IN THE MOOD FOR FILM / Photographs from Phan Ming Yen's Piano Recital

IN THE MOOD FOR FILM

Phan Ming Yen, Piano et al

10 Square @ Orchard Central

Friday (8 April 2022)

 

 

This is not meant to be a review but rather a celebration of the multi-faceted personality that is Phan Ming Yen, the Malaysia-born artistic polymath (Director of Global Cultural Alliance and Chief Operations Officer of The Rice Company Limited), who celebrates his 55^th birthday this week. To commemorate this landmark, he gave a solo piano recital of movie music as a fund-raiser funds for The Business Times Budding Artists Fund. This fund provides opportunities to disadvantaged young people who aspire to make a career in the arts.

 

I have known Ming Yen since the early 1990s, when he was the much-feared music critic of The Straits Times, and scourge of artists who were not total geniuses. It was rumoured that he wrote just three complimentary reviews during his stint there. Those included solo recitals by Shura Cherkassky, Ivo Pogorelich, and I cannot remember what the third one was. He also wrote my first interview for ST (about my Singapore-centred verses to accompany Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals). Later we collaborated to organise the first SSO Music Marathon and co-hosted the Symphony 92.4 FM talk show Bluff Your Way Through Classical Music, which ran for twelve stellar episodes.

I am also much indebted to Ming Yen over the years. He played the piano at our wedding service in 1999, besides supplementing my CD collection in ever creative ways ("I bet you won't have this recording!"), also extending to me multiple invitations to giving talks on musical subjects, performing at cross-straits events and judging at local piano competitions. He is also my original piano duet partner, our specialties being Brahms Hungarian Dances, Rossini's William Tell Overture and the Radetzky March.

Ming Yen's first piece was
Abba's The Winner Takes It All
from the movie Mamma Mia.

 

At the start of his two-hour long recital, the audience was forewarned that he could talk for unlimited lengths of time. He, however, makes an excellent stand-up comedian, and unlike Victor Borge, he actually played more than he talked. The following photographs are a chronological sequence of the pieces performed, an eclectic mix of classical music, original film music and pop music heard in the movies. Each example was peppered with interesting factoids (such as Prague Spring 1968) and curious anecdotes from personal experience. It all made for a celebration of humanity itself, an escape from unrelenting perfectionists like Ray Chen, and not to mention an entertaining evening out.  

Next came two selections from the movie
starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, 
Somewhere in Time by John Barry and...

The 18th Variation from
Rachmaninov's Paganini Rhapsody.

Ming Yen reads from Milan Kundera's 
The Unbearable Likeness of Being followed by
Janacek's Madonna of Frydek (On An Overgrown Path)
and two pieces by Ennio Morricone.

Vocalist Estelle Ng chipped in with two songs:
Bernstein's Somewhere (West Side Story) and
Rodgers and Hammerstein's Shall We Dance?
(The King and I).

Recounting a trip to Hong Kong to watch an
uncensored screening of Lust.Caution,
he performed Brahms's Intermezzo (Op.118 No.2)

A story from Tokyo, an excerpt from an
Okinawan movie whom nobody in his group
has gotten grips with its story or meaning.
This was followed by Ryuichi Sakamoto's
Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence.

Only For Love from Tan Dun's Sonata,
crafted from his music for The Banquet.

Ming Yen was joined by YST Assistant Tutor
Lin Xiang Ning in a medley of Abba tunes
which closed with the ending of
Grieg's Piano Concerto.

An encore from Joe Hisaishi.

Time to cut that birthday cake!

To my friend and co-conspirator in musical endeavours, have a happy 55th birthday!

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS / Metropolitan Festival Orchestra / Review

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: A MUSICAL AFFAIR

Metropolitan Festival Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (3 September 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 September 2017 with the title "Brief but fruitful musical encounter".

The title of this concert was probably derived from the David Lean-directed black-and-white movie Brief Encounter of 1945 where Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto featured prominently in its soundtrack. It however accurately describes the musical collaboration between musicians from Singapore and Austria in this concert, organised by local non-profit organisation Global Cultural Alliance.

Its first half featured the popular Rachmaninov concerto with young Singaporean pianist Li Churen in the demanding solo role. From the intent and demeanour of its opening chords on the Bösendorfer Imperial Grand, one could tell the confident and self-assured Li was going to put her personal stamp on the old warhorse. And it was not to be a self-indulgent spiel, but a totally musical affair where the music came first.

She comfortably surmounted its striding arpeggios, heavy octaves and tricky fingerwork, ably abetted by the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra conducted by Chan Tze Law. It was towards the slow movement's close, with just strings accompanied her passionate chords, which provided the concerto's most heartrending moments. Even when she took liberties in stretching out the final cadenza, it was the blazing conclusion that elicited the longest applause.

The second half was almost double the length of the first, and it featured the 60-strong Chorus Sine Nomine from Austria with the same orchestra conducted by Johannes Hiematsberger. The main work on show was Schubert's Mass No.6 in E flat major (D. 950), composed in the final year of his all-too-brief life.  

The choir's size and experience of its singers (it is not a youth choir) ensured that the widest possible range of dynamics was encompassed all through its heavenly length – some 50 minutes, typical of late Schubert. From the quiet opening Kyrie Eleison expanding to the ecstatic declamations of the Gloria and Sanctus, rising to lofty heights of Brucknerian grandeur, there was little that the mass of voices missed.

Both the ladies and gentlemen's sections were well-matched and homogeneously merged as one. In the Credo, the three solo voices of tenors Jakob Tobias Pejcic and Florian Ehrlinger and soprano Marie-Antoinette Stabentheiner emerged. The effable lilt in Et Incarnatus Est, with its gentle triplet rhythm, was simply delightful.

A solo quartet completed by alto Daniela Janezic and bass-baritone Daniel Gutmann distinguished in the Benedictus, albeit all too briefly, but it was the statuesque Stabentheiner's soaring voice that stood out. All the fugal sections were splendidly handled by the chorus, no doubt the effort of Hiematsberger's meticulous and expert honing.

Before the mass which headily closed the concert, there was more easy listening in choral favourites. Brahms' Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen (How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place) from A German Requiem, Gabriel Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine (sung in French) and Hubert Parry's Blest Pair Of Sirens (in English) merely served as the warming-up prelude for the Schubert.  However brief this encounter was, may more such fruitful collaborations of equals continue.

All photos by courtesy of Global Cultural Alliance.