A VIRTUOSO'S ENCOUNTER: EAST MEETS WEST / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

 

 

 

A VIRTUOSO’S ENCOUNTER: EAST MEETS WEST

Ding Yi Music Company with I-Sis Trio

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday (18 December 2012)

 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 December 2012 with the title "Bold explorations".

 

There are several qualities that unite the Ding Yi Music Company with its senior counterpart the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, one of which is its zeal to collaborate with musicians from different cultures. The I-Sis Trio, comprising harpist Katryna Tan, violinist Cindy Yan and cellist Natasha Liu, was its latest guest in a 90-minute long exploration of widely disparate musical idioms.

 

Each soloist performed separately with the ensemble of Chinese instruments, conducted by Quek Ling Kiong, beginning with Tan’s own Water Dance which juxtaposed dissonances with lyricism. Although inspired by the popular Chinese tune Flowing Water, Tan’s score also paid heed to the rugged landscapes and rocky outcrops through which streams flowed, which accounted for its seemingly uncompromising modernism.

 

 

Yan and Liu’s individual solos were more conventional, the former in the familiar Fishing Boats at Dusk with its slow-fast rhapsodic schema, and the latter in Liu Zhuang’s Romanza based on a Xinjiang folksong, a Central Asian-flavoured elegy that could have come from the pen of a Russian composer. Close your eyes, and the ensemble’s plucked pipas and ruans sounded like balalaikas.

 

The trio then performed Reminisce by young Singaporean composer and arranger Phang Kok Jun, also a zhonghu player of Ding Yi. This is one of those unremittingly lush pieces the melody of which lingers on long after the work has ended.

 

 

All three were joined by the sheng and percussion for Jia Da Qun’s The Prospect of Coloured Desert, an atonal work even thornier than Water Dance. The sonorities of this instrumental combination were however most interesting, the gentle throbbing marimba and harp sharply contrasted with more penetrating tones from the sheng and bowed strings.  

 

By now, the audience had its fill of contemporary music, and the mood lightened considerably for Piazzolla’s Milonga del Angel and Lecuona’s Malaguena, Latino standards of the I-Sis repertoire. The supporting orchestrations by Lu Heng and Wynne Fung respectively were subtle, the presence of the Chinese instruments coming to bear strongly only during their climaxes.

 

There was a bizarre-sounding Variations on Jingle Bells in a gamut of rhythmic styles, including a waltz, swing, rock and roll, which called for the obligatory audience clap-along. This left an odd taste in the mouth, like cheese-coated durian pastries. All was forgiven when Piazzolla’s vibrant Libertango was offered as an encore, which worked like a charm and sent everyone home with a kick in the step.

 

 



DANCE OF AN ANGEL / Katryna Tan 10th Anniversary Harp Recital / Review

 

DANCE OF AN ANGEL

KATRYNA TAN, Harp

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (12 August 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 August 2012 with the title "Night of heavenly harmonies".

It seemed only a short while ago when Seremban-born harpist Katryna Tan first burst onto the local musical scene. This concert marks the 10^th anniversary of activities by the architecture student turned indefatigable musician, teacher, entrepreneur and founder of the Singapore Harp Festival, who was awarded the National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award in 2005.

Her concert was an 80-minute selection of her favourite music in original form and transcriptions, performed solo and with friends. The evening began with Tan’s own virtuosic arrangements of two Astor Piazzolla tangos, Milonga and Death of the Angel. All through its bittersweet melodies, which portrayed tenderness and yearning, she maintained a steady and unceasing pulse that resonated like the human heartbeat.

Alphonse Hasselmans’s Petite Valse provided a delightful Chopinesque interlude before launching to Franz Liszt’s Liebesträume No.3, replete with its sweeping cadenzas which Tan negotiated with a disarming adroitness. A few misplaced chords towards the end did little to dampen the ardour.

More Latino music was next, with Agustin Lara’s rousing Granada, the subject of Carlos Salzedo’s Fantasy, contrasted with the melancholic Adagio from Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, where both solo and orchestral parts were combined by Tan. It was a credit to her artistry when one neither misses Placido Domingo’s voice or the cor anglais’s plaint in these works.

 

Tan’s friends from her all-girl I-Sis Trio then joined her in duos, first violinist Cindy Yan in Miroslav Skoryk’s Spanish Dance, and later cellist Natasha Liu in Ravel’s Piece in the Form of a Habanera and Debussy’s chanson Beau Soir. Tan’s altogether sensitive accompaniment allowed the melodic lines of her glamourous partners to sing, soar and shine. 

A more unusual collaboration came in the person of percussionist Ramu Thiruyanam, who improvised on cajon box drums (including one he was sitting on), chimes, maracas and a rattle in three of Bernard Andres’s Dances from The Island. In these, Tan played on her newly unveiled blue and chrome electrically amplified harp. Energised, the Mambo, Rumba and Samba movements provided foot-tapping moments which the audience positively revelled in.

All four musicians were united in the final work, Primavera Portena (Spring) from Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. The tango rhythm, now vigourous and hip-gyrating instead of just sultry, lent an exuberant end to the evening’s fare. Like Piazzolla who elevated the tango to lofty reaches, Katryna Tan has made the regal harp, the instrument of angels, more accessible to mere mortals.  

  

The I-Sis Trio, Ramu Thiruyanam and colleagues from the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, harpist and guzheng player Ma Xiao Lan and conductor Quek Ling Kiong.

     

I-SIS TRIO performs at College of Family Physicians Singapore 40th Anniversary Dinner

The I-Sis Trio, Singapore's premier harp ensemble, performed at the 40th anniversary dinner of the College of Family Physicians Singapore on 27 November 2011 at the Grand Ballroom of the Singapore Hyatt. They enchanted and enthralled an audience of Singapore's fraternity of family physicians with a selection of works from their latest album.

They performed a short programme of works which included pieces which they had specially commissioned as well as their own arrangements of popular classics tangos.

Two young girls hope to emulate their

talented older sisters when they grow up!

The I-Sis Trio were a refreshing change 

from the boring old string quartets.

PianoManiac happened to attend the event 

(far away from his reviewing duties), 

but could not escape the strong hold of 

good music and charming ladies. 

They say good music is the best medicine 

for the jaded soul.