TCHAIKOVSKY & ARENSKY PIANO TRIOS / Incursion Trio / Review

TCHAIKOVSKY & ARENSKY PIANO TRIOS

Incursion Trio

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday (11 July 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 July 2017 with the title "Thrills from a trio".

Some chamber groups have been established as local leaders of the chamber music genres which they perform. Already well-known are T'ang Quartet (string quartet) and Take Five (piano quintet), and more recently EDQ (wind quintet) has made its name.

Now meet Incursion Trio, comprising the husband-and-wife pair of Siew Yi Li (violin) and Beatrice Lin (piano), and its newest member Lin Juan (cello). On this concert's strength, one will expect it to become a force to reckon with, that is if the threesome gets to performs regularly enough.

The coupling of piano trios by Romantic Russian composers Piotr Tchaikovsky and Anton Arensky is not uncommon on CD recordings. In concert, however, this is a mountain to overcome for the musicians. The pianist never stops for a moment to rest. On this count, Beatrice Lin was a pillar of strength. Besides being spot-on technically, she had both power and projection, fueled by seemingly limitless reserves.

Here the piano becomes de facto leader, and it was easy for the Steinway grand to have totally dominated her string partners. Thankfully this was not the case, as both Siew and Lin Juan were just as resolute, possessed big tones and threw in their lot without reserve.

The opening to Arensky's First Piano Trio in D minor was delivered with such vividness and clarity that it was hard to mistake its nostalgia and melancholy. The skittish Scherzo proved more of a struggle; its tricky rhythms dogged the players and not all the jokes came off as slickly as planned.  

This was forgotten in the elegiac slow movement, achingly beautiful as it unabashedly bared its brooding Russian soul. The finale was a show of passion, its surge of adrenaline only stemmed by a return of the 1^st movement's haunting theme. This sense of deja vu literally stops one's thoughts in its tracks, a highly effective plot device that was to be repeated in the Tchaikovsky.

Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio in A minor, which plays for over 45 minutes, is one of the monuments of the trio repertoire. Composed in memory of piano virtuoso friend Nikolai Rubinstein, who had previously rejected his First Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky was to ironically craft a work longer and even more taxing for the pianist.

The trio more than coped with its longeurs, especially the repetitious 1^st movement which was delivered with seriousness, tinged with typically Tchaikovskyan sentimentality. Lin's opening cello plaint could not have been better rendered.

The 2^nd movement's inventive Theme & Variations, another long movement, was so imaginatively coloured that time just flew past. There were variations in a style of a music box, a waltz, an elegy within an elegy, a mazurka, and culminating in an ever-busy fugue. The breathless last variation served as a long finale, and the 1^st movement's theme returned, now as a plodding funeral march.

Surely performances of Rachmaninov's two piano trios cannot be far off from this excellent trio.

Two violinists: Siew Yi Li with his former teacher
Alexander Souptel, former Concertmaster
of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

Author's note: Interestingly, the first time I heard a live performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio was in 1992 at the Scriabin House-Museum in Moscow. The violinist on that occasion was none other than Alexander Souptel, before he joined the SSO in 1993. What goes around comes around.

POPULAR CLASSICS / Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra / Review

POPULAR CLASSICS
Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra
Singapore Conference Hall
Sunday (29 August 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 31 August 2010.

The Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra (BHSO) is Singapore’s only community-based orchestra. Since 1986, it has provided an invaluable platform for non-professional musicians, students and budding soloists to perform the great classics in public. Its latest concert was a good example of egalitarianism at work.

The guest conductor was Seah Kar Heng, better known as a mechanical engineering professor specialising in racing cars and all-round renaissance man. The soloists were members of the Incursion Trio (below), which performed Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in C major (Op.56). Although not the German master’s greatest effort by a long shot, it is the only example of the genre in the active repertoire.

Cellist Brandon Voo, the chief protagonist, cogently presented his opening statement, later joined by his partners violinist Siew Yi Li and pianist Beatrice Lin. Balance between the three young professionals, who have been playing together for about a year, was generally good, but problems arose when the orchestra joined the fray.

Cellist Brandon Voo, pianist Beatrice Lin,

conductor Seah Kar Heng & violinist Siew Yi Li (from L)

Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture opened the concert, its stern opening chords and an introduction foretelling the grave final scene contrasted with the lively main body. Although the sound was anaemic and lacked homogeneity, the story was conscientiously conveyed.

The most satisfying orchestral performance came in Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony in A major, also known as the Italian Symphony. For its outset, Seah’s charges got the throbbing rhythm spot on, and the pulsating spirit of the sunny work never flagged. The second movement was also coherently delivered, its slow march-like procession paced with discipline and character.

There were some rough spots in the flowing third movement, but the sweeping intensity for the final Saltarello, a swirling Italian dance, made the journey worthwhile. The intricate counterpoint was overcome with some degree of caution, but that was never an impediment to a final decisive flourish.

The encore, the rousing Wedding March from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was dedicated to Seah’s wife. Engineers, contrary to popular stereotype, can be romantic souls too.

Chamber Music Weekend / Review

CHAMBER MUSIC WEEKEND

Incursion Trio, Esplanade Recital Studio
Saturday (15 August 2009)

VCH Chamber Series, Victoria Concert Hall
Sunday (16 August 2009, 5.00 pm)

Yang Shuxiang & Friends, Esplanade Recital Studio
Sunday (16 August 2009, 7.30 pm)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 18 August 2009.

What a busy weekend this has been. With the Singapore Symphony Orchestra on a month-long break, local chamber groups and musicians have come out in full force.

First off was the curiously named Incursion Trio (above). Word has it that the three young Singaporeans – violinist Siew Yi Li, cellist Brandon Voo and pianist Beatrice Lin - gave their first recital together in the Swiss town of Sion, hence its name. More topical was the group’s incursion off the beaten track of repertory works to present local premieres of a teenaged Claude Debussy’s Piano Trio in G minor and Spaniard Joaquin Turina’s Second Piano Trio.

These aren’t the greatest of pieces, but there are enough pleasantries to shake off the derivative nature of the former (think Saint-Saëns and Fauré in a palm court), or the paucity of Hispanic-ness in the latter. Polish, confidence and a lovely overall sound are their qualities, capped with an ability to sustain long sighs in Schubert’s autumnal Notturno.

More established are the three ladies of the Feng Trio, members of the SSO, who presented Brahms’ First Piano Trio in B major (Op.8). Has there been a more gorgeous melody than the one that opens this masterpiece? Their sense of nobility and sumptuous handling were alone worth the price of admission.

Pianist Liu Jia (above) also joined other SSO colleagues in Hummel’s Piano Quintet in E flat minor (Op.87), unusually scored to include the double bass. Stylistically caught between Mozart and Mendelssohn, this trifle was 20-or-so innocuous minutes well spent, with a scintillating piano part to tickle the palate.

Leaving the most spectacular for the last, 20-year-old violinist Yang Shuxiang made a stunning debut with pianist Khor Shang Jin (both above) to a rapturous standing ovation. 

Looking like Adonis sporting a Paganinian mane, Yang’s sheer force of personality and a sonorous vibrato to match was simply breathtaking. There was little to quibble about his effortless take on Vitali’s Chaconne, closely followed by Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No.7 in C minor (Op.30 No.2), which penetrated with an intensity of a laser and bristled with brio.

His ability to blend were further highlighted with duos partnering violinist See Ian Ike and violist Tan Wee Hsin, in Moszkowski’s hyper-Romantic Suite for 2 violins in G minor and Lazar Trachtenberg’s devilishly dissonant Witches Soirée respectively. The diablerie continued with Ravel’s Tzigane, a gypsy rhapsody where free-ranging sense of abandon displayed by both violinist and pianist became an asset.

May wonders in our local chamber music scene never cease, and such weekends of musical manna never end.