SSO Concert: Bach to Mozart / Review

BACH TO MOZART
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
CHO-LIANG LIN, Violin & Conductor

Sunday (28 February 2010, 5 pm)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 March 2010.

Sunday afternoon concerts at Victoria Concert Hall mean one thing: chamber music with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. For the second successive year, the orchestra’s partnership with Artist-in-Residence Cho-Liang Lin bore abundant fruit in its well-run and well-attended chamber series. The Taiwanese-American violinist is an inspiring musician who leads by example.

Just ten string players with harpsichordist Shane Thio produced a full and robust sound for Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto. Lin doubled as sometime soloist and leader, and the ensemble reveled in the music’s sprightly rhythms, a far cry from those ponderous big orchestra renditions of the LP era. He also crafted a short improvisation for the super-short second movement, before launching into the contrapuntal paradise of the finale.

Haydn’s Violin Concerto in C major benefited from Lin’s vigorous double-stopping and singing tone, bringing much purpose and poise to this transitional work that bridged the baroque and classical eras. The Adagio was a wellspring of sheer lyricism, played over a gentle plucked string accompaniment while the virtuoso came out for the third movement’s perpetual motion.

Laying down his violin, Lin (left) conducted the second half of the concert. The ability to evoke pathos and deeply felt emotions is a privilege of stringed instruments, and seldom has Grieg’s Two Elegiac Melodies resounded with such vividness. Ethereal violins and mellow cellos all played their part, ranging from a mere whisper to a full-throated cry from a wounded heart.

Two French horns and two oboes entered the fray for Mozart’s early and graceful Symphony No.29 in A major. Victoria Concert Hall seems like the perfect stage for this slender work. The performance was suitably small-scaled, quaint and even dainty, but never lacking in intimacy and refined nuances. The serenade-like slow movement would have been lost in Esplanade Concert Hall’s cavernous ambience, more suited for the behemoths of Bruckner and Mahler.

The concert closed in high spirits, with a playful minuet and joyous romp of a finale that recalled the jaunty tempos of a foxhunt. For those who missed this peach, there remains one more chamber Sunday on 11 April before the Vic closes for a major overhaul.

SSO Chamber Concert: An Evening Serenade with Cho-Liang Lin / Review

AN EVENING SERENADE
WITH CHO-LIANG LIN
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Victoria Concert Hall
Sunday (15 March 2009, 5pm)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 March 2009.

A sizeable audience greeted Taiwan-born violinist Cho-Liang Lin, one of the world’s great string players, in his debut chamber concert with the SSO. To be more precise, this is not Lin’s first time conducting here, having shared a concert with Lan Shui at the Esplanade several years ago where he conducted from the violin Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

This dual role of soloist and conductor was gloriously relived in Mozart’s Fourth Violin Concerto, where his big and sweet tone was only matched by the vigour in which the chamber-sized orchestra responded. No apologies were made for ignoring period performance practice, as outsized vibratos and broad lyrical sweeps distinguished this reading. Even the romantically-inclined cadenzas by Raymond Leppard played in all three movements enchanted rather than distracted.

It was the slow second movement that brought out the most discreet and lushest accompaniment from the band, which was repeated in the second half’s Serenata Notturno, also by Mozart. Here a concertante quartet of Lin and Concertmaster Sasha Souptel on violins, violist Zhang Manchin and bassist Guennadi Mouzyka were most charming protagonists in a lively interplay between the two instrumental groups.

The last time SSO performed Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll was as a “lightweight” prelude to Act One of Die Walkure, in 2007. On this evening, it was the most concentrated slice of music on show, but the sheer warmth of strings and excellent solos from winds and brass offered total pleasure for its 20 minutes or so.

Lin’s almost leisurely leadership however intensified for Tchaikovsky’s popular Serenade for Strings. The outer movements benefited from a tautness of ensemble that also allowed for spaciousness of tempi. Never a slave to the metronome, the familiar Waltz lilted with ever-nostalgic sentimentality, while the Elegy – with luscious legatos from the violins – relived old and lost romances. The folksong and dance inspired finale rebounded with renewed energy, closing the concert in high spirits.

SSO’s policy of inspiring its musicians by playing chamber music alongside top-ranked visiting artists worked like a dream here. Long may that continue.

Naxos Recordings by Cho-Liang Lin: Review

Here are a couple of reviews of recordings by violinist Cho-Liang Lin on the Naxos label. The first appeared in The Straits Times (30 May 2008) and the second on The Flying Inkpot.

GEORG TINTNER Chamber Music
CHO-LIANG LIN, Violin
HELEN HUANG, Piano
Naxos 8.570258 / Rating ****

The Vienna-born conductor Georg Tintner (1917-1999) is better remembered for his recorded cycle of Bruckner symphonies on the Naxos label. His little known original chamber compositions are now revealed for the first time on record. Youthful works completed before he turned 30, these dabbled with atonality but remain largely accessible. His possible influences: the Second Viennese School (Alban Berg in particular), prodigious film-music composer Erich Korngold and even virtuoso violinist Fritz Kreisler.

The most substantial work is a 25-minute Violin Sonata in four movements, which sounds modern on first acquaintance but retains substantial vestiges of Romantic sentimentalism. Finely crafted, it repays further listening. His Chopin Variations for piano (after the very brief Prelude in A major, Op.28 No.7) is witty and inventive while two funereal pieces – On the Death of a Friend and Trauermusik – uncannily foretell his tragic end by his own hand after being stricken by cancer. The high profile performers, both of Chinese descent, perform the music most sympathetically.

GORDON CHIN SHI-WEN
Double Concerto for Violin and Cello

Formosa Seasons for Violin and Strings
CHO-LIANG LIN, Violin

& FELIX FAN, Cello
Kansas City Symphony / MICHAEL STERN

Naxos 8.570221 / Rating ****

One could be forgiven for suspecting that Brahms and Vivaldi or Piazzolla had been ripped off, based on the titles of these concertos alone. But fear not, Taiwanese-born Eastman-trained Gordon Chin is a fine craftsman whose music can hold its own in the already crowded world of new compositions.

Chin’s idiom in both string concertos is tonal and accessible by 20th century standards, ranging from Waltonian wit and Bernsteinesque sense of pacing to the hair-pulling dissonances favoured by composers like Schnittke. Some parts could also pass off as well-written film music, in the manner of Bernard Hermann (think the score of Psycho, for example). All this may suggest formulaic eclecticism but Chin manages to make his music sound convincing, and definitely worth revisiting.

There isn’t much that is Chinese in the music. Only in the Double Concerto’s slow second movement, A Flowering Sacrifice, are there hints of Chin’s Chinese heritage – a powerful brooding lament with deftly placed portamenti and subtle use of percussion. Equally engaging is the third movement In Expectation, a nostalgic waltz reminiscent of sickly-sweet and demented “haunted house” music.

The Formosa Seasons were composed for Cho-Liang Lin as a companion to Vivaldi’s classic. In reality, they are as different as chalk and cheese. There are four poems (translated into English) to accompany each of the seasons, which begin with summer and close with the onset of spring. The music is more angular and spiky here than in the Double Concerto, but at 21 minutes, this engaging work may prove to be more programmable in the long run.

The Kansas City Symphony under Michael Stern (who definitely knows something about China, having followed his father Isaac in From Mao to Mozart) play well, and this enterprise benefits from having two excellent soloists on board.