MASTERPIECES BY PENG XIU WEN / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

MASTERPIECES BY PENG XIU WEN

Ding Yi Music Company

Singapore Conference Hall

Sunday (21 April 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 24 April 2019 with the title "A memorable tribute to Father of Chinese orchestra".

Peng Xiu Wen (1931-1996) is hailed as the “Father of the Chinese Orchestra” for his pioneering work during the 1950-60s composing original works and arranging classics for large ensembles of Chinese instruments which we know as the Chinese orchestra. This concert by Ding Yi Music Company, augmented to four times its usual size and conducted by Quek Ling Kiong, was a celebration of Peng’s legacy.

Quek was also the soloist in the opening work Harvest Drums, which he led from behind a phalynx of Chinese drums. A commanding display of the full force of orchestral might was made more impressive by a stunning cadenza of incessant drumming accompanied by just cymbals.

Guest yangqin soloist Zhang Guo Xiang led the next two works, replacing baton with wooden mallets. The first was the familiar Dance Of The Yao Tribe, sounding more raucous and vivid in instrumental colour than its Western orchestral version. Performed with gusto, the skipping and jumping moves continued in Ah Xi Dancing Under The Moon and its vigorous syncopated beat.

Peng’s concerto Unyielding Su Wu saw Singapore Chinese Orchestra member Xu Wen Jing emoting on the zhonghu. Deeper in pitch and mellower than the erhu, the music resounded with a decided melancholy reflecting years of exile which Han dynasty envoy Su Wu spent in the Siberian wilderness. The 24-minute work was rhapsodic, alternating between the poetic and the dramatic, before erupting in unbridled joy upon his return.

After the intermission, huqin exponent Jiang Ke Mei was soloist in two short pieces. The highest-pitched jinghu took centrestage in The Surging Of Clouds, delighting in its nimbleness, delicate and refined timbre. In contrast, the banhu produced a lower-voiced and more robust tone in the rustic Beautiful Traditional Chinese Girl.

The Rising Moon, with pipa flourishes from Chua Yew Kok and guzheng glissandi from Yvonne Tay, played like a cortege on a slow final journey. This elegy-like number was appropriately dedicated to the memory of 89-year-old first generation Chinese pianist and Ding Yi benefactor Elaine Wu Yi Li (inset), who passed away the night before.  

Terracotta Warriors, perhaps Peng’s best-known work closed the concert on a high. There was a cinematic quality to this 22-minute piece of programme music, sounding like a Chinese version of film score music to a cowboy Western. Its festive and ritual drumming, pomp and ceremony, allied to a rambling narrative, made this an aural spectacular that was milked for its overwrought instrumental effects.

The young orchestra responded splendidly to conductor Quek’s direction, and there was more in the tank for four encores. Peng’s versatility was displayed in arrangements of Indonesian song Bangawan Solo and Algerian song Damu Damu, while Zhu Jian’er’s Days Of Emancipation (Fanshen De Rizi, parading all three soloists) and the popular Hua Hao Yue Yuan (Full Moon Beautiful Flowers) rounded up a memorable tribute to a master of Chinese music.   

BEST OF CHINESE VIRTUOSOS / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

BEST OF CHINESE VIRTUOSOS

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (30 July 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 August 2016 with the title "Virtuosity celebrated". 

The title of Singapore Chinese Orchestra's latest programme seems to imply the prowess of its guest soloists, who are justly celebrated in China. It also applies to composers of the works performed, two of whom were present at the concert conducted by Yeh Tsung which was digitally streamed live to  a worldwide audience.

The first was Luo Mai Shuo, whose Prince Yin Zhen's Paintings Of The Fair Lady was a suite in four movements inspired by twelve paintings of Qing dynasty empress Na La Shi, a classical beauty. Each movement comprised three portraits, each illustrating courtly activities undertaken by the royal.

Luo's sumptuous orchestration relied on instrumental colour and the use of cellos and basses, essentially Western instruments. The result resembled film music, the kind which Occidental composers employ to evoke the exotic Orient. This was however no pastiche, but cleverly crafted mood music to accompany the imagery of domesticated Manchus.

Dizi soloist Dai Ya then displayed a veritable arsenal of techniques and devices in Hao Wi Ya's Flowers Blooming On The Paths In The Fields. His was not the dainty timbre of pretty gentility, but a full throated variety which encompassed nuances and colours scarcely thought possible.

A slow and meditative introduction soon gave way to an animated dance that barring solo cadenzas for rhetoric's sake got progressively faster to a breathless conclusion. His no-holds-barred virtuosity also lent the nostalgic feel of antiquity. One imagines a Chinese version of the late great Jean-Pierre Rampal in his heyday. 

The other soloist guest was huqin exponent Jiang Ke Mei who played on three instruments in rising order of pitch. On erhu, she delivered Zhao Ji Ping's Love, the 3^rd movement from Qiao's Grand Courtyard, a slow romance that built up to a festive high before receding to calmness. For Liu Yuan's arrangement of Hebei opera tune Hua Bang Zi, the shriller banhu held court with an authority that was totally commanding.

The highest pitched huqin was the diminutive jinghu, with a theatrical voice that mimicked the Beijing opera denizens in Wu Hua's arrangement of Night Thoughts, a scene from the popular Farewell My Concubine. Its big tune was carried in spectacular fashion, and all that was missing were the outlandish costumes and make-up.

Also making his appearance on the evening was Liu Chang Yuan, whose 2011 composition Hope Of The Future closed the concert. Here was an unabashed programmatic work in 6 connected sections that celebrated the centenary of the Chinese republic. The work portrayed revolution, war, sacrifice and heroism in typically percussive and poignant fashion. What Shostakovich could muster in his symphonies, Liu would outdo the Soviet on the occasion.

The sad melody first heard on low dizi in the 3^rd section Tears, accompanied by a chorus of weeping flutes, was transformed into a celebratory paean in a galloping finale. Whether that was glorifying nationalism, socialism, pluralism or capitalism, it was difficult to say.

Maestro Yeh Tsung acknowledging
the composers who had come from afar.

VIRTUOSOS OF CHINESE MUSIC / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

VIRTUOSOS OF CHINESE MUSIC

Ding Yi Music Company

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (19 April 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 21 April 2014 with the title "Humble virtuosos, great music".

The Ding Yi Music Company’s opening concert of its annual season is an inspirational and aspirational affair. As with previous seasons, the concert brings together some of China’s top instrumentalists, whether seasoned veterans or rising young names, in a showcase event that presents them as paradigms of virtuosity, hence models to emulate.

Conducted by its Music Director Tay Teow Kiat, the young chamber group accompanied and supported the visiting soloists in a variety of concertante works.

Performing first was huqin exponent Jiang Ke Mei who played on five bowed instruments of different registers. Two versions of the banhu, covering the high treble tessitura, featured in Zhou Qi Chang and Ding Yong Sheng’s Festivities of Kunming and Zhao Guo Liang’s Henan Bang-Zi Folk Song. Their operatic voice, with a nasal and almost falsetto quality, distinguished both rousing works while easily rising above the percussive beat.

An other-worldly sonority from the diminutive jinghu was the highlight in the well-known Ye Shen Chen (The Deep Night) from Farewell My Concubine. In the patriotic martial music of Zhang Chang Cheng and Yuan Ye’s Return of the Red Army, Jiang’s erhu danced and lamented, well accompanied by Yick Jue Ru’s yangqin.  

Wang Wei on the guzheng provided some of the most evocative moments in the concert. Cheng Gong Liang’s By the Yili River was a Xinjiang serenade, a slow melody from the Silk Road with an unmistakeable Middle Eastern flavour. Zhao Deng Shan’s Jingling Eaves Of The Temple was a meditative work of exquisite beauty, where a strong vibrato applied on resonant chords simulated the distant echoes of Buddhist wind chimes and bells.

Pipa virtuoso Yang Wei may be familiar to listeners of Western classical music as he has appeared as a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. With Ding Yi, he gave the World Premiere of Lin Hsin-Pin’s Formosa Rhapsody, a pleasant medley of Taiwanese folksongs incorporating some aboriginal and contemporary touches.

The out-and-out tour de force came in the ancient classic Shi Mian Mai Fu (Ambush From Ten Sides), possibly the world’s oldest piece of instrumental programme music. Re-enacting the famous battle of 202 B.C. which established the Han dynasty, he demonstrated a panoply of techniques on solo pipa depicting men, horses and wheels in conflict, with clashing metal and cannons for good measure.

The three soloists were interviewed in Chinese on their art and prowess, and invariably all demurred on being referred to as da shi or great masters. Typically self-deprecatory was the reply of Yang who conceded, “I do not know anything about being a master, I am just a musician.”

All three were united in the final work, the newly-commissioned triple concerto Cantabile by Liu Chang. The title is probably a misnomer, as the work was more like a symphonic rhapsody based on Henan Bangzi opera themes. With opportunities galore for solo display from the soloists, this brought the almost 3-hour-long concert to an impressively rowdy close.