NAFA COMPOSITIONAL RECITAL / NAFA Chinese Chamber Ensemble / Review

NAFA COMPOSITION RECITAL

NAFA Chinese Chamber Ensemble

Lee Foundation Theatre

Thursday (13 March 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 February 2014 with the title "Budding talent show promise".

Like the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory that trains young professional musicians to play in Singapore’s symphony orchestras, it is the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts which grooms instrumentalists for a career in ensembles like the Singapore Chinese Orchestra and Ding Yi Music Company. Similarly, the Academy also hones composers for contemporary Chinese music.

This hour-long concert mostly conducted by Quek Ling Kiong, Resident Conductor of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, provided a brief glimpse of the budding compositional talent for Chinese instrumental music here. The future does appear promising at the very least.

It began Zhou Tie’s Act Five, a quintet for erhu, bamboo flute, pipa, ruan and percussion. Resembling an ensemble that accompanies the stage, the group’s assignment was both dramatic and atonal, employing short fragments with the economy that recalled the Second Viennese School works of Anton Webern.

Ernest Thio’s Batu Belah for four huqins (two erhus, gaohu and zhonghu) and cello was based on a familiar Malay song. Operating on a rather narrow dynamic range, the work could have benefited from an expansion or development of the thematic material, and the performance from more accurate intonation.

The title of Lim Tee Heong’s study for solo zhonghu, Long Gou Shui (or Long Kao Chui in Hokkien), sounds far more eloquent in Chinese than the cumbersome English Swirling Waters in the Drain. Soloist Shunta Goh gave a sizzling performance of a perpetual motion that hovered between the repetitious Philip Glass and Bartok’s Solo Violin Sonata.

If the pieces for small ensemble were experimental in nature, the works for the full complement of players seemed more catered towards mass appeal and the genre of film music. Ng Chee Yao’s Ode of Affection employed all sections of the orchestra and played out like a romantic interlude from a movie.

James Goh’s Rain in a Season of Drought was sumptuously orchestrated, highlighting an lovely erhu solo and later a parade of percussion heralding a welcome precipitation. A drone, insistent beats from wooden temple block and strummed ruans provided the backdrop to melodies from the sheng and woodwinds in Ernest Thio’s Prayer.

The concert closed with the Erhu Rhapsody No.1 by Wang Jian Min, head of Chinese Music at the Shanghai Conservatory. Shunta Goh on erhu provided the requisite virtuosity for a work that typically began with a slow and meditative introduction, and then sprinting off breathlessly with the orchestra keeping up neck and neck to a brilliant conclusion.

FLOURISHES / NAFA New Music Ensemble / Review

FLOURISHES

NAFA New Music Ensemble

Lee Foundation Theatre

Thursday (3 October 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 October 2013 with the title "Aural snapshot of city and country".

Following the fine example set by the Conservatory, the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts has begun to present new music in chamber concerts open to the public. This modest but encouraging free event, attended by a small audience, featured works by four locally-based composers who are faculty or alumni of the institution (below).

The eponymous Flourishes by Jeremiah Li which began the concert was a set of three contrasting canvasses exploring different moods and textures on flute, clarinet, cello and piano. Loud and emphatic riffs issued from the opening Presto Agitato, a world apart from the static calm of the middle movement Tranquillo which included the insides of the piano being quietly percussed. A jazzy ostinato from Tran Thanh Xuan’s piano set the rhythm of the insouciant finale which gave the work a languid feel of the American Deep South.

Each composer spoke briefly about their pieces. Li likened his Daemonwing for solo violin to the malevolence of a gothic cathedral gargoyle in flight. Violinist Guo Xingchen (below left) was put through an etude-like test which bristled with high-pitched harmonics and sul ponticello, the wiry timbre produced when the instrument is bowed near its bridge.

Similarly inspired was Lim Tee Heong’s The Devil Dancing for solo piano, receiving its world premiere by excellent Indonesian pianist Wilson (above right). Lim attempted to outdo the efforts of Liszt’s First Mephisto Waltz which he considered being “too nice”. Its 333 bars (exactly half of the diabolical number triple 6) housed trills galore, insistent gestures and abrupt rhythm changes before coruscating home with a tarantella from hell.

The two pieces by Zechariah Goh Toh Chai sounded more conventional but have the best chance of becoming central repertoire works. Four Taiwanese Aboriginal Songs for woodwind quintet is an excellently scored study of ethno-musicological research, in the best tradition of masters like Bartok and Kodaly. Conducted by the composer himself, the EDQ quintet brought out its quaint folksy flavour to great effect.

Goh’s T’was The Rain, part of an ongoing series of chamber pieces, was impressionistic in its colour, with long-breathed passages by flautist Jasper Goh and oboist Veda Lin (above) sensitively accompanied by Ernest Lim on the piano. This was the aurally the most alluring work in the whole concert.

Not to be outdone was Eric Watson’s Aftermath for solo piano, composed in 2011 as a reflection of the Japanese tsunami tragedy. Introspective rather than violent, its subtle mood changes ranged from stoic despair to placid resignation, masterfully negotiated by Ukrainian pianist Kseniia Vokhmianina (above) with much polish and poise.

This concert was in essence a 70-minute panoramic snapshot of the contemporary composing scene in the “city” (the Academy at Bencoolen Street), a quite different but equally valid vista from the “country” (the Conservatory at Kent Ridge). It is hoped that more is forthcoming in the near future.