A FAURE FETE / AN EVENING WITH CHELSEA GUO / Review

 

YOUTH & SERENITY: 

A FAURE FETE

The Music Circle

TMC Studio, Queen’s Road

Saturday (15 July 2023)

 

AN EVENING 

WITH CHELSEA GUO

Chelsea Guo (Piano & Voice)

School of The Arts Concert Hall

Sunday (16 July 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 July 2023 with the title "Engaging chamber concert and unusual piano-vocal recital at two weekend shows".

  

Two unusually different musical events took place last weekend, a chamber concert and a piano/vocal recital. The first saw about 50 people, including many children, packed within a cosy studio in The Music Circle’s school premises at Queen’s Road. This was an interactional concert meant to introduce young people (and their parents) to the joy of chamber music performance.

 

On show was a rare airing of late Romantic Frenchman Gabriel Fauré’s autumnal Piano Quintet No.2 in C minor (Op.115) performed by some of Singapore’s finest chamber musicians - pianist Cherie Khor, violinists Tang Tee Tong and Clarissa Lim, violist Christoven Tan and cellist Leslie Tan. Presenter Moegi Amano, a pianist herself, gave a short spiel on impressionism and Faure’s life history.

 

Strictly speaking, Fauré was not classed as an impressionist composer like Debussy or Ravel, but his more traditional music still provided instances where imaginations were allowed to run freely. As youngsters was busily colouring pictures of Eiffel Tower or pasting paper strips, the quintet performed as they would in a serious concert. In the flighty second movement, the audience was suggested to visualise children playing in a park, while the stillness of the slow movement reminded them of a peaceful river scene.

 

Applause between movements was not discouraged and all through this rarefied and sometimes austere music, many moments of beauty were illuminated, with listeners kept attentive and enraptured. Musical outreach has seldom been this engaging or unstuffy, and more schools are encouraged to win more followers to classical music by pursuing such persuasive means.   

 

Photo: Aceolution

The second concert featured one artist in dual roles of pianist and singer. While this is a given in pop music and jazz, it is virtually unheard of in classical music. Enter American-Chinese pianist and soprano Chelsea Guo, an undergraduate at New York’s Juilliard School, whose delightful programme centred on the love triangle of Robert Schumann, his wife Clara, and their friend Johannes Brahms.

 

The recital’s first half was all piano, opening with Robert’s Kinderszenen (Scenes From Childhood), musings on juvenile memories rather than didactic pieces for children. Innocence and simplicity were well brought out, the popular Traumerei (Dreaming) and the closing Der Dichter Spricht (The Poet Speaks) being particularly poignant.

 

Photo: Aceolution

Two contrasting Romances, Clara’s Op.21 No.1 and Robert’s Op.28 No.2, confirmed that she was no less of a serious composer than her husband. Brahms’ youthful Variations on an Original Theme (Op.21 No.1) provided the most technically challenging moments for the fingers but Guo prevailed.

 

 

The second half was all vocal, with Guo multi-tasking by being her own collaborative pianist. In Mir Klingt Ein Lied (In Me Sings A Song) is based on the melody of Chopin’s Tristesse Etude (Op.10 No.3) with the difficult bits left out, a mellifluous prelude to three songs by Clara which revealed far more of Guo’s art as interpreter. Her German was idiomatic, her tone pure but resolute, paving the way for Robert’s song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben (Woman’s Love and Life).

 

The words by Adelbert von Chamisso seem to modern sensibilities anachronistic and misogynist, that a woman is forever in the thrall of her man. It thus worked best just to pay attention to the music, and Guo expressed in its eight songs a wealth of emotion and colour, her voice never overshadowed by the piano’s rich details and textures. 

The recital closed with Robert’s Du Meine Seele (You My Soul), better known as Widmung (Dedication) written for Clara as a wedding gift, in the showy transcription by Franz Liszt. That heartrending romp and the Chinese song Molihua as encore brought down the house.

MUSIC & MAKAN: HEART / BRAIN

MUSIC & MAKAN: HEART. BRAIN

A Living Room, off River Valley Road

Sunday (15 October 2017) 

Music & Makan is the brainchild of Beverly Hiong, cellist and musical entrepreneur, bringing together the two things which Singaporeans love best: good music and good food. (Good shopping has not been included but I won't count it out at some point the way the event is evolving.)

First held in Christmas 2012, this has become a regular affair at the home of the Hiongs. The formula is simple: get professional musicians to perform and talk about music, engage a Michelin-starred or top-notched chef to prepare tasty dishes, and bring an audience of hungry people who enjoy being entertained. This year, M&M became a ticketed event and one can actually buy tickets via Peatix to attend.

Last Sunday's M&M was attended by over 40 people, including newcomers to the arcane world of classical music. The performers were no strangers to Singapore's classical music scene, and they performed a varied selection of pieces, while gently dismissing the notion that classical music is boring, stuffy or sniffy. Music is a combination of heart and brain, and the pieces were selected to illustrate beauty and symmetry in music, while showcasing form and structure in the process.

Here is the string quartet formed by:
Chikako Sasaki & Christina Zhou, violins
Leslie Tan, cello & Christoven Tan, viola

Beverly provides a friendly intro and
the quartet plays the Notturno
from Borodin's Second String Quartet.

Violist Christoven plays a movement
from György Ligeti's Viola Sonata,
filled with microtones and overtones.
Leslie does an impression of Rodin's Thinker.

To illustrate the fugal form, the
Contrapunctus No.2 from J.S.Bach's
The Art of Fugue was performed.

The concert closed with the first two movements
from Shostakovich's String Quartet No.8.

A peak at the audience, which got to
sing Row, Row Your Boat
to appreciate the canon form.

Chef Kit Wong's awesome spread
of finger foods and canapes.

The event was not sponsored by M&Ms,
but you get the idea.

Musical celebrities like conductor Jason Lai
and Viva Viola man Jeremy Chiew
also made their presence.

We trust everyone who came
had a lovely time.

It is rumoured that the next Music & Makan will be held at an art gallery. To find out where and when, do check-out the dedicated website: www.musicandmakan.com  

VIVA VIOLA / Kris Foundation Concert / Review

VIVA VIOLA

Jeremy Chiew, Christoven Tan (Violas) et al

Kris Foundation Concert

Esplanade Recital Studio

Friday (11 August 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 August 2017 with the title "Viola's dark and dusky sonority".

Why have violas and violists always been given short shrift? Singaporean violist Jeremy Chiew, who organised this viola fest for the Kris Foundation, provided valid reasons in a short preamble. For example, the viola's size and volume militated against possessing the violin's sweetness or the cello's mellowness and projection.

He could, however, comfort himself with the viola's dark and dusky sonority, especially in the context of playing with other string instruments. The opening work was a delightful duo featuring Christoven Tan's viola and Leslie Tan's cello in the 1^st movement of Beethoven's “Eyeglass” Duet.

Composed for a cellist friend who needed corrective lenses for his short-sightedness, this was a match of equals with the viola (which Beethoven played) given the leading voice. That both performers were bespectacled was no surprise in myopia-prevalent Singapore, and there was no surprise either in tautness of ensemble, with each instrument alternating between providing melody and accompaniment.

The combo of viola and violin also worked well in the well-known Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia, with Jeremy Chiew and Chikako Sasaki respectively. Whatever agility the violin mustered was equally matched by the viola (which replaced the customary cello) in its masterful set of very short variations.

When two violas come together, as in Frank Bridge's elegiac Lament, the depth of sound was doubled. Seldom has a work sounded this soulful or long-breathed, with two similar voices mirroring and echoing each other, which Chiew and Tan brought to sonorous perfection.

Perhaps the most demanding solo fell to 16-year-old Calvin Dai who played two movements from Brahms' autumnal Viola Sonata No.2 (Op.120 No.2) with Benjamin Lim on piano. A member of the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, he brought out a very decent burnished sound and was able to skilfully vary the dynamics for the expressive Allegro appassionato.

The evening's gem was undoubtedly the performance of Mendelssohn's late String Quintet No.2 in B flat major (Op.87), published only after his death. Modelled on Mozart's string quintets which use two violas, Chiew and Tan were joined by Sasaki and Andrew Ng (violins), and Leslie Tan (cello).    

The full impact of strings was immediately felt in the opening Allegro vivace, bursting with energy and vitality. The listener is reminded of the earlier and much more familiar String Octet, but this was just as absorbing, with all five players working in close tandem. Here, the violas played a vital supporting role for Sasaki's first violin and Tan's cello which had most of the big tunes.

For without violas, such a work would sound bereft of heft, and far less rich as a result. Theirs was not to hog the limelight but to enhance interest, as demonstrated in the feathery light Andante scherzando and the impassioned Adagio e lento slow movement. The finale was on the short-winded side, but that did little to diminish the overall stature of a memorable and utterly compelling reading.