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.

     

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, March 2012)

PASSION / I-Sis Trio / ****1/2

The I-Sis Trio, formed by harpist Katryna Tan, violinist Cindy Yan and cellist Natasha Liu, is Singapore’s premier harp ensemble. Its début recording Passion, like the performers themselves, is a glamourous affair. Strong on entertaining rather than purveying seriousness, there is a decidedly Latino slant to the programme. There are three tangos, Astor Piazzolla’s Primavera Porteña (Spring in Buenos Aires) and Oblivion, and Carlos Gardel’s Por Una Cabeza, as varied in character and mood as the art form itself. The Cuban Ernesto Lecuona’s Malagueña and Italian film composer Ennio Morricone’s Cinema Paradiso add to the alternately heady and sultry atmosphere.

While most pieces are in arrangements by the trio, there are several original works from local composers which find a committed advocacy. Phang Kok Jun’s Reminisce is classy Chinese mood music, with the harp simulating the guzheng, contrasted with the bluesy sentimentality of In Case A Goodbye and more impressionist shades of Chloeitchka, both by Fung Chern Hwei. Unfortunately, biographies of these young composers have not been included,. Looking beyond the obvious glitz, there is seriously good music-making to be found here.

LISZT Transcendental Studies

MARIANGELA VACATELLO, Piano

Brilliant Classics 94250 / ****1/2

The cover of the album says it all, an Amazonian woman hauling a grand piano with a rope. That is the young Italian pianist Mariangela Vacatello, finalist at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and only the third woman to have recorded Liszt’s twelve finger-busting Transcendental Études in recent times. Trying not to sound sexist-misogynist, this is a man’s work, but Vacatello clearly has the chops. From the minute-long Preludio, which sweeps the entire length of the keyboard for starters, to the Paganini-inspired Molto Vivace second study, there is some amazing pianism taking place.

Prestidigitation and power may be the pre-requisites but there are also tender moments which benefit from a woman’s touch, such as in the gentle Paysage and nostalgic Ricordanza. Leaving out the issue of gender, one still needs feathery lightness and rapier reflexes for a silky smooth Feux Follets, that most nimble of showpieces. Or oodles of passion for an assault on the tenth study with the marking Allegro Agitato Molto, and a sustained crescendo to bring Harmonies Du Soir to glorious fruition. Vacatello has all these and more, which makes this budget-price release an unmitigated success.

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.

CONSTELLATIONS IN HARMONY / KATRYNA TAN Harp Recital / Review

CONSTELLATIONS IN HARMONY
Katryna Tan, Harp
Esplanade Recital Studio
Thursday (11 November 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 November 2010.

The age-old notion of star-crossed lovers and legends immortalised in star constellations was the subject of Young Artist Award recipient Katryna Tan’s latest harp recital. The two major works were as varied as separate galaxies themselves.

Canadian R.Murray Schafer’s The Crown of Ariadne (left) was previously performed by Tan in this same venue. Described by the composer as a “theatre of confluence”, there was some awkwardness on the performer’s part in managing no less than 8 different percussion instruments, including putting on and taking off ankle bells, besides playing the harp.

Tan was ever the cool customer, delivering the “one woman band” spiel about Theseus battling the Minotaur with much assurance and aplomb. Pity she had to saddle herself with delivering the pre-performance narrative as well, marked by distinctly Malaysian-accented English and mispronouncing the man-eating beast as a “minah-tuah”.

She was joined by flutist Roberto Alvarez, violinist Cindy Yan and cellist Natasha Liu (the latter two being her partners in the glamourous I-Sis Trio, below)) for the World Premiere of Indonesian composer Ananda Sukarlan’s Vega & Altair (Left). Based on the Chinese myth of the seamstress and the cowherd, its seven movements traversed through different styles without actually settling on a definitive one.

Alvarez opened with an Indonesian theme, typical of those melodies heard on a suling (Balinese flute) played over gamelan chimes. The counterpoint with the violin was well crafted and the music later moved to a more modern and dramatic style, with the dissonances recalling Bartok and Prokofiev. The love music featuring all four was to be altogether more sentimental and cloying, the sort often accompanying children’s bedtime stories on television. This melange was generally easy on the ear but fitfully memorable.

More to the point was Singaporean Ho Chee Kong’s Evening Lights (left), a musical memoir of the Esplanade of yore, when sampans and satay-sellers plied the environs of Elizabeth Walk. Its strolling pace and calming strains distinguished this subtly Asian flavoured serenade.

Closing the recital was American Carlos Salzedo’s virtuosic Variations on a Theme in Ancient Style, providing Tan with the opportunity to display a full gamut of tricks and an encyclopaedic mastery on 46 strings. Repertoire for the modern harp is growing, and Katryna Tan is its most fervent proselytiser in this land.

Alliance Française de Singapour 60th Anniversary Concert / Review

Alliance Française de Singapour
60th Anniversary Concert
AF Theatre
Friday (17 April 2009)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 April 2009.

The 60th Anniversary Concert of Singapore’s Alliance Francaise turned out to be a light-hearted and enjoyable affair, a departure from the anticipated avant-garde from the land that gave the world Boulez, Barraque and Varese. French music did not feature exclusively, but the segments skillfully programmed by Belgian-Singaporean composer Robert Casteels reflected the cultural activities of the Francophile association.

The three lovely ladies of I-Sis Trio opened with the finale of Jacques Ibert’s Trio, its jazzy and frothy bustle contrasting with the reposeful Reverie by Debussy. Natasha Liu’s soulful cello sang in Fauré’s Apres un Reve, gently accompanied by Katryna Tan’s harp. Joined by violinist Cindy Yan, the threesome also celebrated movies and dance in Ennio Morricone’s Cinema Paradiso and Ernesto Lecuona’s Malagueña, again displaying diversity in rhythms and inspirations.

Trio became quartet with pianist Albert Lin’s participation in the World Premiere of Casteel’s Trois-vingts (composer pictured left), the title being an old-fashioned French way of expressing the number “sixty”. Its joie de espirit, encapsulated by a fanfare-like motif that sounded 60 times through its five minutes, smartly mirrored the Ibert and made a perfect bookend for the first half.

Pianist Lin (left) had the most notes to play, first in two food-inspired pieces from Rossini’s Sins of Old Age. Whoever thought that Dry Figs could sound this scintillating or that mere Almonds could conjure up such an insouciant waltz? The Italian opera-composer once boasted that he could set a laundry list to music, and nearly proved it here.

The concert’s tour de force was Lin’s mighty traversal of Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition. Although not note-perfect, the way each piece was thoughtfully inflected and evocatively characterised revealed a keen mind and mature artist at work. The troubadour’s song in The Old Castle was beautifully coloured, while the pathetic quality of Schmuyle (the second of the two Russian Jews) was brilliantly captured.

That alone would have successfully closed the evening’s fare, but the added bonus was six Singapore songs – old and new, traditional and original – sung in English, Malay and Mandarin by a cappella group Vocaluptuous (left). Over-amplified and over-reverberant, many of the words were lost, but the six-member group crooned and entertained with great pizzazz. Only the cloth-eared and stone-hearted could have resisted this evening’s varied offerings.