EVERYBODY LOVES A SOIREE: TAMPINES EDITION

It was not actually a soiree but a lunch, in the company of Lianhe Zaobao music journalist and recent Yong Siew Toh Conservatory graduate in Music Leadership Zhang Heyang and his guests. These included young composer Lim Kang Ning, Vinna Er of the Kris Foundation, and a pair of fiddlers called Brett Yang and Eddy Chen.

They may be the YouTube sensation TwoSet Violin, but they are as regular as regular blokes go, exactly in real life as they are on video. The fact that our host Heyang was at one time the Concertmaster of the National University of Singapore Symphony Orchestra (NUSSO) helped. He served up a feast of penne arrabiata, fried beehoon, fish head curry, har cheong kai, hae chor, washed down by some grog, bubble tea, and a tiramisu to end it all.

After that the music started, and here is the visual evidence (and without the sound).

TwoSet trying out
Heyang's violin.

Eddy plays Haydn's Serenade,
which is actually by Roman Hofstetter.

A segment of Mozart's
Sinfonia Concertante for violin & viola.

Schubert's Standchen with Brett.

Two violinists and one violin
in Shostakovich's Waltz No.2.

Laughing at TwoZhang's attempt
at Braga's Angel's Serenade.
After which we attempted the local
premiere of Lim Kang Ning's Colour Bar,
which was no joke.

A wefie before hitting the road!

COLOURS & VARIATIONS / METAMORPHOSIS / Karen Tay (Harp), Duo Tarenna & Friends / Review

 

COLOURS & VARIATIONS 

KAREN TAY Harp Recital 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Friday (23 August 2024)

METAMORPHOSIS 

Duo Tarenna & Friends 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Saturday (24 August 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 August 2024 with the title "An exciting showcase of Singapore musicians and composers".

Over the past weekend, this reviewer has had the fortune and privilege of witnessing the world premieres of works by two young Singaporean composers, performed by young local professional musicians. Like the newly commissioned works recently unveiled by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at the National Day Concert, this should be part of a healthy norm, rather than an exception. 

The first was New York-based Singaporean harpist Karen Tay performing London-based Lim Kang Ning’s Tenebroso. Its title relates to many shades of darkness in contrast with light, both in mood as well as musical textures. Possessed with a restless energy, it opened with buzzing ostinatos, operating on both high and low registers of the instrument. Darker hues predominated before culminating in a series of sweeping glissandi, concluding an eventful 6 minutes which did not overstay its welcome. 

The solo recital, presented by Kris Foundation, was mostly of 20th century works, where an outsized virtuosity was requisite despite eschewing outward showiness for its own sake. British composer Benjamin Britten’s varied five-movement Suite and American harpist-composer Carlos Salzedo’s colourful Scintillation, displaying varying levels of dissonance, were complementary companions for Lim’s creation. 

On a lighter side, Tay’s elegant and understated virtuosity brought polish to Frenchman Marcel Tournier’s impressionist Sonatine and American Brandee Younger’s popular music-inspired Unrest I. Transcriptions of familiar music by Domenico Scarlatti and J.S.Bach, and an encore of her mother Magdalene Wong’s delightful Forever completed a highly eclectic and accomplished recital. 

Karen Tay with Kris Tan and Lim Kang Ning.

The following evening saw the premiere of Ding Jian Han’s hreeviFruowT for flute and string quartet, part of the Composer’s Drawing Board commissioning project presented by Duo Tarenna (violinist Tan Tiag Yi and violist Cindy Ow). Joined by violinist Farah Wu, cellist Chan Sihan and flautist Paul Huang, the atonal work employed the flute and piccolo as both solo and ensemble instrument. 

Huang had the most expressive moments, including uttering fragments of themes and using percussive slap-tonguing and purring flutter-tonguing techniques. Ever-shifting contours through its busy 12 minutes kept the listener guessing what comes next and how it would end. Due to the demanding entries exacted, the work was conducted by Ding himself. 

This made for an ideal companion for Lee Jia Yi’s Eclipse for violin & viola (Tan and Ow) which was shorter but exhibited a similar restlessness, with screeching harmonics and slithering glissandi being par for the course. 

The balance of the 75-minute concert was less demanding on the ears. Joseph Kosma’s Autumn Leaves, arranged for string quartet by Toru Takemitsu, saw the famous melody emerge from Ow’s viola. Its relationship to two movements from American Chinese composer Anthony Cheung’s modern and dissonant The Real Book of Fake Tunes seemed tenuous. 

The opening Allegro movement from Danish composer Friedrich Kuhlau’s Flute Quintet in D major (Op.51 No.1) was the concert’s most traditional work, while Death of an Angel by Astor Piazzolla (arranged by Tan) headily combined tango and counterpoint. British composer Thomas Ades’ Tango Mortale from his quartet Arcadiana was a brief essay on darkness and violence. 

To quote the young conductor Adrian Chiang who had recently conducted a concert wholly of local works, “If we do not support Singaporean composers, then who will?”

A HARP RECITAL NOT TO MISS: COLOURS & VARIATIONS by KAREN TAY

If you love harp music, here is a recital not to miss. A varied programme of harp music is presented by New York-based Singaporean harpist Karen Tay. She is presently a doctoral fellow at the Manhattan School of Music, and faculty of the school's pre-college division. This is a Kris Foundation production, a philanthropic body which specialises in showcasing the best of Singaporean musical talents.

Her programme:

Marcel Tournier Sonatina

D.Scarlatti Sonata in A minor, K.113

J.S.Bach Andante from Sonata No.2 for violin

   (arranged by Marcel Grandjany)

Lim Kang Ning Tenebroso (World Premiere)

Brandee Younger Unrest I

Benjamin Britten Suite

Carlos Salzedo Scintillation

Friday 23 August 2024

Esplanade Recital Studio, 7.30 pm

Click here for tickets:

COLOURS AND VARIATIONS: KAREN TAY, HARP [G] (sistic.com.sg)

Watch this video of 

Ravel's Introduction & Allegro

with Karen Tay on harp.

RIPPLES / Mervyn Lee Piano Recital / Joey Lau Violin Recital / Review

RIPPLES

MERVYN LEE, Piano Recital

JOEY LAU, Violin Recital

with Lim Yan, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Friday & Saturday 

(11 & 12 August 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 August 2023 with the title "Thought-provoking recitals by musical talent".

 

The Kris Foundation, founded by local philanthropist and music-lover Kris Tan, has been presenting concerts showcasing young Singaporean and Singapore-based musical talents since 2009. The roster of artists in its annual series of solo and chamber recitals now reads like a Who’s Who of the classical music scene, including violinists Alan Choo, Loh Jun Hong and Yang Shuxiang, pianists Abigail Sin and Azariah Tan, and harpist Laura Peh.

 

Pianist Mervyn Lee, who also performs harpsichord, viola da gamba and guitar in Red Dot Baroque, looks set to join this pantheon. His intellectually satisfying and demanding solo recital was the perfect showcase of breadth and depth. The two major works included Beethoven’s late Piano Sonata No.28 in A major (Op.101), which was Romantically inflected in his voicing of the opening movement’s main theme. Contrasts were sharply drawn for the second movement’s brisk march, before culminating with the finale’s triumphant play of counterpoint.   

 

Equally trenchant was Bartok’s Out Of Doors, a five-movement suite juxtaposing raw percussive violence with unusually lyrical asides. Most strikingly, its fourth movement entitled The Night’s Music was a inimitable study of silence punctuated by sounds of twittering insects and a nightingale’s call. All this tied in poetically with two selections from Spanish composer Enrique Granados’ Goyescas, displaying yearning in The Maiden and the Nightingale and rhythmic vigour in Fandango by Moonlight. The dance element was also mirrored in two swift Scarlatti Sonatas (K.396 & 427), which were dispatched with mercurial wit and panache.

 

Receiving its world premiere was young Singaporean composer Lim Kang Ning’s All The Bells At Once, a dreamily sonorous work that played on lingering single notes and varied intervals with  intendant resonances and echoes. One was reminded of piano pieces by two late great composers, the Hungarian Gyorgy Ligeti and Australian Peter Sculthorpe, the latter well-known for Asian and Aboriginal influences in his music.

 

On the following evening, Lim’s Memories Of A Daffodil for solo violin was premiered by violinist Joey Lau, who is presently pursuing post-graduate studies in Chicago. A shorter work, it opened with a long lyrical line, possibly of Chinese idiom, later roused into animation before being abruptly cut short. This might be a reflection on the transience of life, later echoed in the recital’s final work.

 

Her other solo was Eugene Ysaye’s Sonata (Op.27 No.3) or Ballade, encompassing a formidable arsenal of technical tricks and thrills which she duly delivered. Lau's acute sense of singing lines, by contrast, found just the right response in Prokofiev's Five Melodies (Op.35bis), originally written for wordless high voice, now partnered with pianist Lim Yan.

 

Both violinist and pianist were taxed to the max in two substantial sonatas. Beethoven’s early Sonata in E flat major (Op.12 No.3) offered an imperious show of virtuosity in its outer movements. In between, serenity and equanamity reigned in the slow movement. This sequence was repeated in Frenchman Francis Poulenc’s Violin Sonata, where seemingly whimsical and uproarious melodies belied something more sombre. Humour and wit were in long supply, but its finale turned to elegiac tones before closing on a total downer.

 

Read the well-written notes (by Lau herself), and one learns that the sonata was dedicated to the memory of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, murdered by fascists in the prime of his life. Whether musing on swooning nightingales or dying daffodils, these thought-provoking recitals show three young musical talents - pianist Mervyn Lee, violinist Joey Lau and composer Lim Kang Ning - to be prime prospects for Singapore’s musical future.  

For the record, the encores performed on both evenings were as follows:

11 August 2023 (Mervyn Lee)

TELEMANN Fantasy in G minor

SCRIABIN Poem in F sharp major, Op.32 No.1

12 August 2023 (Joey Lau and Lim Yan)

FAURE Apres un reve

DRIGO-HEIFETZ Valse Bluette

SOUVENIRS DE FETE / SEIKA ISHIDA PLAYS MOZART / Review

SOUVENIRS DE FETE

Miyuki Washimiya, Piano Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday (29 November 2022)

 

SEIKA ISHIDA PLAYS MOZART

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Wednesday (30 November 2022)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 December 2022 with the title "Japanese pianists Miyuki Washimiya and Seika Ishida in fine form."

 

In an interview, internationally renowned Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa once gave reasons why there were so many women pianists in Japan. Japanese society dictated that men went into stable and profitable professions like medicine, law, engineering and civil service, while women were encouraged to pursue music and fine arts. She also suggested that should the women not make their careers, marriage was still an option.

 

Two very fine lady Japanese pianists were heard on consecutive evenings last week. Keyboard veteran Miyuki Washimiya has regularly appeared here in concerts presented by Kris Foundation, both as soloist and in collaboration with young local musicians. The Paris-trained pianist opened her recital with Mozart’s Sonata in F major (K.280), displaying crispness of articulation and a fluid technique to bring out the music’s lyricism.

Photo: Kris Foundation

 

The major work was Francis Poulenc’s Les Soirees de Nazelles (The Evenings Of Nazelles), rarely played because of virtuosic demands and myriad intricacies in moods and dynamics. Its eight variations, each with fanciful French titles, were vignettes of close personal friends. Quirky, humourous but ultimately congenial, these found a sympathetic interpreter in Washimiya’s resolute yet sensitive fingers.

 

Young Singaporean composer Lim Kang Ning’s two piano pieces were also revealed as miniature masterpieces. The highly-spirited Flower Visages was coloured by Chinese influences, contrasted with A Japanese Poem - receiving its world premiere - which was more formal, subtler and possessing darker shades. Both works repay further listening.

Photo: Kris Foundation

 

Rhythmic works by three Latino composers - Alberto Ginastera’s wildly exuberant Three Argentinian Dances, Federico Mompou’s gentler Song & Dance No.6, and the sweeping chords and glissandi of Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance - completed Washimiya’s recital on a high. Her encores of Sakura-Sakura and Poulenc’s Homage To Edith Piaf were also very well received.

 

Miyuki Washimiya with
Kris Tan and Lim Kang Ning.

Photo: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

From the younger generation is Seika Ishida, who performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor (K.466) with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra under former Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Litton. This was a performance that had everything; the sturm und drang (storm and stress) of outer movements salved by the central Romanza’s tenderness and beauty. Even this had its fair share of upheaval, with tension at its heart finely balanced on a knife-edge.

Photo: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

 

SSO’s was an ever-discreet partner to Ishida’s every line and phrase, allowing her freedom to flex every muscle and fibre of musicality. Cadenzas were delivered with big-boned sonorities, and if one felt the first two movements a tad restrained, no apologies were made going for broke in the finale, turning urgency into joie de vivre. Her encore was also special, a Chopin-influenced little gem that is Russian composer Anatol Liadov’s Prelude in D flat major (Op.57 No.1).

 

Photo: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

 

Equally splendid was the rest of the programme, beginning with short-lived American composer Charles Griffes’s Poem, featuring SSO principal flautist Jin Ta as soloist. Tired of hearing Debussy’s Prelude To The Afternoon Of The Faun? This was the perfect antidote, with an even more fleshed-out solo part. Its dreamy languor backed with lush orchestral colour, and solos from French horn, trumpet and viola, made this an ideal overture.   

Photo: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

 

Closing the memorable evening was Tchaikovsky’s Suite No.3 in G major, a rarity compared with his symphonies. Although light-weight in character, its four movements had a balletic feel which made it impossible to dislike. Strings were in fine form for the opening Elegie and melancholic Waltz, while chirpy woodwinds simply ruled in the whimsical Scherzo.

Concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich
gets the plaudits from conductor Andrew Litton.

 

Most substantial was the finale’s Theme and Variations, eventful as it was inventive. SSO former concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich had a plum solo, worthy of the best minutes in Swan Lake, delivered with stunning aplomb. Concluding with a most rousing of polonaises (the Polish dance of nobility), both conductor Litton and the orchestra had the audience roaring for more.