CHILDHOOD MELODIES OF YESTERYEARS / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

 

CHILDHOOD MELODIES 

OF YESTERYEARS 

Ding Yi Music Company 

Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre 

Saturday (1 June 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 June 2024 with the title "Seriously playful concert of children's songs by Ding Yi".

One of the most important musical projects of Ding Yi Music Company is its Disappearing... Series, which documents Singaporean cultural heritage at risk of becoming extinct. Previous concerts have celebrated dragon kilns, giant joss sticks and Teochew embroidery. Its latest offering, conducted by Quek Ling Kiong, was a salute to Asian children’s songs over the ages. 

Its scenario was a 1970s Chinese school classroom, with members of Ding Yi dressed up like primary school students being lectured by their “form teacher” Quek. On the subject of old traditional songs, past ethno-musical research carried out by “headmistress” Tan Beng Luan had unearthed over 300 such examples. Not limited to the Chinese language, these also included Malay and Indian Tamil songs, a selection of which was performed in this 85-minute-long concert. 

Simple archival recordings were aired, but contemporary arrangements and new settings by composers Zechariah Goh Toh Chai and Liong Kit Yeng lent these ditties a relevence for younger people in the audience. Some of them may have forgotten or neglected their family’s spoken dialects and other traditions. 

The Hokkien song Ban Chun Hong (Wang Chun Feng or Pining for the Spring Breeze) was heard in an elegant transcription by Goh. A variation of its melody by Quek called Longing For Home played by Ng Hsien Han (dizi) and Yvonne Tay (guzheng) also evoked the same nostalgia. These tunes were based on an actual composition by Taiwanese composer Teng Yu-hsien. 

Most of the songs, however, were passed on by oral tradition. Mothers singing their children to sleep are the stuff of fondest memories. Hush-O-Hush (sung in Teochew), Sleep Well (Cantonese) and Pat-The-Bottom (Hokkien), sung by Chan Cheow Wee, Pang Hyin June and Isabel Kang respectively, had lovely arrangements by Liong. 

One was hard-pressed to suppress the mirth upon hearing that last song, also called Pai Pi Gu. In Hokkien, the words “pak-kah-chng”, if taken in the wrong context, could sound terribly vulgar, equivalent to “slap that arse”! As this was a family-oriented concert, it sounded endearing and charming instead. 

A nod to South Asian tradition came in three Tamil songs, Nila Nila Odiva (O Round Moon, Come To Me), Thosai Amma Thosai (Mother’s Thosai) and Vattamana Thattu (Round, Round, Plate), which saw Raghavendran Rajasekaran perform the bansuri (Indian flute), vocals and lead the audience in a spot of konnakol (rhythmic vocal percussion). 

The delightful pairing of Siti Shahira binti Abdul Halim and Nurul Amirah binti Amiruddin, singing in Malay, also lit up the stage in Bintang Kechil Di Langit Yang Biru (Little Star in the Blue Sky) and the playful Air Pasang Pagi (The Tide Rose In The Morning). 

As a final apotheosis, a kind of rap combining Chinese dialects, Malay, Tamil and English words, was memorised by the audience and sung with the help of Chordinate Singers (Acid Pang, chorusmaster) and orchestral ensemble at full tilt. The exhortation of this programme was to learn these “lost” songs, and then pass it on. Was it a guilty pleasure for one to have enjoyed a serious concert so much?

INTIMATE INTRICACIES & FOR OUR DREAMS / Ding Yi Music Company / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

INTIMATE INTRICACIES

Ding Yi Music Company

Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre

Saturday (10 June 2023), 3.30pm

 

FOR OUR DREAMS:

WANG CHENWEI’S 

COMPOSITIONAL SHOWCASE

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Saturday (10 June 2023), 7.30pm

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 June 2023 with the title "Ding Yi and Singapore Chinese Orchestra highlight homegrown composers in two concerts". 

Two concerts featured three young Singaporean composers within the short space of a single day. It appears that Chinese instrumental ensembles are doing the heavy lifting when it comes to promoting local compositional talent.

 

The first concert conducted by Quek Ling Kiong was a project commissioned by Ding Yi Music Company, part of its “Disappearing...” series of programmes documenting the plight of Chinese cultural heritage at risk of being lost forever. In an hour-long film scripted by Jesvin Yeo and directed by Eric Wong, the subjects of giant joss stick making and Teochew embroidery were sensitively handled in the orchestral scores Scent Of Reminiscence by Liong Kit Yeng and Iridescent Threads by Ding Yi composer-in-residence Jon Lin Chua respectively.

 

The preludes, Liong’s Handicrafts and Chua’s Heartcrafts, were easily relatable and created the right mood for recounting poignant personal stories of third generation artisans Albert Tay and Jeffrey Eng. In the case of Tay’s family business (Tay Guan Heng), this narrative has come too late as secularism, anti-pollution laws and family bereavement have contrived to make his giant joss sticks craft obsolete. A rebirth is however represented by the incense recycled as incense-infused pottery by artist Oh Chai Hoo.

More fortunate were Eng’s embroidery endeavours, the comforting clatter of his trusty Singer sewing machine being skilfully dovetailed into Chua’s music with Yvonne Tay’s guzheng providing a mirror-like counterpoint. Moments like this and the optimistic end-credits titled Friendship provide hope that when people choose to remember, not all is lost.   

 

The second concert, led by conductor emeritus Yeh Tsung, featured four local premieres by Singapore Chinese Orchestra composer-in-residence Wang Chenwei. The mind boggled at how these very accessible works have never previously been heard here. For Our Dreams (2021) made for a rousing opener with a big central melody that resembled a cross between Scottish folksong O Waly, Waly and some National Day Parade crowd pleaser.

 

Wang is credited to have composed music’s first-ever virtuoso concerto for the diyin sheng, possibly the mouth organ with the world’s largest pipes. Taoyuan Wonderland (2020) featured soloist Lim Kiong Pin, who produced a deep bellowing sonority capable of an astonishing degree of agility. Its four short movements depicted picturesque scenes in Taiwan, with a recurring melody redolent of  I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus.  

 

Postcards From Macao (2019) was a prime example of how to effectively write a musical travelogue. Its movements A-Ma Temple, Mount Fortress and Senado Square incorporated both Chinese idioms and Portuguese influences from the territory’s colonial history. The Portuguese term saudade, connoting nostalgic sadness and yearning, was eloquently expressed in a musical language common to both Eastern and Western viewpoints.    

 

The evening’s most impressive work was Wang’s Concerto for Chinese Percussion (2019), also titled Bronze Age Of Shang, with Benjamin Boo clearly relishing his virtuoso solo role. The three bronze objects referred to – a battle axe, wine vessel and ritual cauldron – represented the forging of a definitive Chinese identity in its first dynasty, circa 2000 BC. Boo’s mastery of a sprawling array of drums, cymbals, bells, gongs and bamboo clappers, a daunting feat of multi-tasking, brought out the longest and loudest plaudits.  

 

As the complete opposite of unfamiliarity, the upbeat encore Dauntless is likely - thanks to school competitions - the most-played Chinese orchestral work in the land. And for good reason too, as Wang’s craft of fashioning tunes and rhythms is totally infectious.

 

TUNE IN 2020 / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

TUNE IN 2020

Ding Yi Music Company

Streamed on Sistic Live

From Friday (15 October 2020)

 

No local chamber group has done more for Singaporean music than Ding Yi Music Company. The roster of works by local composers, including commissions and premieres, is awe-inspiring and can fill a thick book. And that tome becomes even weightier with its first concert of 2020, conducted by music director Quek Ling Kiong, which showcases works by six women, five of whom are Singaporeans.

 

One should not regard this online concert as one with an agenda of female empowerment, but rather an affirmation of the sheer variety of contemporary composition offered by Chinese traditional instruments. The timbres are distinctive and the music does not even have to sound Chinese or Oriental to make sense.

 

Take for example the atonalist Joyce Koh’s Iskimmer (Shimmering Ice in Swedish), a world premiere, which opened the concert. By employing the yangqin, guzheng, sheng, double bass and percussion, she created a distinctive sound canvas in the work’s six short connected movements celebrating the variety of icy formations that may be appreciated in a Swedish winter. A chorale of sustained notes, which she titled Isskärva or ice shard chorale, was a recurring motif bringing unity to the work as a whole. With this almost reassuring fixture, the work’s atonalism became less lacerating or forbidding as its subject suggested.  

 

By contrast, Liong Kit Yeng’s Free-Spirited was unapologetically tonal, employing an unabashedly Chinese idiom in a slow-fast-slow form in what was a feel-happy work. Its general tonal radiance reflected an optimistic mood amid these uncertain times. Also fairly traditional was well-known Shanghai composer Wang Dan Hong’s Depiction of the Sea. This sea was not the watery kind but rather the landscape of sand dunes and a reflection of the ancient Mogao grottoes near Dunhuang, Gansu Province. The use of the xiao (vertical flute) and guzheng was hauntingly evocative of quiet desolation, which opened and closed the work. In between was an exhilarating fast dance in a typically Central Asian idiom.

 

Works for larger ensemble with a more modern persuasion occupied the concert’s second half. Emily Koh’s Resonate was originally conceived for Chinese ensemble and western wind ensemble to represent a confluence of  eastern and western musical cultures. Inflexions from Singlish, Mandarin and Teochew dialect, lots of portamenti, slides and slurs, were incorporated into this intoxicating blend. Piquant winds stood out amid the throng, including the dizi, sheng, and to cap it all Jacky Ng’s sonorous suona.

 

Chua Jon Lin’s Reminiscences of Yuan Xiao was the winner of Composium 2018, the international composition competition for Chinese chamber ensemble organised by Ding Yi. Although yuan xiao is the traditional eve of the Lunar New Year, this was not a work of raucous celebration but one of quiet reflection and solitude. Her source was traditional nanyin chamber music of Southern China, over which this otherworldly and beautiful nocturne was founded. The xiao, pipa, sheng and sanxian (three-stringed lute) were evocatively employed, with the last having the final word.  

 

Juilliard masters student Koh Cheng Jin’s symphonic poem Legend of Badang qualifies as an excellent example of Nanyang music. Its subject was the Herculian strong man of the Sejarah Melayu (Malay annals) and his heroic feats. The slow mystical opening brought the mellow guanzi (played by Jacky Ng) representing Badang into focus. The Indonesian influence would come in the fast martial section with furious Javanese drumming, culminating with Badang hurling an enormous boulder (later to be christened the Singapore stone) into the mouth of the Singapore River. A stirring work for certain, and premiered with the vehemence it deserved.

 

This very approachable concert is presented in Chinese (with English transliterations) and English (composers’ preambles), and is available for viewing till 1 November at live.sistic.com.sg  

LIM YAN Piano Recital / Review

LIM YAN Piano Recital

Victoria Concert Hall

Thursday (16 July 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 18 July 2015 with the title "Tales from the keyboard".

It was almost exactly ten years ago when Lim Yan became the first Singaporean pianist to perform at the Singapore International Piano Festival, in the process inaugurating the ongoing Young Virtuoso Recital Series. Since then he has gone on to become the nation's most active collaborative pianist besides the first local to perform all of Beethoven's piano concertos in a cycle.

His latest piano recital, part of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra's SG50 series of concerts at Victoria Concert Hall, revealed how he has matured during the intervening years. His was an example of excellent programming, involving works of related keys and forms, yet providing much-needed contrasts.

It opened with Beethoven's Sonata in E flat major (Op.27 No.1), designated “quasi una fantasia” as it departed from the standard sonata form, resembling a fantasy in freedom of expressing its themes and ideas. Immediately apparent was his richness of sound and clarity of articulation. Within the second movement's undercurrents of disquiet and the finale's perpetual motion, there was always utmost control. The sudden and unexpected reintroduction of the slow movement's theme near the end, sensitively handled, provided a gratifying touch of nostalgia.

Beethoven's Eroica Variations (Op.35), also in E flat major, was based on a quirky dance from his ballet The Creatures of Prometheus that later famously appears in the finale of his Eroica Symphony. Often overshadowed by the Diabelli Variations, it is still a demanding work, which found a sympathetic hearing from Lim. He understood well its built-in humour and discursive asides, including a fugue to spice things up.   

In between, he performed local composer Liong Kit Yeng's Roller Coaster Ride, an etude-like showpiece which like its title suggests, traverses tumultuous shifts of dynamics. From Messiaen-like chords to manic runs in the manner of Ligeti's studies, and strumming the insides of the piano a la Cowell and Crumb, the brief work had it all. It closed with sweeping glissandi up and down the keyboard and a jerking full stop.

Lim Yan with young
Singaporean composer Liong Kit Yeng.

Liszt's Sonata in B minor may be considered the ultimate fantasy for the piano. Its introduction and transformation of four simple themes through an Olympian half-hour's journey is the stuff of pianists' dreams and nightmares. Lim has lived with it for years, but this was his first public performance here. And he is only the third or fourth Singaporean to survey it within the last 30 years.

Such a landmark got the reading it deserved, as Lim was fully attuned to its complex structure and  successive series of emotional pinnacles and valleys, in short another roller coaster ride. Its cascading octaves, scintillating runs and chordal climaxes held no terrors for him, conquering each obstacle with fearless accuracy and no little finesse.

Far from being just technically adroit, Lim also found poetry amid the drama in its quiet spots and spiritual silences. There is no programme or back-story attached to this Romantic masterpiece, but Lim's musicianship was its best story-teller because whatever he plays, one cannot but be drawn in and totally absorbed.  

Prolonged applause drew an encore from the otherwise reticent Lim: Beethoven's little Bagatelle (Op.126 No.3) in E flat major. That, is perfect symmetry and eloquence for you.

Lim Yan with his students,
past and present.

CHAMBER.SOUNDS IN MOTION / Review

 

CHAMBER.SOUNDS IN MOTION

The Living Room @ The Arts House

Sunday (21 July 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 23 July 2013 with the title "Varied voices of Singapore".

Given the major symphony orchestra’s abject failure to commission and support local compositions, more Singaporean composers are relying on chamber groups to champion and perform their works in concert. Chamber.Sounds is a collective of young professional musicians and composers, mostly alumni of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, which has found an annual platform for its members.

Its yearly concert, usually held in the summer to coincide with its players’ vacations from overseas studies, is an ample showcase of the Singapore voice. This concert had a common theme of dance and childhood, which partly explained why there was sizeable number of children in the audience. They were mostly well-behaved, and more importantly, quiet throughout the event’s 70 minutes duration.

Driving ostinatos opened and closed the concert, beginning with Derek Lim’s Dance On! for piano trio (above). Wong Yun Qi’s piano provided an insistent jig-like beat, which was joined by Ng Wei Ping’s violin and Chan Si Han’s cello. There were multiple changes in meter, and the paced upped to resemble Shostakovich’s more manic moments.

Jeremiah Li’s Seasons: A Petite Suite, inspired by English poetry, portrayed the change of moods through indolent summer, lively autumn (with beat provided by Li’s baritone saxophone), desolate winter (starring Daniel Yiau’s clarinet solo) to the rejuvenating bagpipe drones of spring. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony was cheekily quoted at its close.

Alicia De Silva’s Silhouette for Two was a cleverly disguised tango for violin, flute and clarinet, with Klezmer elements (Yiau again) thrown in, its title suggesting the ever-changing flickering of a flame and the shadow it casts.

Audience participation was called for in the first movement of Liong Kit Yeng’s Childhood Fantasy Suite, entitled The Clown (above). Clarence Tan’s jocular euphonium solo was punctuated by squawking and hooting on children’s party toys, which the kids in the audience duly obliged on cue. The balance of the suite consisted of more “naïve music”, totally tonal and eminently listenable.

Yiau’s IV Movements Four V ironically has three movements, every one being rhythmic, from the minimalistic Moving, the more fluid Flow and the funereal march of Rhythm which closed with one loud dissonant chord. The concert ended with John Mackey’s Breakdown Tango, its centre adopting a slow habanera rhythm, percussive Bartokian pizzicatos, and its bristling end being a summation of all that had come before. 

A certain pride of place has to be reserved for the Sonatina Op.2 No.3 for solo violin (above) by Cheng Wei Le. It began simply enough, a top-line melody in D major, which later shifted tonally and dynamically at an alarming pace, such that it ended like something by Prokofiev, stretching the resources of violinist Ng to the full. The astonishing thing is this: Cheng is only 11 years old. Are we witnessing the bright beginning of a startling new trend?

My apologies for not being to name every single performer who played in this concert. chamber.sounds In Motion also featured violist Jeremy Chiew and flautist Kevin Seah.