POULENC'S LA VOIX HUMAINE / Review

POULENC’S LA VOIX HUMAINE

Jennifer Lien, Soprano 

Shane Thio, Piano

Ivan Heng, Director

Streamed on the Internet @ SISTIC Live

Saturday (18 July 2020)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 July 2020 with the title "Home-grown rendition of The Human Voice a rare gem".

Until the embargo of live concerts is lifted post-circuit breaker, music lovers will have to be content with pre-recorded digital concerts. Presented by the Singapore Symphony Group in its Victoria Concert Hall Presents series, this 2018 production of Francis Poulenc’s single-act, single-singer chamber opera La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice), first streamed last weekend, was a rare gem.

Performed before a live audience, its plot involved Elle (the generic “She” in French) in a final conversation with her former lover. Central to the 1958 opera, adapted from playwright Jean Cocteau’s 1928 script, was the telephone, a modern convenience and prop that was supposed to figure prominently throughout.

Wrong numbers, crossed connections and inept telephone operators were comedic elements in the serious melodrama. However, in director Ivan Heng’s conception, that physical means of communication was totally expunged. This allowed protagonist Elle the freedom of movement, to wander about onstage and sing without impediment.

The telephone’s only hint was a long red cord tightly wound around the grand piano on which pianist Shane Thio played. Also absent was Elle’s faithless lover, although his insidious presence might be inferred in furtive onscreen projections and Thio’s sockless red sneakers.   

Enlivening the anguished Elle was USA-based Singaporean soprano Jennifer Lien, whose monologue was a tour de force of lyrical and dramatic role-play. The former Business Times journalist turned operatic diva was fully immersed in the multi-faceted part and emoted brilliantly in idiomatic French (with the audience well served by English transliterations).

Through the opera’s compact 40 minutes, she brilliantly lived through Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief. Shifting effortlessly between denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, she often mixed these up in an intoxicating melange of fraught and barely-contained emotions. With hysterical outbursts alternating with episodes of lucidity, this was a multi-layered and grandstanding performance.

Poulenc’s music was unremittingly tonal, but liberally laced with dissonances and abrupt figurations. Lien flitted through recitative and outright song, where a penchant for sentimentality was revealed, albeit briefly. There was a short waltz-song sequence midway through, with a cascade of falling pills projected behind the performer. This was more than an allusion to a drug-induced fit of pique, also fortified by a well-placed bottle of liquor.

Whatever was Elle’s fate (suicide by overdose, gunshot or strangulation by telephone cord) became immaterial by the opera’s passionate but lyrical close. All that remained were the frenzied circumstances and states of mind that led to her fateful (and ultimately fatal) decisions. In short, The Human Voice was an in-depth treatise of the human condition, fragile psyche, warts and all. That it was captured with such trenchancy speaks volumes of all the artists involved.       

POULENC'S DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES / New Opera Singapore / Review

DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES

New Opera Singapore

Victoria Theatre

Friday (3 August 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times (online edition) on 10 August 2018 with the title "Unconventional choice, but Dialogues of the Carmelites a landmark for New Opera Singapore".

New Opera Singapore (NOS) has done it again. By mounting the Singapore premiere of Francis Poulenc's 1957 opera Dialogues Of The Carmelites (Dialogues Des Carmelites), it defied the conventions of what operas should local companies be presenting. No Verdi, no Puccini, no Mozart, but no worries. NOS had Purcell, Britten and Monteverdi on its books, and has now added 20^th century Frenchman Francis Poulenc to its list of successes.

In reality, Carmelites should not have been a great surprise as it represented the last of last century's great tonal operas, conceived during the era when serious composers were pursuing atonalism and avant-garde agenda. Its subject, the 1794 martyrdom of the Camelite order of Compiegne during  the French Revolution's Great Terror, was also fertile for exploitation in musical drama.

Mother Superior Lidoine (Jennifer Lien)
leads the Requiem service.

Sung in English instead of French, directed by Kyongsu Kathy Han and conducted by Chan Wei Shing, this production was furthered by a very strong cast of principals as the ill-fated nuns. The protagonist Blanche (soprano Victoria Songwei Li) as aristocrat-turned-novice sparkled as she alternated between hope and fear, finally finding a resolution in extreme courage. Beside her, Sister Constance (soprano Capucine Daumas) was a light-hearted and playful presence, the perfect foil.

The Mother Superiors were well contrasted, soprano Patricia Sands as the long-suffering and terminally-ill Madame de Croissy and soprano Jennifer Lien (fresh from her leading role in the other significant Poulenc opera La Voix Humaine) as the plain-speaking and more cheery Madame Lidoine. Between them, mezzo-soprano Rebecca Chellappah was a rock-steady Mother Marie, close confidante to the beleaguered ladies. Their voices rang well over the discreet orchestral manoeuvres from the pit.

Blanche (Victoria Li) with
Mother Marie (Rebecca Chellappah)

Men had much smaller parts, including tenors Reuben Lai (Father Superior) and tenor Shaun Lee as Blanche's brother the Chevalier. The touching scene between Blanche and Chevalier came closest to a conventional operatic love duet, but had the former rebuffing the latter's pleas to flee the oncoming crisis. The men's black suits also contrasted markedly against the light pastel nuns' habits and ultimately white, symbolising innocence and purity.

The sets in all three acts by Allister Towndrow were monochrome and starkly effective, with series of screens adding layers of dimensions. The shadow of the guillotine loomed ever so ominously through the First Act, and when the heart-wrenching final scene beckoned, there were to be no falling blades.

Execution by decapitation was depicted symbolically. With the chorus of nuns (including NOS Artistic Director Jeong Ae Ree in a cameo role) singing the poignant Salve Regina and each walking through the scaffold and towards oblivion, their voices diminished and decimated until there were only two. Blanche's final act of sacrifice with her sisters in faith could not have been better depicted.

This production marked yet another important landmark in the short history of New Opera Singapore. It produces only one opera a year, but making that count is what that really matters.

The main cast (from L): Sands, Daumas, Li,
Chan, Han, Jeong, Lien & Chellappah.

Production photos by Chester Chew, applause photos by Pianomaniac.

WANG CONGYU Piano Recital / Review

WANG CONGYU Piano Recital

Alliance Francaise

Sunday (15 November 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 November 2015 with the title "Charming recital of French music".

It was with a heavy heart that young Singaporean pianist Wang Congyu, who spent the best years of his musical education in Paris, began his recital of the music of French composer Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). A minute of silence was observed in memory of victims of Friday evening's Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris. With the audience still standing, he performed Arioso, Alfred Cortot's transcription of the slow movement from J.S.Bach's Keyboard Concerto in F minor (BWV.1056). 

Clearly affected by the horrific turn of events, his pulse of the touching piece was unsteady, and this continued into Poulenc's popular Trois Mouvements Perpetuels. The perpetual motion of its title proved to be deceptively difficult to sustain, and the odd bit of rubato did not seem appropriate in this context.

It got better for the Trois Novellettes and Trois Intermezzi, works of more varied character. Wang provided the gentlest of touches for the Steinway grand wheeled in specially for this concert, and his liberal use of the sustaining pedal smoothed over the more angular edges. A little more incisiveness and élan would have helped, but still, he is incapable of any ugly sound.

Poulenc's piano music is light and airy, often accused of being frivolous and prone to fripperies, but is never dull. How Wang navigated through the 15 Improvisations, the longest work in the recital, was a testament to his music “story-telling” abilities. Every short piece is highly characterised in form, sentiment and mood, and here his variegated approach to each proved to be decisive.

The Seventh Improvisation achieved a high point in capturing Poulenc's carefree and melancolic personality. The Homage to Schubert (No.12) was a delightful German dance in three-quarter time, while No.13 and No.15, the latter a homage to chanteuse Edith Piaf, were showcases of lyrical writing which Wang revelled in.

The 5-minute-long Melancolie was Poulenc's longest single movement, yet within it was a microcosm of his seemingly contradictory personas, befitting his reputation of being a “rascal and saint”. The programme, which follows Wang's debut CD recording entitled Charme, closed with an arrangement of the chanson Les Chemins D'Amour (The Paths Of Love), which was shaped beautifully.

Wang generously performed three encores, the first being American pianist Earl Wild's Homage to Poulenc, in effect a J.S.Bach sarabande dressed up in Poulenc's perfumed harmonies. This was followed by an alternative version of Chopin's Nocturne in E flat major (Op.9 No.2), which has more difficult and filigreed right hand ornamentations, and Debussy's First Arabesque. This recital summed up in a word: charming.       

Je suis Parisienne
Wang Congyu with Singaporean musicians
who had studied in Paris, composer Tan Chan Boon
and duo-pianists Low Shao Ying & Shao Suan. 

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, November 2015)

CHARME

POULENC Piano Music

WANG CONGYU, Piano

KNS Classical 040 / ****1/2

The piano music of Frenchman Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) comes from a bygone era, filled with the song-like charm of the Belle Epoque and influenced by popular trends of the day in Gay Paree. His persona was both rascal and saint, displaying seemingly contradictory facets of his personal life: a bon vivant with a deep inner spirituality informed by his Roman Catholic faith. This album brings together his most popular works for piano; the popular and witty Trois Mouvements Perpetuels, with the quintessential characteristics which are further delved in his Three Novelettes and Three Intermezzos.

The 15 Improvisations are delectable shavings from the master's work desk, which include a waltz in homage to Schubert and a heartfelt homage to songstress Edith Piaf. Poulenc's genuine gift of melody comes across most sympathetically in Melancolie, which at 5 minutes is his longest piano piece, and the chanson Les Chemins De L'Amour (The Paths Of Love). The latter was never notated but improvised from the song itself. Young Singaporean pianist Wang Congyu studied in Paris with Gabriel Tacchino, the composer's only formal student. His playing is elegant and refined, an excellent introduction to Poulenc's uniquely personal sound world.

BOOK IT:

WANG CONGYU Piano Recital

AGF Auditorium, Alliance Francaise

Sunday (15 November 2015), 7.30 pm

Tickets at $28 available at:

admin@steinway.com.sg  or Tel: 6838-0525

BIZJAK PIANO DUO

Stuttgart Philharmonic / Radoslaw Szulc

Onyx Classics 4148 / *****

The exciting Serbian duo of Lidija and Sanja Bizjak make their first concerto recording with two 20^th century double piano concertos that look to the past for inspiration. Think of J.S.Bach's concertos for two keyboards updated to the present, and the Concerto For Two Pianos (1943) by Bohemian composer Bohuslav Martinu comes into view. Its busy play of counterpoint in the fast outer movements, fuelled by his upbeat and kinetic style, makes this a jolly listen. 

Its companion is the equally engaging Concerto For Two Pianos (1932) by Frenchman Francis Poulenc, where Mozart's sensibilities, Javanese gamelan and Gallic charm become equals in an inimitably quirky manner.

The fillers without orchestral backing are just as apt. Stravinsky's Sonata For Two Pianos (1943) is neoclassical in its conception with a droll theme and variations second movement as its centrepiece. Shostakovich's single-movement Concertino (1954), composed for his teenaged son, combines mock-seriousness and genuine gaiety, looking forward to his guilelessly melodious Second Piano Concerto. 

This seemingly unusual programme by the Bizjak sisters is a total charmer. Their digital brilliance is blessed with a lightness of touch and a generous dose of wit and humour. Its unmitigated success is a given.    

SOLO

NICHOLAS MCCARTHY, Piano left hand

Warner Classics 0825646052400 / ****1/2

The 26-year-old Briton Nicholas McCarthy was born without a right hand, but in 2012 became the first one-handed pianist to graduate from London's Royal College of Music. His debut solo recording of left hand piano music begins unpromisingly with typically vacuous fare from Ludovico Einaudi and clunky operatic transcriptions where a seamless cantabile is found wanting.

However there is an astonishing sequence of tracks that seals the deal: Frederic Meinder's transcription of Rachmaninov's Vocalise, Count Geza Zichy's transcription of Liszt's Third Liebesträume and two contrasting Chopin-Godowsky Études (Op.10 No.3 and Op.25 No.12), the latter given a thunderous reading that proves his credentials.

Then come three Scriabin pieces, the famous D flat major Nocturne (Op.9 No.2) and two Études (the fearsome Op.8 No.12 with the melancholic Op.2 No.1). Probably the greatest left hand solo work is Felix Blumenfeld's A flat major Étude, which gets a glorious performance it deserves. To wind down, two Gershwin songs (The Man I Love and Summertime) and Nigel Hess' Nocturne, specially commissioned by McCarthy provides some lighter listening. 

Judging by the simplistic entry level programme notes by the pianist himself, this album was clearly aimed at beginners, but seasoned pianophiles need not shy away. 

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, May 2015)

VADYM KHOLODENKO

PLAYS RACHMANINOFF & MEDTNER

Delos 3567 / *****

The young Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko was awarded the coveted 1^st Prize at the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas. This all-Russian recital disc reveals him at his persuasive best, not so much as a barnstorming virtuoso but a thoughtful and sensitive interpreter. Nikolai Medtner's Winter Wind Sonata in E minor (Op.25 No.2) is a dense and contrapuntally complex single movement lasting some 30 minutes, but listen to how he elucidates its simple main theme, adds building blocks and develops a monumental edifice upon its foundations. While not the easiest work to sit through, he makes a strong case as he leads the listener through its seemingly knotty vistas to ultimately a palpable sense of musical enlightenment.

The balance of the recital comes like a sweet dessert with nine of Rachmaninov's stylish transcriptions of popular melodies. There is utter clarity in the articulation of J.S.Bach's Partita No.3 in three movements and Schubert's lilting Wohin? from Die Schöne Müllerin. Kholodenko skilfully negotiates the hairpin turns of Mendelssohn's Scherzo (from A Midsummer Night's Dream), one of the most hair-raising transcriptions ever devised. The Slavic brooding of Tchaikovsky's Lullaby (Op.16 No.1) is contrasted with the gaiety of Rachmaninov's Polka de V.R. (based on a Lehar tune his father once doodled on) and Kreisler's Liebesleid and Liebesfreud. This is playing of an exulted kind, where true musicality triumphs over mere technical know how. 

BOOK IT:

VADYM KHOLODENKO 
DESTINATION SINGAPORE

Piano Recital

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday, 7 June 2015 at 7.30 pm

Tickets available at SISTIC

THE RASCAL AND THE SPARROW

POULENC MEETS PIAF

ANTONIO POMPA-BALDI, Piano

Steinway & Sons 30015 / *****

In 1959, the French composer Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) composed the last of his 15 Improvisations for piano. He titled it Hommage a Edith Piaf, a languorous waltz-song that indelibly captured the insouciant Parisian spirit of the famous diminutive chanteuse who was known as “The Sparrow”. It is not known whether Poulenc ever knew Edith Piaf (1915-1963) personally or even met her, but his admiration was obvious.

This collection of “songs without words” by Italian pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi brings together his transcriptions of 18 Poulenc's chansons with 10 “elaborations” by Sardinian pianist-composer Roberto Piana of songs immortalised by Piaf. Undoubtedly the best known is La vie en rose, with the famous left hand melody dressed up with playfully contrapuntal and ornate filigree from the right hand. Un grand amour is no less fine, and even cheekily quotes the Rose at its end.

Piana's art borders on the improvisatory, bringing a wealth of feeling and charm to numbers like Hymne l'Amour, Non, je ne regrette rien and Mon Dieu!, which sound truly delicious. Pompa-Baldi's treatment of songs like Le Chemins de l'Amour, Montparnasse, C and Le dernier Mazour are more straight-forward, combining sumptuous melodic lines with Poulenc's own piano accompaniment. Here is just over an hour of nostalgia and gaiety, beautifully realised.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, August 2014)

PHILIPPE ENTREMONT

Complete Piano Concerto Recordings

Sony Classical 88843013272 (19CDs) 

****1/2

The French pianist-turned-conductor Philippe Entremont was only 16 when he won the Marguerite Long Piano Competition in 1951, and was soon signed on a long-term record contract with Columbia Records. These classic recordings with the great American orchestras, mostly under the direction of conductors Leonard Bernstein and Eugene Ormandy, date from 1958 to 1981. Included are a raft of Romantic concertos (Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Rachmaninov), major French repertoire (Saint-Saens, Faure, D’Indy and Ravel) and contemporary works (Bartok, Stravinsky, Gershwin, Milhaud, Khachaturian, Bernstein and Jolivet).  

Many of these have been reissued in various guises but remain examples of whole-hearted pianism that is unafraid to wear heart-on-sleeve. His playing was generous, full-blooded and passionate, which won him much favour among the Americans. New to the CD catalogue are his Mozart recordings (Piano Concertos Nos.13, 17 and 22) which reveal much sensitivity and sympathy for the idiom. In honour of Entremont’s 80^th birthday this year, all the discs display the original sleeve-art from the LPs as well as the programme notes. Here is a treat and boon for all nostalgics. 

POULENC Complete Chamber Works

London Conchord Ensemble

Champs Hill Records 028 (2 CDs) / ****1/2

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) was the best loved and universally performed of the French composers known as Les Six, a loosely knit group that made its name in Paris following the First World War. His chamber music has some of his most approachable music, with a gift of lyricism balanced by generous doses of wit, irony and poignancy. He is one of very few composers who could sound both flippant and serious within the same breath.

The five sonatas on the first disc, relatively later works, are already staple repertoire for each of the instruments. The very beautiful Flute Sonata (1957) is the most familiar, followed by the substantial and sometimes jazzy Cello Sonata (1948), with the athletic Clarinet Sonata (1962) and bittersweet Violin (1943) and Oboe Sonatas (1962) not far behind.

The second disc highlights a wealth of music for woodwind and brass, with the gaiety and drollery of the Sextet (1939) and Trio for piano, oboe and bassoon (1926) being particularly infectious. The standout solemn work is the Elegie for horn and piano (1957) written in memory of the British horn virtuoso Dennis Brain. The shorter sonatas and pieces for guitar, clarinet, flute and piccolo also show Poulenc as a master of miniatures. The London Conchord Ensemble led by pianist Julian Milford is an excellent guide to these treasures, on an album which retails at budget price.   

THE SONGS OF FRANCIS POULENC / 3rd Singapore Lieder Festival / Review

THE SONGS OF FRANCIS POULENC

3^rd Singapore Lieder Festival

Living Room @ The Arts House

Sunday (27 October 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 October 2013 with the title "Poulenc tribute a labour of love".

In the birth anniversary year of Wagner, Verdi and Britten, it should not be forgotten that 2013 is also the 50^th anniversary of the death of Frenchman Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). He is the best-loved and most performed of the composing clique known as Les Six, and for good reason too.

The 3^rd Singapore Lieder Festival organised by the Sing Song Club was devoted to the complete songs of Poulenc, spanning seven October evenings and utilising the talents of nine singers, two narrators, two ensembles and one very busy pianist, Shane Thio. The songs were performed chronologically, with the ensemble pieces occupying the final concert.

Young musicians of the Raffles Institution new music ensemble (above) confidently opened with Rapsodie Negre (Negro Rhapsody), Poulenc’s first work written as an impressionable and rebellious 18-year-old. The influences of New World jazz and African rhythms, all the rage in 1917, were unmistakeable.  A slight departure took the form of the song Honoloulou, with tenor Adrian Poon singing nonsense lyrics by the rhyming but fictitious Makoko Kangourou.

Poulenc’s last song La dame de Monte-Carlo (1961), about a washed out and suicidal gambler casting her last die, reflected his own brittle and depressive psyche. Despite the broad sentimental melodies that typified Poulenc, a sense of desperation and resignation was well captured by Poon, with the words Monte-Carlo uttered like a curse rather than its usual trappings of glamour.

A more mature ensemble from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts conducted by Zechariah Goh Toh Chai accompanied baritone William Lim in Le Bal Masque (The Masked Ball), a 1932 secular cantata after words by Max Jacob. Here all the qualities that are quintessential Poulenc – acid wit, anarchic humour, mock sentimentality and a predilection for the comic and grotesque – came to bear with a shuddering vividness.

The concert and festival closed with Poulenc’s popular setting of the children’s classic The Story of Babar by Jean de Brunhoff, narrated by Poon and Ruth Rodrigues. It was enchanting to be reunited with the ridiculously naïve story (a young elephant who loves the city, wearing fine clothes and driving cars), and its brilliantly characterised piano part in 22 movements evocatively performed by Thio (below).

One hundred and fifty-eight songs later, one was amazed at this labour of love mounted by the Sing Song Club, which had the misfortune of being under-publicised and under-subscribed. However its faithful audience got to enjoy what made Poulenc tick – his iconoclasm, insouciance, gift of melody and ultimately, his humanity.