PORTRAIT OF A COMPOSER / IKAN GIRL / Singapore International Festival of Music / Review

PORTRAIT OF A COMPOSER / IKAN GIRL

Singapore International Festival of Music

Chamber, The Arts House

Friday (21 October 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 24 October 2016 with the title "Coherent fusion of Malay and Western music".

Malay musicians have long dominated the popular music scene in Singapore, but have recently made in-roads into Western classical music. The best example is young composer Syafiqah 'Adha Sallehin, the first Malay-Muslim graduate from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, who was the composer-in-residence of the 2^nd Singapore International Festival of Music.

This concert was to have featured five new chamber works including two World Premieres but logistical reasons militated against that. It instead had a truncated first half that opened with two solo piano works performed by Matthew Mak. Elegy was a short and sentimental pop-inspired piece, a student work that could have come from a songbook anywhere in the world.

Syafiqah assured that no one died for it to be conceived. More complex was Surviving Love, which was also tonal but featured some dissonances, and a turbulent central section that portrayed the trials and tribulations of her parents' love. Played with feeling by Mak, all's well that ends well, as to be expected.

The first work with an authentically local idiom was Anjakan Jiwa (Movements Of The Soul) performed by an ensemble with Syafiqah on accordion, violinist Mukhriddin Sayfiddinov, flautist Zaidi-Sabtu Ramli, pianist Nabillah Jallal and percussionist Ramu Thiruyanam. With rhythmic ostinatos established on accordion and percussion, this was an lively dance that lilted like the infectious nuevo tangos of Astor Piazzolla, but with a distinctly Malay flavour. 

The group conducted by Marlon Chen performed the concert's main work Ikan Girl. To prepare the audience, a Prelude was crafted involving its main themes and presented as an attractive stand-alone concert piece.

Ikan Girl, a dance-tableaux in multiple short scenes, was adapted from a tale in the ancient Malay poem Syair Bidasari. Here, a beautiful girl's life and soul is intertwined with that of a magical fish. Producer Mohamad Shaifulbahri's conception was the eternal play of good against evil, danced by eight members of the Bhumi Collective. Amin Farid's choreography combined modern dance with Malay and Indian traditions, where grace and violence found an equal footing.

Nur Azillah Abdul Rahman and Nadia Abdul Malek mirrored each other's movements with seamless fluidity, their carefree smiles finding an implacable antagonist in Rupalavanya Subramaniam's icy Queen. Paralleling a similar plot in the Snow White story, the Queen seeks to destroy the girl but is saved by the fish's dynamism and an unlikely lackey danced by Amin.   

This feel-good quotient would have come to nought if not for Syafiqah's vivid music that closely followed the narrative. Lively and high-pitched birdsong evoked a forest waking, while heavy chords and stern harmonies represented the darker forces at work. A sense of agitation filled the air in the abduction scenes while a violin's bittersweet melody played out a happy resolution.

Like what Stravinsky's Petrushka did for Russian music over a century ago, could Syafiqah's Ikan Girl, an experimental but coherent fusion of Malay and Western classical music, be this equally momentous landmark for local music?   

Producer Mohamad Shaifulbahri,
choreographer Amin Farid and
pianist Nabillah Jalal were London-based
artists, when they first collaborated with
composer Syafiqah 'Adha Sallehin.

NEW MUSIC IN A MYTHIC LANDSCAPE / SIFOM Ensemble / Review

NEW MUSIC IN A MYTHIC LANDSCAPE

SIFOM Ensemble

Singapore International Festival of Music

Chamber, The Arts House

Wednesday (19 October 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 21 October 2016 with the title "Three strikes and New Music is out".

New music has the perpetual problem of attracting audiences, and presenters are usually mindful of engaging patrons with various outreach efforts to win them over. This concert of new Singaporean music however did nothing of the sort as its presentation was lamentable and unacceptably poor.

There were neither composer biographies nor programme notes provided, just a host who happened to be Paris-based conductor Marlon Chen merely reading out titles of performed pieces. Even the names of performers were omitted. Strike One. Two works on the printed programme by John Sharpley and Koh Cheng Jin were discarded with no reasons given. The compensation was a  complimentary drink offered on the house. Strike Two.

Without fanfare, the 65-minute long concert (originally marketed as 90 minutes) began with Chen Zhangyi's Sandcastles. Violinist Arisa Ikeda and pianist April Foo gave an evocative reading with lyrical lines accompanied by rippling keyboard textures, like waves gently lapping on a serene tropical beach.

Bertram Wee's Love Songs for piano trio was sterner than its title suggested. Its 5 movements were atonal and dissonant, with the idea that the course of true love is never easy. Violinist Rida Sayfiddinov, cellist Dzhama Saidkarimov and pianist Thomas Ang covered a full gamut of 20^th century technical devices including harmonics, slides, brusque pizzicatos and heavy chords which cemented his case in no uncertain terms.  

A surreal soundscape was created for Ding Jian Han's Slow Jogging On A Not-So-Silent Night, scored for flute (Jeremy Lim), clarinet (Andrew Constantino), violin, cello and piano (Foo), conducted by Marlon Chen. No actual notes were played in its opening minutes, comprising only the sound of air passing through channels or over strings. This soon cystallised into tones, both short and long-held, which generated a Zen-like calm and mysticism.  

Newly commissioned was Mick Lim's #9 (Sharp Nine), a brief work for pipa (Chua Yew Kok), zhongruan (Loi Eevian), violin, viola (Ho Qian Hui) and cello, which ran a course of plucked notes and pizzicatos. The first work to actually resound with a distinctively Oriental idiom was Ho Chee Kong's Echoes Of Fall for marimba (Kevin Castelo), clarinet, gambus (Loi on ruan) and cello. There were virtuoso roles for each in this enjoyable serenade-like work, which could have come from Central Asia.  

The last and most substantial work was Tan Yuting's Chinatown, a song cycle with texts by Tan Chee Lay featuring talented and expressive soprano Angel Cortez. Its scoring with strings, winds, piano and percussion was lush, and two central fast movements took on the form of rhythmic dances. The subjects involved a culinary paradise and a back-alley barber, but Cortez's Chinese pronunciation was indecipherable, again not helped by the lack of texts or translations. Strike Three and you're out.  

Good music performed by dedicated musicians will always endure, but the cause of new music was not honoured with proper contexts and annotations on this occasion, thus coming off as a wasted opportunity.  

HOLOCAUST / Singapore International Festival of Music / Review

HOLOCAUST

Singapore International Festival of Music

Play Den, The Arts House

Saturday (10 October 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 12 October 2015 with the title "Absorbing tribute to Anne Frank".

The final evening of the Singapore International Festival of Music was reserved for just one work, Russian composer Grigory Frid's 1968 chamber opera The Dairy Of Anne Frank. The subject of a teenaged Jewish girl's plight (and that of her people) during the horrors of the Second World War needs little introduction. The hour-long opera in 21 short scenes for soprano and nine instrumentalists drew on excerpts of her preserved writings and made absolutely absorbing drama.

The darkened Play Den was a perfect setting for the secret annex of the Franks, claustrophobic and intimate, sparsely filled with just a writing desk, bed and a small pile of books. The musicians conducted by Marlon Chen were tucked at one end where their important but unobstrusive presence laid the foundation for Japanese soprano Akiko Otao's one-woman tour de force.

No stranger to the stage, Otao has already helmed important parts in John Sharpley's Fences and Kannagi, and this even more exposed role was to top them all. For all her girlish charm, her portrayal of 13-year-old Annelies was a multi-faceted one. Her identification with the personality of Frank was complete, encompassing all her fears and anxieties, hopes and dreams, and ultimately her humanity in the face of extreme duress.

Samantha Scott-Blackhall's direction was also spot on, enabling Otao to be the riveting centre of attention from start to finish. The singing part was devilishly difficult, atonal for most part and with the sprech-gesang (speech-song) technique of Schoenberg's Second Viennese School as the narrative. This was greatly aided by the projected texts on the walls and precision timing from both singer and musicians.

There were many young people, including children, in the audience, and it was not difficult for them to follow the thread of Frank's thoughts. From the joy of receiving a birthday gift, the terror of hearing knocks on the door, the onset of infatuation with a boy, to a hope of seeing the world in the open again, this was the essence of life itself. There was even a brief spot for humour, in the squabbling of the Van Daans, which was accompanied by jazzy strains.       

The festival's programme notes makes one glaring error. Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, one of six million Holocaust victims, and not in Amsterdam. Amid all of this tragedy, it is amazing that Frank maintained her faith in God, which by now seems frightfully unrequited. If she were still alive (and she would be 86 this year), what would she have thought of our world today?

The Singapore International Festival of Music (SIFOM) was presented by Opera Viva Singapore and The Arts House. This performance of The Diary of Anne Frank was dedicated to the memory of Mr Leow Siak Fah, founder of Opera Viva Singapore and the Singapore Lyric Opera.