FACULTY AND FRIENDS CONCERT II / School of the Arts / Review

FACULTY AND FRIENDS CONCERT II

School of the Arts

SOTA Concert Hall

Tuesday (14 May 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 May 2013 with the title "Yellow Pages with Caribbean beat".

The School of the Arts (SOTA) Concert Hall has truly become a boon for the performance of chamber music within the city. Time and again, its capacious yet intimate space allows for instrumental sounds to bloom, regardless of the size of the performing group, as it proved in this evening’s concert of 20^th century music.

The evening began with two works for harpsichord and small ensemble. Despite the title, Spanish composer Manuel de Falla’s 1926 Harpsichord Concerto is a virtuoso vehicle for all six instrumentalists, not just the keyboardist. Drawing inspiration from the baroque as well as Stravinsky’s spiky neoclassicism, violin (played by Chan Yoong Han), cello (Leslie Tan), flute (Roberto Alvarez), oboe (Audi Goh) and clarinet (Li Xin) all had vital parts to play in its piquant and kinetically charged short movements.

Project themselves they did, however it was in the expense of Yang Tien’s soft-focused and mellow-toned harpsichord, her complex figurations barely rising above the busy throng. The admixture of textures was somewhat better in Samuel Adler’s Acrostics, subtitled Four Games for Six Players (1985). The four movements played on varied timbres, colours and moods, afforded by the same combination of instruments and fuelled by an anarchic spirit of bantering fun. 

The second movement and its direction to play “with a great deal of charm” summed up the exercise. Pointillist and with short spurts of sound interjected at different intervals, its laugh-a-minute atmosphere then into dissipated into a droll, ghostly waltz. A second hearing of this unusual work could do wonders.

A grand piano was wheeled in place of the harpsichord for the second half, and close to perfect balance was restored. This is not a slur on the performers but rather because the piano’s plangent sound disperses into the air better than that of a dainty harpsichord’s.

Spaniard Salvador Brotons’s Mixed Sextet (1992) was as the title suggested. It pitted the sonorities of paired woodwinds with those of paired strings, against the percussed instruments – namely Lim Yan’s piano and Mark Suter’s marimba and three assorted drums. The music traversed a melange of styles, including a fugue and romantic gestures before its single movement escalated to a climatic close.

The final work was also the most entertaining. The American Michael Torke’s brand of minimalism in the three-movement Telephone Book (1995) incorporated popular styles and not a little humour. How else could his Yellow Pages be suffused with an infectious Caribbean or Latin American beat?

Blue Pages employed a syncopated bass clarinet as its beat, transporting listeners into a smoky Manhattan jazz club, while the perpetual motion of White Pages revelled in a succession of intoxicating riffs. Flashy and energetic, this clearly enthused reading from the five performers on stage - three of whom played the entire concert - was something to call (or text) home about.

JIN TA Flute Recital / Review

JIN TA Flute Recital
with Liu Jia, Piano
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall
Tuesday (29 September 2009)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 October 2009.

In one of the finest flute recitals in recent memory, Singapore Symphony Orchestra principal flautist Jin Ta distinguished himself as a virtuoso par excellence. It was not just his craftsmanship and versatility that impressed, but the musicianship in articulating a phrase and shaping it with the love of ages that transcended mere notes.

The recital began with Baroque, Georg Philipp Telemann’s Sonata in G major displayed clear limpid lines in dulcet tones in its four-movement sonata da chiesa form, varying slow and fast with great ease and alacrity. Liu Jia’s piano (left) was unobtrusive but as with baroque music, harpsichord accompaniment would have been preferred.

Jin was all on his own in living Spanish composer Cristobal Halffter’s Debla (1980), a tour de force of solo playing. Beginning with long sustained notes, the soliloquy was punctuated with ear-piercing shrieks but this was no empty bluster for mere effect. The work probed a wide range of moods, presenting a hint of lyricism without evolving into melody, reveling in flamenco-like foot-stamping before closing by whistling overtones into his golden flute.

More virtuoso fare was ushered by the Flute Concerto (1950) by André Jolivet, a French composer for whom dissonance was a mere excuse for luscious melodic writing. Sounds ironic but the first movement brought out long-breathed song-like lines that bathed the senses with aural honey. Its slow-fast-slow-fast sequence uncannily echoed the Telemann, creating an aesthetic symmetry that was not immediately apparent but totally satisfying.

The extremely demanding piano accompaniment necessitated razor-sharp reflexes, which the diminutive Liu handled superbly, laying the path for Jin’s forceful show of exuberance. Collective hair was let down when the duo was joined by bassist Guennadi Mouzyka and percussionist Mark Suter on drums (left) in a selection from Claude Bolling’s Suites for flute and jazz trio popularised by the late Jean-Pierre Rampal.

Jazzy and Veloce were the breathlessly exciting finales of the Suites No.2 and No.1 respectively, bringing out the cheers from the house. Jin then dedicated his encore, the popular Sentimentale (Suite No.1), to his conservatory colleagues and audience. Like his surname, the heartfelt perfomance spelt pure gold.