ARNOLD SCHOENBERG'S PIERROT LUNAIRE / THE VIOLIN SONATA REBORN / The Sing Song Club / Paul Huang & Helen Huang / Review

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG’S

PIERROT LUNAIRE

The Sing Song Club

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday (20 June 2023)

 

THE VIOLIN SONATA REBORN

Paul Huang (Violin)

Helen Huang (Piano)

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (23 June 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 June 2023 with the title "Enthralling diversity of chamber music".

 

The scope of chamber music has never been wider, and it was fascinating to witness two chamber concerts that featured vastly diverse repertoire in a matter of days. The 20^th century, with its myriad influences and inspirations, made all this possible.

 

The 11^th edition of the Singapore Lieder Festival, an annual fixture of The Sing Song Club, featured just one work, Arnold Schoenberg’s melodrama / song-cycle Pierrot Lunaire. Composed in 1912-13, it had the same impact as Stravinsky’s contemporaneous ballet The Rite Of Spring, by initially raising an almighty stink. Today, its 21 short songs in German (translated from Albert Giraud’s French texts) are considered seminal in the history of modernism.

 

Freely atonal in idiom, the vocalist practises sprechgesang (German for speech-song), a technique which hovers and glides between pitches, with notes often sounding indeterminate. This performance was unusual by having tenor Adrian Poon instead of a soprano doing the honours. Cladded in a white kaftan, his dramatic but non-histrionic interpretation stole the show, the clarity of diction aided by helpful English transliterations projected on a screen behind.

 

No one could be accused of missing the commedia dell’arte plot of “Moonstruck Peter” with themes of life, love, death, disillusionment and finally homecoming. The essence of chamber music was also highlighted by individual virtuosity from instrumentalists Christoven Tan (violin/viola), Chee Jun Sian (cello), Alvin Chan (flute), Sean Lim (clarinets) and Shane Thio (piano), led by conductor Zechariah Goh Toh Chai. The 40-minute act was surprisingly well-attended and enthusiastically received.

 

Diametrically different and more traditional was the violin sonata programme by violinist Paul Huang and pianist Helen Huang, both American-Chinese of Taiwanese descent who are not related to each other. Kudos to them for omitting the usual suspects of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, instead offering unexpected Romantic era choices that had links with the past.

 

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

Coming from opposite ends of the Romantic period were Mendelssohn’s Sonata in F major (1838) and Respighi’s Sonata in B minor (1917), the contrasts of which were stark. The former sounded like an extension of Mozart’s idiom, formal in approach with a flowing lyricism, while the latter came close to brushing the impressionist palette.

 

Both works showcased Paul’s beautifully burnished violin tone, blest with clear and immaculate articulation. This was also a partnership of equals, where Helen’s pianism was complementary in every step, perfectly projected rather than just providing mere accompaniment. The finale of the Respighi, in the form of a passacaglia, a tightly-wound set of short variations, was a prime case of achieving an ideal union.

 

For the second half, Paul opened with Ysaye’s unaccompanied Third Sonata or "Ballade" from Op.27 (1923), a work in a single movement. Its thorny and highly chromatic opening page posed no obstacles to his finely-honed technique, later letting rip on its fast and virtuosic conclusion.     

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

 

Saint-Saens’s Sonata No.1 in D minor (1885) is underrated as a showpiece, but the duo showed what mileage could be gotten from its superficially charming yet hazard-laden pages. What could have sounded tiresome in lesser hands instead came alive with an outlandish display of string and keyboard calisthenics, before closing in a most thrilling tarantella thought possible. One goes back to 1994 for Itzhak Perlman’s performance of this same work at this same venue for similar superlatives.

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

 

Cheered on by a smallish but vociferous audience, the Huangs’ delightful encores of Londonderry Air (arranged by Fritz Kreisler) and Arthur Benjamin’s Jamaican Rumba (arranged by William Primrose) made for a perfect send-off. This dynamic duo had deserved nothing less than a full-house.

Paul Huang & Helen Huang were presented by Altenburg Arts.

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.