean musicians mentored by leading international classical artists, and performing alongside them.

Two showcase concerts of French music were fruits of their labour. On Saturday (13 June), Gabriel Faure’s Piano Quartet No.2 in G minor (Op.45) was given a rare airing. Violinist Yang Shuxiang, who is concertmaster of re:Sound, was partnered with violist Joelle Hsu, pianist Tay Shu Wen and British cellist Jamie Walton.

The historic chapel of Objectifs, formerly the Middle Road Church in the 1890s, has reverberant acoustics well-suited for chamber music. From the outset, all four instruments could be distinctly heard on their own and in ensemble. This made for a rich unified sound in the music’s passionate opening pages, sustained as the tempo was further upped in the breathless Scherzo.

The true heart laid in the elegiac slow movement, where Hsu’s viola sang its plaint, backed by Tay’s bell-like chords. This oasis of respite was the calm before the finale’s storm of rapidly surging triplets, which made for an exciting end.

Maurice Ravel’s masterly Piano Trio in A minor followed without an intermission, performed by the musical mentors themselves, violinist Tang, cellist Walton and Scottish pianist Alasdair Beatson. Despite adopting a somewhat deliberate opening tempo, the ensemble very rapidly ratcheted up the tension and volume, rising to the venue’s highest reaches.

All four movements were united by a common theme, so well-disguised as to be almost imperceptible. The second movement’s Pantoum was influenced by the metre found in the Malay pantun, its syncopations contrasted by the varied slow chants of the ensuing Passacaille (passacaglia), a set of variations on a bass theme. As in the Faure, the finale went for broke, where all caution was thrown to the wind for a rapturous close.

Friday (19 June) evening’s concert began with Faure’s La Bonne Chanson, an exquisite nine-movement song cycle with texts by French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. Locally-based British soprano Kezia Robson was accompanied by string quartet (violinist Yang and Isabelle Ong, violist Hsu and cellist Cho Hang-oh), pianist Tay and double-bassist Kuek Jia Xin.

Over muted strings, Robson cast a spell of mystique over the opening song Une sainte en son aureole (A Saint In Her Halo), her spirits later soaring with the piano’s entry in Puisque l’aube grandit (Since Dawn Is Rising). The verses take a darker turn with fear and anxiety expressed, well captured by all aboard, before closing with the hope of love in L’hiver a cesse (Winter Has Ended).

Very different was Ernest Chausson’s Concert for violin, piano and string quartet (Op.21), a four-movement masterpiece conceived like a symphony but with the intimacy of chamber music. Violinist Tang and pianist Beatson were backed the same string foursome, but gloves were off for the most dramatic of first movements, built on an ominous three-note motif. 

A full gamut of emotions was run through a clothes wringer, the insouciant elegance of sicilienne-based second movement sharply contrasted with the moody yet intensely passionate dirge of the third movement aptly marked Grave.

The breathless and ecstatically charged finale saw the most acute of responses, with all six musicians playing as if their lives depended on it. The packed chapel erupted with vociferous praise. That is what truly moving chamber music in closed spaces elicits, and nothing less.

MUSIC RESIDENCY SHARING CONCERT / Chamber Music & Arts Singapore / Review

 

MUSIC RESIDENCY 

SHARING CONCERTS

Chamber Music & Arts 

Homegrown Artists

Objectifs Chapel, Middle Road

Sunday (21 June 2026)

The final day of Chamber Music & Arts’ (CMAS) Chamber Music Residency programme yielded one last concert by four of its Homegrown Artists, whom over a two-week course were mentored by three established international artists. Their Sharing Concert, just like the formal evening concerts, focused on all-French repertoire.

Titled The Conclusion of the War, it opened with Claude Debussy’s late Violin Sonata in G minor (1917) with violinist Isabelle Ong and pianist Tian KeXin. This was the terminally-ill composer’s attempt to relive Gallic characteristics and sensibilities in music, moving away from the German model that had influenced composers like Franck and Chausson. 

Penchant for melody and lightness in textures were key, which informed Ong’s perceptive playing and Tian’s fluid accompaniment. This was a performance strong in flavour and sensitive to nuance, not least in the middle movement’s subtle humour and the finale’s scintillating caprices.

This was followed by Gabriel Faure’s Cello Sonata No.1 in D minor (Op.109, 1917) performed by Singapore-based Korean cellist Cho Hang-oh with Tian again on piano. This underrated gem should be as popular and often played as Debussy’s late Cello Sonata, which remains a mystery. An elusiveness in melodiousness may be a reason, the lyrical glories of the Belle Epoque being well left behind by the horrors of war. 

Still, the duo mastered the opening movement’s rhythmic quirkiness and the finale’s emotional vagaries. However, the tender beauty of the slow movement’s plaint remains the abiding memory of this reading. Cho’s tone is simply gorgeous, and the outpouring of emotion by both players totally palpable. Bravo!

The matinee concluded tumultuously with Maurice Ravel’s La Valse (1919-20), in the version for piano four hands by Lucien Garban. Here, young pianist Tay Shu Wen was partnered by mentoring Scottish pianist Alasdair Beatson. The duo could not completely escape the Yamaha’s tendency for percussiveness, but Beatson’s ever-steady waltz rhythm in the secondo part was met with alacrity by Tay’s flashily swooning primo role. 

Before long, both musicians were waltzing on their seats, while busily avoiding collisions of bodily parts. A sense of danger was ever present, and one was almost half-expecting the piano to collapse in the heap. The reality was that both pianists were on top of their game, and the message of societal decadence and collapse was well and truly received.

This Sharing Concert was more than a show-and-tell session after two weeks of music professionals working today. It was a clear indication that thanks to CMAS, chamber music performance in Singapore is heading in the right direction.

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

THE SALON OF PRINCESSE DE POLIGNAC / Chamber Music & Arts Singapore / Review

THE SALON OF 

PRINCESSE DE POLIGNAC

Chamber Music 

& Arts Singapore

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (12 November 2022)

 

Winnaretta Singer (1865-1943), the Princess de Polignac, was one amazing women. Heiress of the Singer sewing machine empire, she inherited a further fortune after the death of her second husband, Prince Edmond de Polignac. In 1894, she established a salon in Paris, becoming patron to major composers of the age including Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Poulenc and many others. Great works of music commissioned by her were premiered, attended by intelligentsia and cognoscenti, include Marcel Proust (who mused on and glamourised the Parisian salon), Serge Diaghilev, Jean Cocteau and others.  

 

The Salon of Princesse de Polignac was a series of concerts presented by Chamber Music and Arts Singapore (formerly known as the Tang Tee Khoon Grand Series), reliving music from the heady years of Polignac’s legacy. The first series was held in April this year, and this second series introduced new repertoire over two evenings and outreach concerts for children.

 

The second evening (Saturday) opened with French clarinettist Florent Héau and Italian pianist Luca Buratto in Francis Poulenc’s Clarinet Sonata (1962), a late work written long after Polignac’s death. It was the spirit of such a work that defined the salon; new and edgy, but retaining links to past traditions, such as harmonic beauty and memorable melodies.  

 

Héau’s virtuosity was his ability to shape phrases, however sinuous or awkward, and a glorious creamy tone. The latter was exhibited in the slow movement’s big melody, before the anarchic sweep and fireworks show of the finale. In Debussy’s Premiere Rapsodie, which opened the second half, one imagined this to be the solo clarinet’s answer to the flute in Prelude a l’aprés midi dun faune. It was also the perfect vehicle for colouristic effects, well-exploited by Héau from its sultry opening, later building to an ecstatic climax.   

 

The first half was completed by Gabriel Fauré’s rarely-heard Sonata No.2 in G minor (Op.117, from 1921) with British cellist Jamie Walton and Buratto. In contrast with early Fauré, who epitomised the Belle Epoque with lovely melodies, his late style was sparer, acerbic and not initially memorable. But his quite exquisite harmonic intrigues repay patience and repeated listening. The fast outer movements bristled with intent and purpose, bookending the slow movement Andante’s beating heart. Here is a nostalgic glance to Fauré’s well-known Elegie (also in C minor) from some 40 years before. A mature and more fully-realised expression of grief, this received a most moving performance from both cellist and pianist.      

 

The concert’s piece de resistance surely had to be Ravel’s Piano Trio in A minor, with Chamber and Arts Singapore founder and mastermind violinist Tang Tee Khoon joining Walton and Buratto. Simply put, if there were a more idiomatic and exciting performance of its four varied movements, one has yet to witness it.

 

The moderate tempo (Modere) of its first movement soon built up into a terrific climax, and one knew this was going to be a rocking performance. The scherzo-like second movement (Pantoum), based on the rhythmic meters of the Malay pantun but not Malayan musical idioms. Its level of excitation was contrasted by the more sedate Passacaille (Passacaglia), with a doleful quality which was particularly moving. This went without break into a rapturous finale where all stops were pulled for a grandstanding finish. This trio combination truly has passion in spades.

 

As with previous Chamber Music & Arts Singapore productions, this was particularly well-curated, aided by a stylish physical programme booklet (a relative rarity these days) with the historical background to the Princesse de Polignac’s patronage of composers provided. This class act, supported over the years by the National Arts Council and The ARTS Fund, continues to thrive and bear fruit.