BACH CONCERTOS EXTRAVAGANZA / Red Dot Baroque / Review

 

BACH CONCERTOS EXTRAVAGANZA!

Red Dot Baroque

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (7 September 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 September 2025 with the title "Celebrating 60 years of Singapore-Germany diplomacy with Bach extravaganza".

Red Dot Baroque (RDB), led by violinist and Young Artist Award recipient Alan Choo, is Singapore’s only professional group playing period instruments. In 2023, it performed all six of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos in a single sitting. Its latest concert, celebrating SG60 and marking sixty years of Singapore-Germany diplomacy, saw four favourite concertos of the German baroque master aired.

Photo: Yong Junyi

Opening the show was the Concerto for violin and oboe in C minor (BWV.1060) with soloists Placido Ho (violin) and Veda Lin (oboe). Both played as members of the general ensemble before assuming their solo parts and standing out with piquant tones. There were few moments as beautiful as the slow central movement’s duet, before a flurry of counterpoint completed the fast finale.

The title of Orchestral Suite No.2 in B minor (BWV.1067) may seem a misnomer as there were just six players partnering Rachel Ho on traverso (baroque flute) for the set in seven movements. Partita or Overture might have been more apt titles for this, but Ho’s lovely tone presided over dances including a Rondeau, Sarabande, Bourree, Polonaise and Menuet.

Photo: Yong Junyi

The audience’s erratic response of applauding between some movements may have distracted the ensemble, leading to a false start for the Badinerie. However, playful bantering between players was the idea of this mercurial finale, closing the work on an irrepressible high.

Photo: Yong Junyi

After the interval, a rare performance of the Harpsichord Concerto in A major (BWV.1055) featured Mervyn Lee as soloist. His understated but crystal-clear articulation was the highlight in this forerunner of the piano concerto, with brooding and emoting in the Larghetto slow movement, before breaking free of fetters in the fast outer movements.

Photo: Yong Junyi

Closing the matinee was the popular Concerto for two violins in D minor (BWV.1043) with leader Choo and Gabriel Lee in the spotlight. The unspoken chemistry between two founding members shone through despite having quite different stage demeanours, Choo’s animated movements versus Lee’s steadfast stance. The performance, true to form, exuded joy from every pore.

Inserted between the concertos in each half was the Asian premiere of Rainforest Refrains (2025), composed for RDB’s Italian tour earlier this year by Young Artist Award recipient Chen Zhangyi. This is a modern update of the multi-movement baroque suite or partita. With narration and delightful singing by soprano Teng Xiang Ting, this could also pass off as a neo-baroque cantata.

Photo: Yong Junyi

Tropical flora and fauna were the subjects in its nine movements. Burung Hamba Kera (The Monkey’s Servant Bird), a reimagination of the Malay song Burung Kakak Tua contrasted with Pangolin Passacaglia, a doleful lament. The lively finale became a play on the Chinese words “liu lian”, which was to linger besides being the name of a thorny but aromatic fruit.

Composer Chen Zhangyi
acknowledges the applause.

The encore of Phang Kok Jun’s A Barojak Suite (2020) comprised four dance movements which were settings of local songs in the form of antique dances: the allemande, corrente, sarabande and gigue. Commissioned out of pure fun, one has not lived without having heard Munnaeru Vaalibaa or Jinkli Nona played on baroque instruments.

THE CLASS OF 1685 / Mervyn Lee, Yang Tien & Brenda Koh / Review

 

THE CLASS OF 1685 

Mervyn Lee, Yang Tien & Brenda Koh 

School of the Arts 

Orchestral Rehearsal Studio 

Wednesday (30 April 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 May 2025 with the title "Satisfying salute to Bach, Handel & Scarlatti".

Harpsichord recitals are a rarity in Singapore, such that a near full-house turned out in support of a concert by three faculty members of the School of the Arts (SOTA). Two of them, harpsichordist Mervyn Lee and violinist Brenda Koh are founding members of Red Dot Baroque, Singapore’s first professional period music ensemble, while harpsichordist Yang Tien is the Dean of Arts at SOTA. 

Love those wigs!
J.S.Bach, G.F.Handel & D.Scarlatti.

The concert was a salute to three towering figures of baroque music, the Germans Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Frideric Handel, and the Italian Domenico Scarlatti, all of whom were born in that miracle year of 1685. The music was performed on two instruments by British harpsichord maker Andrew Garlick modelled after a French Goujon instrument of 1749. 

Opening the 90-minute concert was Bach’s Preludium & Fughetta in G major (BWV.902) performed by Lee. The sonority he coaxed from the harpsichord was gentle and clear, played as if improvised on the spot. There was none of the clattery harshness that British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham infamously mocked as “two skeletons copulating on a tin-roof”. The short fughetta (little fugue) would later serve as a model to a more fleshed-out fugue from Book Two of The Well-Tempered Clavier. 

Lee was joined by Koh for Bach’s Sonata for Violin and Continuo in G major (BWV.1021), a four-movement work that followed the slow-fast-slow-fast Sonata di chiesa (church sonata) form. Koh’s intonation and articulation were spot on, her violin possessed with a sweetness of tone. The successive movements were sufficiently contrasted which made the matter of vibrato (or lack of) seemed almost irrelevant. 

Closing the first half were two very different Sonatas in A major by Scarlatti (K.208 and 113) played by Yang. The first, marked Adagio e Cantabile, had an aria-like singing line, as if accompanied by a guitar. The busy second, Allegro, simulated the massed winds and drums of a marching band, delighting with the frequent crossing of hands. 

In the second half, the interloper was contemporary Finnish composer Jukka Tiensuu’s Fantango (1984), providing the shock of the new. A playful cross between the Spanish fandango dance and the more modern tango, the piece utilised microtones which toyed with bending of pitches (hence the second harpsichord) and Yang’s forearm clusters (many contiguous keys played at once) giving a new definition of a smash hit. 

Playing Handel’s Suite No.7 in G major (HWV.432), Lee closed the concert on a satisfying high. This was a collection of dance movements preceded by a French Overture. This movement typically opens with a solemn statement in dotted rhythm, and closes with an elaborate fugue which Lee took care to make out its various voices. 

What follows is a series of contrasted dances – including a slow Sarabande and faster Gigue - before ending with a Passacaille. This series of short variations is already well-known through Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen’s Passacaglia arranged for violin and cello. Hearing the original was revelatory, and the audience made that known with a warm reception.

All photographs by Huang Ying.

RHAPSODIC STORIES: EXHIBITION / Samuel Phua Saxophone Recital / Review

RHAPSODIC STORIES: EXHIBITION

SAMUEL PHUA, Saxophone

with MERVYN LEE, Piano

Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre

Wednesday (29 November 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 December 2023 with the title "Saxophonist Samuel Phua showcases technical prowess".

 

When it comes to classical saxophone in Singapore, one name invariably comes to mind: Samuel Phua. The young graduate from Finland’s famed Sibelius Academy was the first and only saxophonist invited to perform at the President’s Young Performers Concert in 2014, and has been a regular fixture in works requiring sax solos in Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s concerts ever since.

 

His recital partnered by pianist Mervyn Lee was an impressive showcase of technical prowess and repertoire he has inspired. No less than five Singaporean composers were represented, opening with London-based composition student Elliot Teo, whose three-movement Mixed Recital received its Singapore premiere.

 

Opening with alto sax alone, its atonal content was characterised by declamatory and seemingly improvised passages that sometimes hinted of jazz. The second movement was for piano left hand alone despite its many notes, while the third, Pas de deux, was for combined forces with the dance element being apparent later on.

 

The late Leong Yoon Pin’s Sketches (1984) was originally scored for oboe and piano. Its movements, recalling scenes in New Zealand, was heard on soprano sax, which relived the oboe’s plangency, well-suited for musical dissonance and dance-like moves. In the world premiere of pianist Mervyn Lee’s Sketches in Movements, contrasts between lyricism and playfulness were well brought out on alto sax.

 

Two rather more approachable works closed the concert’s first half. New York-based Koh Cheng Jin’s A Fleeting Perennity was inspired by a poem about Suntec City’s Fountain of Wealth. Alto sax was rewarded with lyrical moments accompanied by gentle piano ostinatos. Volume and tempos would rise, like sprayed water jets, but the work closed quietly.

 

The world premiere of Germaine Goh’s Portrait saw the first appearance of the large and unwieldy baritone saxophone. Described as a “charming” character study of Phua himself, it was good-humoured and whimsical, radiating warmth and sensitivity besides having surprises up the sleeve. That it closed theatrically with an ascending glissando wail and a loud fart also spoke volumes.

 

Starring saxophones:
Baritone, soprano, tenor & alto
(from right to left)

The concert’s second hald was devoted to one work, Jun Nagao’s arrangement of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Originally a piano solo, this version saw Phua playing four different saxophones. Although some of the work’s original mystique was lost, this was made up by many fiendishly difficult maneuvers demanded of a soloist.

 

Alto sax appeared most frequently, including the opening Promenade and The Old Castle, a tribute to Maurice Ravel’s famous orchestration employing the saxophone as the troubadour’s voice. Baritone sax was used for the lumbering oxcart Bydlo and imperious Polish Jew Samuel Goldenberg, while soprano sax accounted for the shrieky Schmuyle and the Ballet of The Unhatched Chicks. 

The alto saxophone’s full gamut of tricks and devices was reserved for Baba Yaga’s Hut and The Great Gate of Kiev, where Promenade would gloriously return and the evening brought to a rousing close.   

RIPPLES / Mervyn Lee Piano Recital / Joey Lau Violin Recital / Review

RIPPLES

MERVYN LEE, Piano Recital

JOEY LAU, Violin Recital

with Lim Yan, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Friday & Saturday 

(11 & 12 August 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 August 2023 with the title "Thought-provoking recitals by musical talent".

 

The Kris Foundation, founded by local philanthropist and music-lover Kris Tan, has been presenting concerts showcasing young Singaporean and Singapore-based musical talents since 2009. The roster of artists in its annual series of solo and chamber recitals now reads like a Who’s Who of the classical music scene, including violinists Alan Choo, Loh Jun Hong and Yang Shuxiang, pianists Abigail Sin and Azariah Tan, and harpist Laura Peh.

 

Pianist Mervyn Lee, who also performs harpsichord, viola da gamba and guitar in Red Dot Baroque, looks set to join this pantheon. His intellectually satisfying and demanding solo recital was the perfect showcase of breadth and depth. The two major works included Beethoven’s late Piano Sonata No.28 in A major (Op.101), which was Romantically inflected in his voicing of the opening movement’s main theme. Contrasts were sharply drawn for the second movement’s brisk march, before culminating with the finale’s triumphant play of counterpoint.   

 

Equally trenchant was Bartok’s Out Of Doors, a five-movement suite juxtaposing raw percussive violence with unusually lyrical asides. Most strikingly, its fourth movement entitled The Night’s Music was a inimitable study of silence punctuated by sounds of twittering insects and a nightingale’s call. All this tied in poetically with two selections from Spanish composer Enrique Granados’ Goyescas, displaying yearning in The Maiden and the Nightingale and rhythmic vigour in Fandango by Moonlight. The dance element was also mirrored in two swift Scarlatti Sonatas (K.396 & 427), which were dispatched with mercurial wit and panache.

 

Receiving its world premiere was young Singaporean composer Lim Kang Ning’s All The Bells At Once, a dreamily sonorous work that played on lingering single notes and varied intervals with  intendant resonances and echoes. One was reminded of piano pieces by two late great composers, the Hungarian Gyorgy Ligeti and Australian Peter Sculthorpe, the latter well-known for Asian and Aboriginal influences in his music.

 

On the following evening, Lim’s Memories Of A Daffodil for solo violin was premiered by violinist Joey Lau, who is presently pursuing post-graduate studies in Chicago. A shorter work, it opened with a long lyrical line, possibly of Chinese idiom, later roused into animation before being abruptly cut short. This might be a reflection on the transience of life, later echoed in the recital’s final work.

 

Her other solo was Eugene Ysaye’s Sonata (Op.27 No.3) or Ballade, encompassing a formidable arsenal of technical tricks and thrills which she duly delivered. Lau's acute sense of singing lines, by contrast, found just the right response in Prokofiev's Five Melodies (Op.35bis), originally written for wordless high voice, now partnered with pianist Lim Yan.

 

Both violinist and pianist were taxed to the max in two substantial sonatas. Beethoven’s early Sonata in E flat major (Op.12 No.3) offered an imperious show of virtuosity in its outer movements. In between, serenity and equanamity reigned in the slow movement. This sequence was repeated in Frenchman Francis Poulenc’s Violin Sonata, where seemingly whimsical and uproarious melodies belied something more sombre. Humour and wit were in long supply, but its finale turned to elegiac tones before closing on a total downer.

 

Read the well-written notes (by Lau herself), and one learns that the sonata was dedicated to the memory of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, murdered by fascists in the prime of his life. Whether musing on swooning nightingales or dying daffodils, these thought-provoking recitals show three young musical talents - pianist Mervyn Lee, violinist Joey Lau and composer Lim Kang Ning - to be prime prospects for Singapore’s musical future.  

For the record, the encores performed on both evenings were as follows:

11 August 2023 (Mervyn Lee)

TELEMANN Fantasy in G minor

SCRIABIN Poem in F sharp major, Op.32 No.1

12 August 2023 (Joey Lau and Lim Yan)

FAURE Apres un reve

DRIGO-HEIFETZ Valse Bluette

BACH BEATS CORONA / Red Dot Baroque / Review

BACH BEATS CORONA

Red Dot Baroque

Streamed on SISTIC Live

Sunday (6 September 2020)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 September 2020 with the title "Bach's life-affirming music for troubled times".

 

Musical groups in Singapore are slowly but surely getting a grip on the Covid-19 pandemic, with more online concerts being released on the Internet in lieu of live concerts. The latest was by Red Dot Baroque, Singapore’s only professional period instrument ensemble, with Bach Beats Corona.

 

The catchy title was borrowed from the ongoing worldwide movement performing Johann Sebastian Bach’s life-affirming music in these troubled times. The group’s founder and lead violinist Alan Choo played host by introducing the works, each performed by one to four players, all socially distanced and masked.

 

The concert opened with the Trio Sonata in G major (BWV 1039) for two flutes, viola da gamba and harpsichord. A delightul work which contains exactly the same music as the Viola Da Gamba Sonata No.1 (BWV.1027), its four movements alternated between a song-like countenance and contrapuntal busyness. Cheryl Lim and Rachel Ho on traverso flutes (baroque flutes) revelled in their starring roles, partnered by Mervyn Lee (gamba) and Gerald Lim (keyboard).

 

Each work was prefaced by a short movement in the same key from Bach’s Cello Suites, performed on baroque cello by Leslie Tan (from the T’ang Quartet). This included the familiar Prelude in G, Sarabande in C minor and Allemande in D major, all being movements possessed with a meditative quality. The last was played on a 5-stringed cello, producing a deep and long-breathed sonority.

 

The Violin Sonata No.4 in C minor (BWV.1017) is probably Bach’s best known accompanied violin sonata. If its 1^st movement sounded familiar, that was because it used the same theme as the hauntingly beautiful aria Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott (Have Mercy, My God) from Saint Matthew Passion. The instruments may be different, but the doleful spirit of contrition remained. Violinist Brenda Koh gave a sensitive reading, accompanied on obbligato harpsichord by Lee, a former child prodigy known as a polymath in all things baroque.

 

To illustrate Bach’s great sense of variety, the works chosen displayed a wealth of nuances and responses.  For example, there was a highly dramatic and almost improvisatory prelude that opened the Violin Sonata in E minor (BWV.1023), very unlike the other works. Violinist Placida Ho handled its surprising exuberance brilliantly, then keeping up the same exalted level in later movements. Here she was partnered by cellist Tan and harpsichordist Lim.

 

The 70-minute programme concluded with Trio Sonata in D minor (BWV.527) with violinists Choo and Gabriel Lee, backed by Tan and Lee on continuo. Originally conceived as an organ sonata, its three movement schema resembled the concerto form pioneered by the Italians, which Bach was undoubtedly familiar with. The duo voices of both soloists came through clearly in a spirited reading which could be described as a joyful romp.

This lovely concert is available to view on www.sistic.com.sg on a pay-as-you-please basis till 6 October 2020.

EVOLUTION / GABRIEL LEE Violin Recital / Review

EVOLUTION

GABRIEL LEE Violin Recital

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory 

Orchestral Hall

Saturday (31 March 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 April 2018 with the title "Enjoyable ride through violin's history".

In his 75-minute recital, Singaporean violinist Gabriel Lee gave a treatise on the history of the violin, performing on both baroque and modern violins. The first half belonged to the baroque. Both Arcangelo Corelli and Johann Paul von Westhoff pre-dated the giants J.S.Bach and Handel, and their sonatas he played did not conform to the usual four-movement form.

A sense of spontaneity pervaded Corelli's E major Sonata (Op.5 No.11), well expressed in the alternating slow and fast movements. As with period performance practice, very little vibrato was used by Lee and partner cellist Leslie Tan, with Mervyn Lee accompanying on harpsichord. Befitting one of the era's great violin virtuosos, a fast Gavotte completed the work, as if tacked on like an showy encore.

Westhoff's Sonata No.2 in A minor, also in 5 movements, sounded surprisingly modern for its time. The opening was marked by pointillist fragments from both violin and cello, before coalescing into busy counterpoint in the 2^nd movement. The 3^rd movement titled “Imitatione del liuto” saw Lee putting aside his bow and strumming the strings as if it were a lute. A similar timbre produced on the harpsichord (with mechanically plucked strings) gave the impression of a serenade for duet.

What are these people looking at?

Answer: the insides of a harpsichord

The classical era of Mozart and Beethoven was skipped, arriving instead at the late Romanticism of Ernest Chausson's Poéme. Here Lee played on a modern violin, luxuriating in the full flourish of vibrato which audiences are more accustomed to. After an extended piano introduction which Mervyn Lee delivered with requisite gravitas, Gabriel's solo entry was one of breathtaking intensity, grabbing listeners by the lapels without letting go.

This rhapsodic work dwelled in the deepest recesses of feeling and emotion, where Lee plumbed with a passion and concentration that was hard to surpass. Although tempered by a Franckian chorale that provided some respite, the music soared to a rapturous climax before receding gently.

The 20^th century was represented by Penang-born Singaporean composer Kam Kee Yong, now residing in Canada. His short showpiece Cicada was described by Lee as Singapore's answer to Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumble Bee. Delighting in its buzzing motifs and swooping slides, its eccentric bursts of energy provided a lively close to the recital proper.

If one wondered what a recorder placed on a chair was doing, it was part of Lee's encore act. This saw him play few bars of the violin, toot on the recorder and do a spot of beat-boxing. All these were recorded and layered by electronic means, controlled by a foot pedal and within seconds, he operated a virtual one-man-band. Here was a re-creation of a baroque passacaglia, over which he further improvised on his violin with snatches of Grieg, Tartini and more.

  

This 21^st century “back to baroque” gesture drew the loudest cheers, and one suspects Bach and company would not have minded in the least.