MADELINE GOH Violin Recital / STORIES FROM THE HEART by Voice of the Cello / Review

MADELINE GOH Violin Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday (4 January 2023)

 

STORIES FROM THE HEART

Voice of the Cello

School of the Arts Concert Hall

Sunday (8 January 2023)

 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 January 2022 with the title "Concerts showcase Singapore's wealth of string talent".

If one wondered how Singapore produces so many excellent young musicians in recent decades, the answer can be attributed to good teaching. Pioneering classical musician Goh Soon Tioe (1911-1982), violinist, conductor, pedagogue and impresario, saw to the beginning of this renaissance. His legacy lives on through his many students and awards bestowed in his memory.

Photo: Gilbert Chan

 

The tenth and latest recipient of the Goh Soon Tioe Centenary Award was 15-year-old violinist Madeline Goh Anyi, former student of violinist Min Lee, who is pursuing pre-college studies at the Salzburg Mozarteum. Her hour-long recital was a showcase of precocity balanced by maturity beyond tender years.

Photo: Gilbert Chan

 

In Mozart’s Violin Sonata in B flat major (K.378), the hallmarks of fine musicianship were displayed, including clarity of articulation, beautiful cantabile tone, excellent intonation and  attention to phrasing and nuances. There was never a moment of artifice as she and pianist Beatrice Lin sang their way through to its virtuosic close in double-quick time.  

Photo: Gilbert Chan

 

In unaccompanied music, Goh was nigh unimpeachable in two movements from J.S.Bach’s Sonata No.2 in A major, with the fugue’s complex counterpoint mastered with aplomb. Scaling fiendish heights in Paganini’s mercurial Caprice No.10 and contemporary Austrian composer Gerhard Wimberger’s Toi, Toi, Toi (2016), tricks and cliches of the trade were laid out and skilfully dissected with a surgeon’s precision.

 

There were moments to relax in Eugene Ysaye’s salon-like Mazurka (In A Distance) in gentle triple-time but all stops were pulled for Wieniawski’s showpiece Polonaise in D major,  bringing down the house. As an encore, Madeline was joined by elder sister Mathea (award recipient in 2016) in the Allegro movement from Prokofiev’s Sonata for two violins (Op.56), a show of perfect synchrony demonstrating that musical talent does run in families.

Madeline Goh receives her big cheque
from Vivien Goh,Goh Soon Tioe's daughter.

 

If one thought pianists and violinists were main foci of attention, young cellists have begun to have their say. Stories From The Heart was a fundraiser for The Business Times Budding Artist Fund presented by Voice of the Cello, a collective mentored by veteran cellist Natasha Liu. No less than 40 cellists performed in this impressive showcase.

Amelie See with Michelle Seah

 

Its first half highlighted solo works, with 10-year-old Amelie See opening in Bohemian composer David Popper’s Polonaise de Concert with a display of confidence and poise. Even younger was 8-year-old Grace Joy Chee who blew away Saint-Saëns’ showpiece Allegro Appasionato with relative ease, followed by Ji Yuanjun (10) in the finale from Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C major, possessing both lightness and fleet-fingeredness.

Grace Joy Chee

Natalie Yong

 

By way of contrast, Lucas Liow (11) bared his heart and soul in the contemplative Andante movement of Rachmaninov’s ever-popular Cello Sonata, while Natalie Yong (13) luxuriated in the cantabile opening of Paganini’s Variations on Rossini’s Moses in Egypt, and never faltered as the work got increasingly thorny by the minute. All the works were partnered by pianist Michelle Seah.

 

The concert’s second half featured cello ensemble works ranging from three to twelve cellists. Six six-year-olds delighted in Tchaikovsky’s Sugar Plum Fairy while twelve seven-to-nines had their work cut out in William Squire’s very animated Tarantella. Stealing the show were four immaculately dressed lasses in all-white outfits for Saint-Saëns’ The Swan, and a choreographed  Elgar’s Salut d’amour for three cellists accompanying three dancers befitting the gracefulness of the music. Just too cute for words.

 

Six twelve-year-olds tackled Gabriel Fauré’s Elegie, calling for sobriety and depth of expression without piano accompaniment, while Shostakovich’s Waltz No.2 closed the variety programme on a lighter note. The grand finale saw the entire ensemble of 40 cellists converge in Harold Arlen’s Over The Rainbow, with a melody that would melt even the stoutest of hearts. Singapore’s got talent, and there are no two ways about it.  

Photo: Voice of the Cello

MATHEA GOH Violin Recital / Review

MATHEA GOH Violin Recital

with Beatrice Lin, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday (26 October 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 October 2016

Fifty years ago, the classical music scene in Singapore was spear-headed by Goh Soon Tioe (1911-1982), violinist, pedagogue, conductor and all-round music entrepreneur. His name lives on in the award created in his memory, given to exceptional young Singaporean string players and administered by his daughters Vivien and Sylvia, and the Community Foundation of Singapore.

The recipient of this year's Goh Soon Tioe Centenary Award is teenager Mathea Goh Xinyi, a student of former child prodigy Lee Huei Min, whose 75-minute long solo recital distinguished her out as a major talent to watch in years to come. There was nothing student-like in her playing, only an astonishing maturity that has to be experienced to be believed.

She commenced her recital with Edvard Grieg's rarely heard Second Sonata, with an opening G minor chord that immediately showed she meant business. Its solidly-drawn quality and the strong, vibrant tone she exuded would be sustained unflaggingly for the rest of her very demanding programme. In the dance-like faster section, her nimbleness and flexibility meant she could truly bring out the robust spirit of the Norwegian composer.

The slow movement sang and flowed like one of Grieg's Lyric Pieces, with simplicity and not a little nostalgia, and the finale's folk-dance leapt up from its black and white pages with fulsome colour and rhythmic vitality. Pianist Beatrice Lin was sensitive throughout, but every bit an equal partner in chamber music.

Arguably even more impressive was the segment for unaccompanied violin when Goh was completely on her own in Bach's First Sonata in G minor (BWV.1001) and Ysaye's Sonata No.3, also known as the Ballade. This resembled the opening rounds of any of the prestigious international violin competitions, which Goh will undoubtedly feature in years to come.

Her impeccable intonation in the Prelude (marked Grave) of the Bach would make players double her age green with envy. The clarity and dexterity displayed in the Fugue and final Presto were again the result of that familiar adage, “Practise, practise, practise,” if one were asked the way to Carnegie Hall.

The hair-raising technical difficulties in the Ysaye did little to faze Goh, as she launched herself fearlessly into its thorny thickets and brambly bushes. That she come out victorious and unbruised was credit itself, and this continued into Paganini's well-known Caprice No.24. In these fearsome variations, she wisely chose to include Schumann's piano accompaniment (again played by Lin) which prevented her from being too exposed.

Together the duo completed the recital with Ravel's swashbuckling Tzigane. The extended solo introduction gave Goh ample opportunity to rhapsodise in as free a manner as she chose, and when the piano joined in, the Magyar swagger was in full flow to its brilliant close.

A chorus of bravos ensued, and Jascha Heifetz's transcription of Gershwin's Summertime showed that in the midst of all that bravura, there is a sensitive and musical soul of a virtuoso also waiting to come out.