FAR, FAR, AWAY / REVERIE / Reviews

FAR, FAR, AWAY

Jeremy Chiew, Viola

Adrian Poon, Tenor

& Shane Thio, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday 26 September 2021

 

REVERIE: NICHOLAS HO IN CONCERT

Nicholas Ho, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday 28 September 2021

 

Concert life has begun to take shape again in Singapore, with multiple concerts in different venues springing up quite unexpectedly and often unannounced. Most are solo recitals or chamber concerts, which avoid over-crowding on stage, attended by size-restricted and socially distanced audiences.

 

Despite rising numbers of Covid cases and fatalities in Singapore, concert venues are still relatively safe havens, having recorded zero outbreaks from concerts all year round. Going to markets, food centres and shopping malls are far riskier propositions. Over the past week, I was treated to two excellent recitals, the variety of repertoire is staggering, representing the wealth of musical talent which exists within our modest island state.

 

First up was an hour-long vocal-cum-viola recital curated by the combined brains of Sing Song Club and Viva Viola. Both are among Singapore’s best kept secrets, thus the maximum capacity of 50 audience members was not close to being breached. This was also a concert of rarities, such that even Brahms’ two Op.91 songs with viola were not included. Instead, it opened with Benjamin Britten’s realisation of Bach’s Kommt, Seelen, dieser Tag (Come, Celebrate This Morn) with tenor Adrian Poon in his genteel best accompanied by pianist Shane Thio.

Photo: Yong Junyi

 

This freshness continued into Frank Bridge’s Far, Far From Each Other, with viola obbligato part provided by Jeremy Chiew, arguably Singapore’s most active proselytiser of viola repertoire. This was both hauntingly sad and beautiful, perfectly complementing Bridge’s Two Pieces for viola and piano, contrasts provided by the reflective Pensiero and self-explanatory Allegro Appassionato which closed the set on a rapturous high.

 

The programming with pairs of works for voice and viola was excellently thought out. Whoever dreamt of coupling Arthur Honegger’s rather substantial three-movement Viola Sonata and short Psalm No.138 deserves a prize. The Sonata traversed from a highly chromatic and dissonant opening to something far more agreeable before finishing with a Franckian flourish. Simply a journey from utter bleakness to life-affirming sunshine, with the brief sung psalm (I will praise you Lord, with all my heart) in French as the sweet icing on the cake.

Photo: Yong Junyi

 

Has anybody has heard of Benjamin Dale (1885-1943)? The English composer was a contemporary of York Bowen and composed in a similar tuneful neo-Romantic style. Come Away, Death is a soothing salve in the best English pastoral tradition, with the obbligato viola part adding to its poignancy. The Romance from Dale’s Viola Suite in D minor Op.2 (1906) is far more ambitious than its title suggests, sounding more like a rhapsodic tone poem. The tenderness of its first pages gave way to a more lively central episode before ending with the same deeply felt emotions as it began.   

 

To close the evening in a pleasingly symmetrical manner, Jeremy polished off the Courante from J.S.Bach’s Cello Suite No.4. Striking three lotteries with a single ticket, lovers of unjustly neglected rarities, fine singing and viola playing have been well-served.

 

The young pianist Nicholas Ho has progressed from a self-conscious teenaged hotshot to a bona fide virtuoso with uncommon talents, as evident in his latest recital. Its title Reverie only applied to the first piece, Chopin’s Nocturne in C minor (Op.48 No.1), which was dark and smouldering, exploring the mysterious and tempestuous nature of night.

 

He amply brought out its brooding qualities, before launching headlong into Schumann’s Fantasie in C major (Op.17), with its full flush of hot-blooded romanticism worn heart-on-sleeve. He is unafraid to relive the early Romantic excesses to greatest advantage, yet also wallow in moments of tenderness and vulnerability, as in the quote of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte near the end of the first movement. The second movement’s imperious march took no prisoners, and even if there were a couple of slips at its treacherous final two pages, these came at the extreme heat of the moment. One would not have it any other way. A pianist’s maturity is revealed in the slow Beethovenian final movement, and he did so by teasing out inner voices, plumbing the depths and building up to impressive climaxes. A more satisfying performance would be hard to find.

 

For the recital’s second half, one can only quote Monty Python, “And for something completely different”. Dutch minimalist Jacob ter Veldhuis’ Body of Your Dreams has cult status for its hilarious spoof on 20^th century American vanity and consumerism. Ho essentially accompanies a looped soundtrack (played on boombox) of the Abdominiser infomercial, with quotes like “that cellulite and flabbiness... how can you beat it?”, “oh wow, that’s incredible!”, “3000 muscle contractions” and “and its so easy!” peppering the score like obsessive earworms. Once heard, it cannot be unheard. This performance centred on the piano part in the expense of the soundtrack, a pity since the actual punchlines were in its words.

 

To close the recital was the World Premiere of the first six of Nicholas Ho’s Twelve Etudes Op.11, composed during the troubled months of the Covid pandemic. Each of these finger-twisters were dedicated to his mentors and teachers, including Tedd Joselson, Tan Chan Boon, Edward Auer and others. To say that a transcendental technique is required to perform these is itself an understatement. The first, written for Joselson, reminds one of the Chopin first etude (Op.10 No.1) with its firm tonal centres established by left hand pedal points. The second, for Tan, was written for left hand alone, but exceeds the difficulty of both Scriabin and Corigliano’s south paw wonders.

 

Nicholas’ playing is mercurial yet emphatic, exhibiting a light touch in running-flying passages, and applying necessary force in chordal segments when called far. The colours on his palette seem almost infinite. Having enjoyed these six etudes with score in hand, I can proudly proclaim that Singapore has found a set of piano etudes worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Debussy, Ligeti and Marc-André Hamelin. Handphones off, a genius!

 

POTPOURRI: VIOLA IN DIFFERENT LIGHTS / Jeremy Chiew et al / Review

POTPOURRI: VIOLA 
IN DIFFERENT LIGHTS

Jeremy Chiew (Viola) et al

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (23 March 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 March 2019 with the title "Viola takes centre stage with agility".

If there is one person in Singapore who has championed the cause of the viola more than any other, that would be Jeremy Chiew. His sheer single-mindedness has resulted in an unprecedented series of concerts edging the seemingly unglamourous instrument, often the butt of musicians’ jokes, firmly into the limelight.

His latest viola showcase, lasting an hour without intermission, was filled with rarities. Under dim lighting, he opened with an Etude by Italian composer Bartolomeo Campagnoli, cast in the form of theme and variations. Exhibiting a wide and sonorous tone with much agility to match, he later explained that this was his encore for the concert.

A soft-spoken person with an understated and droll sense of humour, it was not altogether clear whether he was playing a joke on the audience or not. Nonetheless the hall lighting came on for two sets of songs with obliggato viola parts. First was English composer Benjamin Dale’s lovely setting of Come Away, Death from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Pondering on the melancolic course of true love was tenor Adrian Poon, of Sing Song Club fame, who emoted longingly above Muse Ye’s piano accompaniment. Poon and Chiew alternated their parts and never the twain did their plaints meet.

More integrated were voice and viola in Adolf Busch’s Three Songs Op.3a, about more love, sadness and solitude, sung in German. Viola filled in the parts where the voice fell silent besides providing counterpoint and counter-melodies in these retiring and probing numbers.

The Busch songs were sandwiched by two solo Fantasias by Georg Philipp Telemann, originally for violin, performed on baroque viola by Taiwanese violist Amy Hsu. She gave a short spiel on her period instrument, which was smaller than its modern counterpoint, had neither chin nor shoulder rests, and utilised gut instead of metallic strings. The latter, she explained, was the reason why such instruments were so difficult to tune.

The two contrasted Fantasias, in B flat minor and G major, provided ample display on the techniques used for these early pieces. The sound was mellower and more intimate, but equally expressive in slow dirge-like slow movements and faster dance pieces. And she was right, maintaining pitch and intonation was a challenge.

The longest work on the programme fell to Chiew, who returned in Johann Hummel’s Potpourri Op.94, which was a showy fantasia on popular operatic tunes by Mozart and Rossini. Predating similar potboilers by violin phenomenon Nicolo Paganini, Hummel’s was no less virtuosic but none of its hair-raising diablerie seemed to faze Chiew, who was commandingly secure throughout.

Having already expended his encore piece, Chiew departed the stage but lent his modern viola for Hsu’s own solo encore. That was a moving arrangement by Toshio Hosokawa of Handel’s popular aria Lascia Ch’io Pianga from Rinaldo, proving that whatever the human voice can do, the viola could do even better.   

VIVA VIOLA / Kris Foundation Concert / Review

VIVA VIOLA

Jeremy Chiew, Christoven Tan (Violas) et al

Kris Foundation Concert

Esplanade Recital Studio

Friday (11 August 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 August 2017 with the title "Viola's dark and dusky sonority".

Why have violas and violists always been given short shrift? Singaporean violist Jeremy Chiew, who organised this viola fest for the Kris Foundation, provided valid reasons in a short preamble. For example, the viola's size and volume militated against possessing the violin's sweetness or the cello's mellowness and projection.

He could, however, comfort himself with the viola's dark and dusky sonority, especially in the context of playing with other string instruments. The opening work was a delightful duo featuring Christoven Tan's viola and Leslie Tan's cello in the 1^st movement of Beethoven's “Eyeglass” Duet.

Composed for a cellist friend who needed corrective lenses for his short-sightedness, this was a match of equals with the viola (which Beethoven played) given the leading voice. That both performers were bespectacled was no surprise in myopia-prevalent Singapore, and there was no surprise either in tautness of ensemble, with each instrument alternating between providing melody and accompaniment.

The combo of viola and violin also worked well in the well-known Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia, with Jeremy Chiew and Chikako Sasaki respectively. Whatever agility the violin mustered was equally matched by the viola (which replaced the customary cello) in its masterful set of very short variations.

When two violas come together, as in Frank Bridge's elegiac Lament, the depth of sound was doubled. Seldom has a work sounded this soulful or long-breathed, with two similar voices mirroring and echoing each other, which Chiew and Tan brought to sonorous perfection.

Perhaps the most demanding solo fell to 16-year-old Calvin Dai who played two movements from Brahms' autumnal Viola Sonata No.2 (Op.120 No.2) with Benjamin Lim on piano. A member of the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, he brought out a very decent burnished sound and was able to skilfully vary the dynamics for the expressive Allegro appassionato.

The evening's gem was undoubtedly the performance of Mendelssohn's late String Quintet No.2 in B flat major (Op.87), published only after his death. Modelled on Mozart's string quintets which use two violas, Chiew and Tan were joined by Sasaki and Andrew Ng (violins), and Leslie Tan (cello).    

The full impact of strings was immediately felt in the opening Allegro vivace, bursting with energy and vitality. The listener is reminded of the earlier and much more familiar String Octet, but this was just as absorbing, with all five players working in close tandem. Here, the violas played a vital supporting role for Sasaki's first violin and Tan's cello which had most of the big tunes.

For without violas, such a work would sound bereft of heft, and far less rich as a result. Theirs was not to hog the limelight but to enhance interest, as demonstrated in the feathery light Andante scherzando and the impassioned Adagio e lento slow movement. The finale was on the short-winded side, but that did little to diminish the overall stature of a memorable and utterly compelling reading.    

VIVA VIOLA! / JEREMY CHIEW et al / Review

VIVA VIOLA!

Jeremy Chiew & Daniel Ong, Violas

with Lim Yan, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Friday (6 May 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 May 2016 with the title "Vivid sounds from viola duo".

The cause of the viola has found a new champion in Jeremy Chiew, who has done more than anyone today to promote the instrument in his chamber recitals. Let it never be said that the viola is only performed by “failed violinists”, because it is fiendishly difficult to perform well, hence the relative paucity of repertoire and its apparent lack of glamour on the concert stage.

The 70-minute long recital, presented by the Kris Foundation, opened with eight Duos by Bela Bartok, original for two violins but arranged for violas by his son Peter. Chiew was joined by junior Daniel Ong, principal violist of the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, who more than showed that he has been well mentored. Both have been students of the viola pedagogue Yeo Jan Wea.

These short pieces were written with pedagogy in mind, and get progressively more complex and technically challenging as they go. Most were based on folk songs and dances, and the duo was very well matched, taking turns on playing melody and providing accompaniment and counterpoint. Their chemistry in these engaging pieces was palpable, climaxing in the trickily syncopated Hungarian Dance (2) and Pillow Dance that closed the suite.

Next was Henri Vieuxtemps substantial Viola Sonata in B flat major Op.36, which saw Ong play the 1^st movement and Chiew helming the 2^nd and 3^rd movements. Ong was a portrait of confidence in its slow but majestic opening, with a piano accompaniment that resembled that of Schubert's Ave Maria perfomed by Lim Yan.

Introspection soon grew into turbulence and agitation in its development, which also saw a commensurate expansion of the viola's vocal range. Chiew's part included a gentle Barcarolla (a gondolier's song) which also had a passionate side to it, before a playful dance-like finale upped the tempi and finished with a blaze of aplomb.

The final work was all of Chiew's to handle, Paul Hindemith's early Viola Sonata in F major (Op.11 No.4), which unlike his later and more astringent works was unusually lyrical. A Brahms-like autumnal feel inhabited its opening Fantasie, which was just the invitation to display a warm and ingratiating tone. The subsequent movements took the form of variations, providing more opportunities for an almost improvisational approach to its themes.

An obligatory fugato in the finale marked “mit bizarrer Plumpheit” or “with bizarre crudeness” was as droll and mock-serious as one could possibly get, and both Chiew and Lim played with straight faces and tongues firmly held in cheek. A splashy virtuosic close to the sonata was greeted with warm applause.

Chiew's encore was appropriated from the violinist's repertoire, Fritz Kreisler's short but demanding Praeludium & Allegro in the Style of Pugnani. With excellent intonation and articulation, Chiew made it sound as if it was originally meant for the viola. Violinists can have good reasons to be green with envy.

  

BASICALLY VIOLA! / Jeremy Chiew & Friends / Review

BASICALLY VIOLA!

Jeremy Chiew (Viola) and Friends

Esplanade Recital Studio

Monday (30 March 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 April 2015 with the title "Savouring the low-key viola".

The viola and its practitioners have been subject to music's most cruel jokes since time immemorial, mostly having to do with the instrument's low key profile next to the glamourous violin and the prowess (or otherwise) of its players. But make no mistake, some of the world's greatest musicians including Mozart, William Primrose and Yuri Bashmet were violists themselves.

This chamber concert presented by Chamber.Sounds and showcasing young Singaporean violist Jeremy Chiew, underlined the integral and indispensible role of the viola in chamber music. Importantly, it represents the middle voice in chamber combinations such as the string trio and string quartet. Bookending this evening's 90-minute offering were performances of piano quartets, a genre less often heard than the piano trio or piano quintet.

Gustav Mahler's early and incomplete single-movement Piano Quartet in A minor would scarcely be recognisable as typical Mahler. Watered down Brahms or a follower of Brahms would be closer to the mark, but the ensemble of Chiew with violinist Lee Shi Mei, cellist Lin Juan and pianist Lim Yan brought out an edgy account of late Romanticism that was well-balanced in terms of instrumental timbres.

The central bloc of programming was reserved for Chiew to demonstrate a variety of possiblities on his instrument, beginning with four movements from J.S.Bach's Suite No.1 in G major (BWV.1007), originally written for cello. He crafted a steady and robust tone, illustrating how clear melodic lines with a single voice may be achieved in these short dance pieces.

The art of pizzicato came to the fore in Garth Knox's Nine Fingers from Viola Spaces, when he dispensed with the bow and plucked his way through this rhythmically exacting exercise. There were different ways of plucking too, each producing a varying effect in the spectrum of twangs depending on the direction and how much pressure or vigour was applied by the fingers.

Pianist Lim Yan was able partner in Chiew Keng Hoon's highly chromatic and almost atonal Fantasy (1985). Chiew, who is the violist's father, would have been proud of both musicians' high level of concentration and articulation in its astringent pages that were reminiscent of those by Paul Hindemith, the great 20^th century German composer and violist who wrote some of the best works for the instrument. 

Henri Vieuxtemps' Elegie Op.30 also found a passionate response, its yearning long-breathed melody becoming increasingly dramatic and agitated as the work progressed. The grand finale was devoted to Schumann's Piano Quartet in E flat major (Op.47), with the same complement of musicians that opened the concert.

Its serious Beethovenian beginning and declamatory four note motif were stated trenchantly, signalling the common intention of the performers to keep the pace taut and tightly reined. The first two movements flew with a bristling urgency,  contrasted with a most languorous of songs in the slow third movement, where each stringed instrument took turns to luxuriate in Schumann's lyrical largesse.

There was a curious moment when Chiew's viola crooned unabated over Lee's violin filigree while Lin tuned his cello in order to play the low B flat note. The final outcome with a depth of sonority at the end was a moment to savour before the quartet lunched into the finale's busy runs of counterpoint. Loud applause greeted its end, and if there were a neat story to take home, that would be the viola not to be regarded the Cinderella of instruments, but a first among equals.    

CHAMBER PLAYERS / The Chamber Players / Review

CHAMBER PLAYERS

The Chamber Players

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra

Sunday (15 March 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 March 2015 with the title "From the familiar to the obscure".

The Chamber Players is the only surviving non-professional classical music ensemble that existed during the early 1980s. In those days, classical music here was just the newly-formed professional Singapore Symphony Orchestra and a small handful of amateur groups. After a hiatus of almost twenty years, The Chamber Players returned under the leadership of engineer, French horn player cum Straits Times music critic Mervin Beng, becoming the mainstay of the Singapore Chamber Music Festival.

The Festival is now run by the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, and The Chamber Players makes regular appearances with interesting programmes that juxtapose the familiar with the rarely heard, like the one this evening. Very familiar was Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, designated as a Serenade in G major, but resembles a 4-movement symphony in miniature.

The ensemble brought out a rich string sound, unafraid to apply vibrato whenever possible. Performing without a conductor, the players took their lead from experienced concertmaster Seah Huan Yuh, one of few professional musicians assisting the group. The slow movement radiated warmth, and even the tricky fast central section held little terrors. The 3rd movement's Minuetto flowed unabated, but the quicksilver finale was taken a tad too cautiously to be truly thrilling.

Rather unfamiliar was the Viola Concerto in D major by Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754-1812), a German-born Viennese better known as a music publisher and close friend of Beethoven's. This innocuous and attractive little work gave much by way of display to young violist Jeremy Chiew, who lapped up every virtuoso turn with relish, including a couple of showy cadenzas.

His tone was healthy and robust, putting paid to those violist jokes about violin envy. The ensemble included two oboes and two horns which contributed to overall body of sound in this Mozart-like work, which closed with a jocular Rondo that stretched and extended the players' abilities to the max.

Very obscure was Bohemian composer Leos Janacek's Idyll For Strings, an early work from the 1870s before he developed his spare but immediately recognisable hallmark style. The spirit of Dvorak looms over its seven movements, with a melodic charm that is hard to dislike. Based on folktunes and rhythms, its occasional irregular meters troubled the players at times, which was when the ensemble could have benefited from a conductor's baton.

The fifth movement's Adagio saw some of the best playing, a heartfelt plaint based on the Slavic dumka, a lament that distinguishes much of Eastern European musical tradition. Despite the inherent difficulties, the general outcome was a positive and admirable one, enjoyed by the Kent Ridge faithful. It was thus a pity that the ensemble briefly acknowledged the applause, and then immediately broke rank and disassembled.

Milking the applause for the efforts of weeks of rehearsals is also part of showmanship and the concert game, something that musical amateurs can learn from the professionals.

SHUXIANG, ESTHER & FRIENDS / Yang Shuxiang and Friends / Review

SHUXIANG, ESTHER & FRIENDS

Yang Shuxiang, Violin et al

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (23 August 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 August 2014 with the title "When locks fly and bow-hairs fray".

There exists a “golden generation” of young classical musicians in Singapore born in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Violinists feature prominently, and Yang Shuxiang, graduate from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory and now studying in Boston, is arguably the most flamboyant among them. His imposing stature, matinee idol hair and passionate response to music rather makes him stand out.

Musically he is equal to the best of them, and when these factors collude, sparks fly in concert as this outing soon proved. It however began sedately with the World Premiere of young Singaporean Phoon Yu’s Elegy for violin, piano and string quartet.

In Phoon Yu's Elegy, the composer (seated left)
also served as the pianist's page-turner.

The second-generation composer (son of the esteemed Phoon Yew Tien) proved to be a chip off the old block, with his highly coherent tonal work sustaining an air of sombre anguish through its 6 minutes. The plaint of the strings was contrasted with series of piano chords and the solo violin’s attempts to establish a melodic line, ending definitively with a strum on a piano bass string by the composer himself.

The atmosphere lightened with Brahms’s Violin Sonata No.2 in A major (Op.100), where Yang’s sumptuous and full-bodied tone soon took flight. The performance was distinguished with a fiery vehemence in the outer movements, contrasted with singingly lyrical asides through its course. The balance achieved with Hong Kong-born American pianist Esther Ning Yau, whose clarity of articulation and pedalling were exemplary, was also excellent.

For film composer Franz Waxman’s Carmen Fantasy, which improves on the popular Sarasate warhorse, Yang took on a dramatic life and death stance from start to end. With locks flying and bow-hairs fraying, the level of intensity he achieved was frightening, and the frenzied ending saw him finishing a beat ahead of the piano.

The intermission was brief respite before the onslaught on the senses that was Ernest Chausson’s Concert for violin, piano and string quartet, the same forces that began the evening. Those who remember Yang’s impassioned take on the same composer’s Poeme at the President’s Young Performers Concert several years ago will take delight in tripling the dose of adrenaline here.

Cast symphonically in four movements and lasting almost three-quarters of an hour, Yang, Yau and the quartet formed by violinists Alan Choo and Gabriel Lee, violist Jeremy Chiew and cellist Cho Hang-Oh made every minute count. Interestingly, the arrangement of the musicians on stage made it appear that the work was scored for violinist and piano quintet.

The dominance of Yang as de facto leader was because he was the only player standing, thus becoming the focal point. His virtuosic flourishes and the floridly exuberant piano part were well supported by the quartet which traded every blow with equal trenchancy.

Seldom has the three note motif (D-A-E) of the bristling first movement been stated this emphatically, a portent of things to come. Even the laid-back rocking rhythm of the Sicilienne and dirge-like slow movement could not hold back the deluge of emotion that inundated the rapturous finale. This showing, greeted with a chorus of cheers,  just about eclipses the memory of past performances. But that is the essence of live music making, the secret of which is to play and live for “now”.

All photos by the kind permission of Yang Shuxiang and Friends.