ENSO / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory New Music Ensemble / Review

ENSO

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory New Music Ensemble

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (14 April 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 April 2013 with the title "Programme for nuclear fission".

Pieces of new music benefit greatly from the manner they are presented, often in juxtaposition with other works, to gain coherence and synergy they would otherwise not have if performed separately on their own. Such was the case of the five works presented by the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory New Music Ensemble conducted by Kawai Shiu, a composer himself.

The title Enso, accordingly to his interview notes, refers to the focused energy inherent in mere notes and motifs with their potential for infinite variations. This reviewer chooses to equate this with the power harnessed within the nucleus of an atom, the concert being a controlled experiment in nuclear fission. With each work being progressively longer and generating greater volume than the last, the result was a chain reaction leading to ever increasing circles.

The first three works were brief and relatively quiet. Even Pierre Boulez’s Memoriale from …explosante-fixe… (1985) had a strange and ethereal serenity, centred around flautist Tanasak Angsugomutkul’s virtuosity in trills and flutter-tongue technique.  Thai student composer Achittapol Tinnarat’s Compression (2012) opened with an emphatic, even grandiose, statement of the G note, and generated interesting textures with harp, piano, woodwind and brass in what may be seen as a prelude to something bigger.

Allied to this was Giacinto Scelsi’s Pranam II (1985), centred round a C sharp pedal-note, for whom the concept of sound was a series of sustained vibrations. There were small and subtle changes of textures along the way, making barely perceptible shift in the aural geography, like the minute movements of tectonic plates, mostly silent but unusually impactful.

Greater upheavals were reserved for Polish centenarian Witold Lutoslawski’s Chain 1 (1983), which employed the largest ensemble on the evening. His technique was to utilise mere fragments or shards of themes, developing into larger blocks or segments, the overlapping of which provides the origin of his title Chain. The manner in which the work progressed inexorably to a massive climax and its application to nuclear physics is perhaps coincidental.

Shiu’s own composition kör (2013) gets its title from the Hungarian word for “circle”. Superficially it takes the form of a single-movement piano concerto, opening with pianist Abigail Sin’s statement of themes based on Messiaen-like chords. Around her, instrumental groups were creating a moving spectrum of sound, arriving at a centre of calm represented by Yang Shuxiang’s solitary violin. Joined by Victor Williams’s viola, the music then segued to a short sequence with piano and vibraphone as partners in percussion.

The music contrasted light with darkness, high-pitched instruments with lower register ones, before returning for solo piano to close, a full circle being completed. There was a small but receptive audience for this show, sympathetic to the conviction and confidence of the young players. It looks like Esplanade's Spectrum Series and new music performance is hear to stay.

Kawai Shiu speaks forthrightly at the post-concert talk, and exhorts the audience to listen to more new music - Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring on Thursday week.

LUTOSLAWSKI QUARTET / Review

LUTOSLAWSKI QUARTET

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Wednesday (27 March 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 March 2013 with the title "Pleasing symmetry by Polish quartet".

2013 has been exceptional year for chamber music, and it got even better at the 6^th Singapore Chamber Festival with a very challenging but rewarding recital by the Lutoslawski Quartet from Poland. Seldom has a programme of 20^th and 21^st century chamber music been performed with such vibrancy and dedication.

Its first half ran for close to an hour, beginning with the String Quartet (1964) by Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994) whose birth centenary is celebrated this year and after whom the ensemble is named. Its atonal 25 minutes in two movements were a concentrated study in modernist gestures and techniques, with little concession made for both performer and listener.

The opening gambit was dispatched with utter clarity by first violinist Jakub Jakowicz; mere wisps and shards of muted tones, and answered with an equally trenchant response by his three partners. The mostly quiet first movement was contrasted by lacerating violence and rapidity of reflexes, a deliberately provocative riposte in the ensuing movement. The storm eventually settled with the sustained long lines of the final lament, closing with the apparent placidity of its beginning.

Even if one did not take to the uncompromising and rarefied musical language, it was hard to ignore the manner to which the players listened and responded to each other. Each had his own distinctive and very difficult part but together they resounded in one accord, which is the true mark of virtuosity

By comparison, Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet (1960) is an established classic. The composer’s own motto theme (D-E flat-C-B) hovered ominously through its proceedings, with quotations from earlier works thrown into the fray. Satirical and grotesque elements were keenly brought out in this rapt reading, leaving one without a doubt that while he had dedicated the work to “the victims of Fascism”, Shostakovich counted himself among them.

The second half opened with the Third String Quartet by Marcin Markowicz, the quartet’s second violinist. It was the shortest work and ironically the most approachable. It began with a familiar motif from the first violin, which comes from the opening of Szymanowski’s Roxana’s Song (from the opera King Roger).

The tonal work ambled into an impish scherzo, reminiscent of Shostakovich, and culminated with a furious fugue, the subject of which was instigated by Markowicz himself. Like a rainbow’s arc, the earlier song returned but now shared by the foursome.

The aural beauty continued with Karol Szymanowski’s Second String Quartet (1937), with Marciej Mlodawski’s cello singing high above a gently rocking accompaniment. The first movement was played on mutes throughout, while the vigorous scherzo relived the spirit of folk music and dance of  Poland’s Tatra Mountains, providing both rhythmic and thematic contrasts.

The finale comprised two fugal episodes, the second of which was an echo of Shostakovich’s motto theme. As the concert drew to an emphatic close and very enthusiastic applause, it did so with a pleasing symmetry.

SSO Concert: GALA: KRYSTIAN ZIMERMAN / Review

GALA: KRYSTIAN ZIMERMAN

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (5 January 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 January 2013 with the title "Zimerman wows with silky touches and fluid fingerwork".

Krystian Zimerman. Here is a name that can fill the Esplanade to the rafters, even if he is not playing either of Chopin’s piano concertos. On this occasion, his debut with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the choice of Witold Lutoslawski’s Piano Concerto to commemorate the 20^th century Polish composer’s birth centenary was most apt.

Dedicated to and premiered by Zimerman himself in 1988, it deserves to be better known. Lutoslawski’s sound palette is both delicate yet pungent, and the highly transparent piano part wafted like ether through the orchestra’s still opening of harp, woodwind and string whispers. First we hear wisps, fragments and shards from the piano, and the semblance of a theme emerges like a nascent sun’s rays for an early climax in the first movement.

“Rachmaninov without tunes,” wrote one critic, but that view is just simplistic. The work is spread over four movements without a break. A mercurial scherzo and the ruminations in a slow movement’s soliloquy are discernible, so is a final passacaglia, as if in obeisance to classical form. But one needs to forget the theory and bask in Zimerman’s pianism, silky touches, crashing chords and astonishingly fluid fingerwork.

The 24 minutes or so held one in its thrall, and if atonal music could be made to sound so persuasive, even inviting, then a composer’s craft is vindicated. The tumultuous applause yielded two encores, thankfully not Chopin, but instead the coruscating first movement from Grazyna Bacewicz’s Second Sonata and Debussy’s shimmering Pagodes from Estampes.  

The first music to be played by the Singapore Symphony was Dvorak’s American Suite, five highly agreeable short movements cut from the same fabric as his New World Symphony. Native Indian melodies and Negro spirituals dressed up in Central European finery made for easy listening, and one was hard put to tell where Bohemia ended and Louisiana began.

The concert closed with Beethoven’s popular Seventh Symphony, supposedly routine repertoire but the performance was anything but ordinary. Conducted by Music Director Shui Lan with neither score nor baton, he took a decidedly brisk view to the classic. The slow introduction was light-footed but not lightweight, and the ensuing Vivace was exactly that, vivacious and a bit more.

The second movement’s Allegretto, the slowest movement of four, grew in stature and built to a heady climax. The final two movements raced off in breakneck pace, but this was not mindless velocity for its own sake but more an expression of exhilaration, which made the Trio’s hymn tune of the third movement all the more gratifying.

The breathless finale would not have been possible if not for the tower of strength that was guest timpanist Paul Philbert, formerly of the Malaysian Philharmonic, whose steadiness on the sticks at high speeds was an inspiration. It certainly was a Gala Concerto to remember.