THE TASTES REUNITED / Red Dot Baroque / Review

 

THE TASTES REUNITED 

Red Dot Baroque 

Conservatory Concert Hall 

Wednesday (6 November 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 November 2024 with the title "Lively and sublime all-French concert by Red Dot Baroque".

The Tastes Reunited comes from the French phrase Les Gouts-reunis coined by Baroque composer Francois Couperin, referring to a glorious unification of Italian virtuosity and dramatics with French elegance and restraint in musical performance. That was the basis of an enlightening and entertaining all-French programme by period instrument group Red Dot Baroque (RDB), ensemble-in-residence of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, led by its founder-leader Alan Choo. 

There is no story more melodramatic than the infamous demise of Jean-Baptiste Lully, who led his musicians by stomping a wooden staff on the ground. That was until his foot got in the way, with septic gangrene being his cause of death. Percussionist Derek Koh did the honours for Lully’s rousing March for a Turkish Ceremony, which opened the evening, but he was far more careful.

Photo: Ong Shu Chen

Michel Corrette’s Concerto Comique No. 25 in G minor, based on earlier music, was a happy marriage of tradition and innovation. Choo’s improvisatory flourishes on violin were let loose on in Les Sauvages (The Savages), originally a harpsichord piece by Jean-Philippe Rameau. In quand on sçait aimer et plaire (When You Know How To Love and Please), Rachel Ho’s graceful flute entreaties were gently accompanied by pizzicato strings and Gerald Lim’s harpsichord. Then it was a return to more lively fiddling in La Furstemberg, which closed this attractive work.

Vivaldian virtuosity came to the fore in Michel Blavet’s Flute Concerto in A minor with Cheryl Lim as impressive soloist backed by two violins and continuo. Both outer movements were distinguished by thrilling runs particularly taxing cadenzas where her breath control was exemplary. The French penchant for dances was typified by a slow movement comprising two leisurely Gavottes.

Few moments in music are more sublime than Entry of Polymnie from Rameau’s late opera Les Boreades. What magic can be conjured with merely a sequence of descending scales was realised in RDB’s sensitive and finely judged performance. Piano-fanciers will know this as The Arts and the Hours from Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson’s transcription.

Contrasting simplicity with outright showiness was violinist Brenda Koh in Jean-Marie Leclair’s Violin Concerto in A minor (Op.7 No.5). Playing within the ensemble as well as the demanding solo, she displayed both agility and excellent intonation. Carving long lyrical lines in the slow movement’s aria, she followed with a dance-like interlude in the finale which looked forward to future composers like Mozart.

Photo: Ong Shu Chen

The 110-minute concert concluded with a suite of orchestral movements and arias from Rameau’s opera Hippolyte and Aricie. Its Overture was a typical French overture, opening with dotted-rhythms followed by a faster fugue. Sound effects were de rigeur in Bruit de tonnerre (Sound of Thunder) with thunder tube, metal plate and bass drum being shook and struck for all their worth.

Soprano Alison Wong’s three arias were variedly attractive. There was solemn beauty in Temple Sacre, the joy of birdsong (with pair of flutes in counterpoint) in Rossignols amoureux (Amorous Nightingales), and L’amour, comme Neptune (Love, Like Neptune) which closed in a vigorous Rigaudon with jingles of tambourines. This concert ended as clangourously as it began.

ELISABETH JACQUET DE LA GUERRE: A MUSICAL PORTRAIT / Red Dot Baroque & SingBaroque / Review

ELISABETH JACQUET DE LA GUERRE:

A MUSICAL PORTRAIT

Red Dot Baroque

Presented by SingBaroque

Victoria Concert Hall

Tuesday (17 May 2022)

 

Where would we be without Red Dot Baroque and SingBaroque? The music scene in Singapore has been enriched beyond compare after these two groups began their joint evangelism of baroque music from 2018-19. Those satisfied with just knowing Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and the Pachelbel Canon would have had their ears and eyes opened, and horizons widened in their concerts, the latest collaboration being an introduction to the musical world of Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre.

 

Who? Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1732) was born near Paris, a child prodigy who became a professional musician in the court of King Louis XIV of France, better known as the “Sun King”. In 1694, her Cephale et Procris was the first ever opera written by a woman composer in France. Her music is still little known to the general public, and practically never heard in Singapore, and this concert of premieres served as a totally enticing taster.  

 

The Aria Affettuoso from Trio Sonata No.3, a short canon in D minor, opened the 80-minute concert like an amuse bouche.  Red Dot Baroque’s core of four players – violinist Alan Choo, cellist Leslie Tan, flautist Cheryl Lim and harpsichordist Gerald Lim – provided the musical accompaniment to the preamble, a brief rundown on de la Guerre’s eventful life provided by host Rachel Ho.

 

As if to prime the audience for further discoveries, the works got progressively longer, beginning with four movements from de la Guerre’s Suite in A minor for harpsichord. These included a Prelude, Allemande and Courante, before closing with a Chaconne. Gerald Lim played with an improvisatory freedom of tempo and without much ornamentation. For those familiar with antique dance movements, these looked forward to those French Suites by J.S.Bach. Yes, Elisabeth was Johann Sebastian’s senior and her keyboard works predated those of his.

 

Now things were getting even more interesting with flautist Cheryl Lim as the lead in Flute Sonata No.2 in D minor. Although Italy provided the model for the sonata, its four movements were not in the traditional slow-fast-slow-fast sonata da chiesa (church sonata) form. Instead it was fast-slow-fast-fast, which put even more pressure on the technique and endurance of the soloist. The third movement was a fast gigue, followed by an even faster dance to close. Cheryl and her pleasingly mellow flute tone were equal to all the challenges.

 

More extended was the Violin Sonata No.1 in D minor, in multiple movements alternating between slow and fast. There was an operatic quality to the proceedings with Alan Choo as protagonist, the slow bits acting as recitatives preceding the faster virtuosic main movements. Even each of these were different, often involving Leslie Tan’s cello as a partnering and sparring voice. The play of counterpoint although not of Bachian complexity was still lively and provided many passionate moments.

 

All this built up to the tour de force delivered by soprano Teng Xiang Ting in the cantata Samson, about the biblical judge of superhuman strength. The French texts make no mention of the temptress Dalila but a Samson weakened and captive slave of l’Amour, his humiliation but final resolve to destroy the Philistine enemies. Like in the sonata, Recitatif followed Air, with Xiang Ting’s vivid narrative being centrestage. Her idiomatic French (as attested by Francophones) was matched with a voice of expressive power and ravishing beauty. These would reach a climax in the aria Tremblez, fiers Tyrans (Fear, Proud Tyrants) where Samson forewarns the mocking foe, in a Handelian rage.

 

The loud and prolonged accolades which greeted the band was reciprocated with an impromptu encore, a reprise of Tremblez, fiers Tyrans, resounding with even more fervour this time. The grateful audience had also been forewarned, Elisabeth de la Guerre’s time will come.

OMM RESTARTS! / FRENCH IMPRESSIONS / Review

OMM RESTARTS!

FRENCH IMPRESSIONS

Esplanade Concert Hall

Recorded in January 2021

YouTube: https://youtu.be/1cPx8g16Mic 

 

Orchestral concerts are not back to what it was pre-Covid, and no thanks to the recent heightened measures taken in May-June, further concerts had to be cancelled. Online concerts have become a new normal, and no less than the Singapore Symphony Orchestra has relied on this platform to share its art. The Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) has done the same, employing the same recording specialists (msm-productions and Dancing Legs Productions) to do its bidding, and the results have been just as spectacular.

 

Viewing this latest concert video of mostly-French music (https://youtu.be/1cPx8g16Mic), and one will be challenged to decide which is the national orchestra and which is the independent youth orchestra formed by students, free-lancers, working non-musical professionals, and a handful of SSO players. Even the OMM’s programming has been one of sophistication, combining popular with less heralded works, as well as commissioning young local composers for orchestral transcriptions.

 

Conducted by Seow Yibin, the concert began with Debussy’s Reverie (originally a piano work) orchestrated by Lee Jinjun, who also played the trumpet in this concert (but not in this piece). This made for a calm and atmospheric prelude, with Vincent Goh’s solo clarinet providing the opening melody before the theme being passed around. Ethereal strings (with occasional use of harmonics) and the ever-evocative harp lent the performance an other-wordly feel it deserved.     

Lee Jinjun playing the trumpet in Ravel

 

The four orchestrated movements of Ravel’s piano suite La Tombeau de Couperin (excepting the Fugue and Toccata) followed, opening with a flowing Prélude which saw solo woodwinds negotiating multiple tricky turns with great aplomb. This was pretty much a woodwind masterclass, continuing into the bouncily syncopated Forlane, and the Menuet where solo oboist Tay Kai Tze  had the choicest of plum parts. His excellence also shone through in the slow central section of the rollicking Rigaudon, which closed the suite on a high.

 

Prokofiev’s only Flute Sonata, orchestrated by Jonathan Shin, has become Prokofiev’s Flute Concerto, now receiving its world premiere. This has the same music as the Russian’s Second Violin Sonata, which had been for reconfigured for David Oistrakh from its flute origins. One wonders why it did not become a third violin concerto as well. At any rate, Shin’s is a totally idiomatic and faithful transcription, one which gave soloist Cheryl Lim full rein to express her virtuosity.

 

Hers has never been one of outward flashiness, instead she is completely assured and totally musical. Her tone is gorgeous and limpid, well suited for the work’s broad vistas of sheer lyricism in the opening and Andante third movements. Even in the thorniest passages of the Scherzo, she remained unfazed, leaping over hurdles and through hoops with seeming comfort and ease. For the  jocular finale, the was overarching spirit was one of unremitting joy, bringing to a close a performance of utmost satisfaction. When can we get to hear the violin version of this concerto, from the likes of Alan Choo or Yang Shuxiang?     

 

Francis Poulenc’s four-movement Sinfonietta (1947) is too modestly titled. Running over 30 minutes, it is actually a fully fledged symphony, longer than all of Mozart’s symphonies and at least three Beethoven symphonies. It is scandalously neglected and I do not remember the SSO ever programming it, so kudos to OMM for possibly giving its Singapore premiere.

 

It contains all of the Frenchman’s grace, charm, sumptuous melodies and good humour, and the same uplifting spirit as his better-known ballet Les Biches (1924). Poulenc was no modernist, but one will detect influences of Stravinsky from his neo-classical phase, the infectiously chugging rhythms of the fast outer movements and svelte strings (think Apollon Musagetes) of the slow third movement.

 

While one might marvel at the typically comedic high jinks regularly offered up, it was the slower lingering passages, such as midway in the first movement and finale, which showed the ensemble at its subtle and sublime best. This was a very fine performance with much to be proud of, distinguished by very confident woodwind and brass playing and a general cohesiveness from conductor Seow’s firm yet flexible control from start to finish. It was so good I had to rewatch the whole Sinfonietta and pinch myself about the quality of the music and its playing. Perhaps OMM might also want to look at Prokofiev’s Sinfonietta as well.  

 

Highly pleasurable concerts such as this should be enjoyed by a full-house Esplanade Concert Hall, and one simply cannot wait for audiences to return. It is a big hope, but that is what will buoy us through these troubled times.

 

Watch it here:

https://youtu.be/1cPx8g16Mic

and its free of charge, 

thanks to the National Arts Council.

BACH BEATS CORONA / Red Dot Baroque / Review

BACH BEATS CORONA

Red Dot Baroque

Streamed on SISTIC Live

Sunday (6 September 2020)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 September 2020 with the title "Bach's life-affirming music for troubled times".

 

Musical groups in Singapore are slowly but surely getting a grip on the Covid-19 pandemic, with more online concerts being released on the Internet in lieu of live concerts. The latest was by Red Dot Baroque, Singapore’s only professional period instrument ensemble, with Bach Beats Corona.

 

The catchy title was borrowed from the ongoing worldwide movement performing Johann Sebastian Bach’s life-affirming music in these troubled times. The group’s founder and lead violinist Alan Choo played host by introducing the works, each performed by one to four players, all socially distanced and masked.

 

The concert opened with the Trio Sonata in G major (BWV 1039) for two flutes, viola da gamba and harpsichord. A delightul work which contains exactly the same music as the Viola Da Gamba Sonata No.1 (BWV.1027), its four movements alternated between a song-like countenance and contrapuntal busyness. Cheryl Lim and Rachel Ho on traverso flutes (baroque flutes) revelled in their starring roles, partnered by Mervyn Lee (gamba) and Gerald Lim (keyboard).

 

Each work was prefaced by a short movement in the same key from Bach’s Cello Suites, performed on baroque cello by Leslie Tan (from the T’ang Quartet). This included the familiar Prelude in G, Sarabande in C minor and Allemande in D major, all being movements possessed with a meditative quality. The last was played on a 5-stringed cello, producing a deep and long-breathed sonority.

 

The Violin Sonata No.4 in C minor (BWV.1017) is probably Bach’s best known accompanied violin sonata. If its 1^st movement sounded familiar, that was because it used the same theme as the hauntingly beautiful aria Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott (Have Mercy, My God) from Saint Matthew Passion. The instruments may be different, but the doleful spirit of contrition remained. Violinist Brenda Koh gave a sensitive reading, accompanied on obbligato harpsichord by Lee, a former child prodigy known as a polymath in all things baroque.

 

To illustrate Bach’s great sense of variety, the works chosen displayed a wealth of nuances and responses.  For example, there was a highly dramatic and almost improvisatory prelude that opened the Violin Sonata in E minor (BWV.1023), very unlike the other works. Violinist Placida Ho handled its surprising exuberance brilliantly, then keeping up the same exalted level in later movements. Here she was partnered by cellist Tan and harpsichordist Lim.

 

The 70-minute programme concluded with Trio Sonata in D minor (BWV.527) with violinists Choo and Gabriel Lee, backed by Tan and Lee on continuo. Originally conceived as an organ sonata, its three movement schema resembled the concerto form pioneered by the Italians, which Bach was undoubtedly familiar with. The duo voices of both soloists came through clearly in a spirited reading which could be described as a joyful romp.

This lovely concert is available to view on www.sistic.com.sg on a pay-as-you-please basis till 6 October 2020.

DECONSTRUCTED / EDQ Wind Quintet / Review

DECONSTRUCTED

EDQ Wind Quintet

Esplanade Recital Studio

Thursday (11 September 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 September 2014 with the title "Award-winning quintet's joyful night of new-isms". 

While violinists and pianists get the most attention by general audiences here, it should not be forgotten that wind and brass players have made a quantum leap in furthering their art. The award-winning EDQ wind quintet, formed in 2011, is undoubtedly the most visible and active of professional wind chamber ensembles in Singapore.

Its 70-minute programme of 20^th and 21^st century music was a microcosm of the marathon concerts by the London Sinfonietta recently presented at the Singapore International Festival of the Arts. Hungarian composer György Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles (1953) were the most familiar pieces played this evening. These were transcriptions of piano pieces from Musica Ricercata, each movement based on a fixed number of notes in a chromatic scale.

Rapid reflexes were called for in the first piece, contrasted with the slickness of articulation in the third piece where Cheryl Lim’s flute smoothly glided over a sea of running figures. The spirit and influences of Bela Bartok hovered over each number, the solemn fifth piece being a memorial to the composer who regularly appended the word mesto (sad) to his music. The set closed with humour and cheek, the wit of which was ardently captured. 

Next, French horn player Alan Kartik gave an imperious solo display in Olivier Messaien’s Appel Interstellaire (Interstellar Call) from the massive 12-movement symphony Des canyons aux etoiles (From the Canyon to the Stars) of 1974. Playing in pitch darkness, the bell of the horn was directed into the grand piano, with the resonance of its strings adding a spectral echo to the impassioned and highly virtuosic brass soliloquy. 

In the world premiere of Singaporean Liew Kongmeng’s Partitional (2014), the five players were widely spaced apart. Oboist Leow Rui Qing and clarinettist Benjamin Wong played from behind the audience, creating an antiphonal effect with bassoonist Emerald Chee, Lim and Kartik on the floor stage. Long held single notes, sometimes in unison and often with narrow pitched intervals, permeated the air and the general mood was one of strange calm.

In Estonian Arvo Pärt’s Quintettino (1964), the emphasis was on generating a range of varied tonal splashes in its three very brief movements. Short repeated staccato bursts and slow sustained notes coloured the first two pieces, and the rhythmic finale ended with a musical in-joke, all the funnier when crowned with wrong closing cadences.

Guest pianist Nicholas Loh garnered the solo spotlight in four pieces from Makrokosmos Book II (1973) by the American George Crumb. Altering the piano’s timbre by placing paper on, manually strumming and striking the strings was all part of the pianist’s arsenal in a showing that would have made avant-gardist Margaret Leng Tan proud.

As if to repay the audience’s patience for sitting through a host of new-isms, the final work was not just gratifyingly tonal but unabashedly populist. Dutch composer Leo Smit’s Piano Sextet (1932) predates the far better known Sextet by Poulenc, but shares with it a similar warmth and congeniality. Its insouciance and gaiety were made light work by the industrious quintet and Loh in a performance that was lapped up by both players and audience alike. EDQ’s next outing should be worth waiting for.

LES OISEAUX / Robert Casteels and Ensemble / Review

LES OISEAUX – BIRD SONGS

Robert Casteels & Ensemble
Singapore Conference Hall
Wednesday (5 October 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 October 2011 with the title "Clipped by mishaps".

Les Oiseaux (The Birds) is one man’s tribute to feathered friends and mankind’s fragile relationship with the environment. The scope encompassed by Belgian-Singaporean composer-conductor Robert Casteels was as vast as the subject itself, spanning almost 500 years of music.

In Clement Jannequin’s Chant des Oyseaults (Song oOf Birds), composed in 1529, the spirit of birdsong was wonderfully captured in onomatopoeaic devices and complex polyphony. The Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Chamber Singers performed with full-throated gusto, also making its presence felt in Casteels’s Bird Songs (2009).

Taking off where the great French composer and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen left, the 10-minute work blended recorded birdsongs (courtesy of Singapore Nature Society), electronically synthesised sounds and an ensemble dominated by woodwinds and percussion into a coherent collage. Florence Notté’s projected photography of caged birds, water reflections and bamboo forests provided further evocative stimuli.

Messiaen’s own Le Merle Noir (The Blackbird) received a virtuosic showing from flautist Cheryl Lim with Casteels at the piano. Three Korean singers were equally adept in Ravel’s Trois Beaux Oiseaux du Paradis (Three Beautiful Birds of Paradise), the birds being a metaphor for messengers from the afterlife. Yeo Jan Wea’s throaty viola heaved a lengthy sigh in Vaughan Williams’s Flos Campi, the perfect scene of pastoral serenity.

If the concert had ended with the hour-long first half, everybody would have left happy and sufficiently edified. The second half, which had nothing to do with birds, blotted the copybook.

The World Premiere of Greed & Fear, a joint composition by Casteels and electro-acoustician Seah Huan Yuh proved a 23-minute long anti-climax. iPad sounds and a string quartet led by violinist Seah jostled for supremacy, accompanied by verbal commentary in French and English about financial matters. The seemingly random string scrapings were supposedly based on the rise and fall of stocks and shares. A novel premise about the faltering European economy, but so what?

Worse was to come in Simple-X, for strings, harp and iPads, (above and below) also by the same composers. The tangled mess of electronic equipment and cables had not been properly set up, resulting in the musicians spending an interminable time wandering like lost sheep on stage, fidgeting with their instruments. Also apparently unrehearsed, the conductor-less performance lurched from one mishap to another, a case of trial and error that could be interpreted as reliving the aleatory techniques of John Cage, or simply down to man-made disaster.

In a concert that probed man’s relationship with nature and machines, the score reads: Gadgets 1 Humans 0.

The performance of Simple-X finally took place after a seemingly interminable delay

MAHLER 1: MEMORIES OF YOUTH / Orchestra of the Music Makers / Review

MAHLER 1: MEMORIES OF YOUTH
Orchestra of the Music Makers
Victoria Concert Hall
Sunday (3 January 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 January 2010.

After a year of over-achieving, the Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) has hit the ground running in the new decade. In what resembles a promising beginning to a Mahler symphony cycle, the young musicians put on a show of instrumental prowess that beggared belief.

The evening began in the manner which the Vienna Philharmonic closes its celebrated New Year Concerts, with Johann Strauss the Younger’s Blue Danube Waltz. Gossamer light tremolo strings ushered in the opening horn solo, which unfortunately did not have the mythical quality of sounding from afar. The brass chorale also lacked subtlety, making for a bumpy first half-minute. However as soon as the waltz rhythm got underway, it was plain sailing, even affording the luxury of several tantalising rubatos.

The Viennese theme continued with Mozart’s lovely Concerto in C major (K.299) for flute and harp. A work of exquisite craftsmanship rather than inspirational genius, it showcased two young ladies who were also members of OMM. Flautist Cheryl Lim was the more confident, projecting a tone of crystal-like clarity and seamlessness throughout. Harpist Laura Peh, a tender 16, had several awkward moments with wrong notes, but held her own with composure and grace. Together, the music alternated between lyrical beauty and scintillation, ably supported by the unobtrusive orchestra.

The test of the pudding was surely in Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony (composer left), nicknamed The Titan. Its opening pianissimo hum of nature was a feat of control from the strings, and woodwind solos also distinguished, notably clarinetist Vincent Goh’s cuckoo impressions. While the solo French horn had issues with flubbed passages, the massed group of eight horns was a force to behold.

It was this selfsame unity of spirit that galvanised the ensemble as a whole, rendering an invigorating performance that was greater than the sum of its disparate parts. The dance and funeral march of the middle movements were suitably earthy and raw, nuances that so coloured Mahler’s world of banalities, skillfully brought out by conductor Chan Tze Law.

If there were moments that simply blew one away, these would be the finale’s agonising “cry from the wounded heart”, a 20-minute journey from tragedy to final triumph. These youngsters, for whom nothing is impossible, certainly know the meaning of “titanic”.