CD Reviews (The Straits Times, March 2013)

Singaporean Classics

GENUS

Singapore Original Compositions

For Niibori Guitar Orchestra

NUS Centre For The Arts / ****

A Niibori guitar orchestra is an ensemble formed by nine different groups of guitars, each with specific registers of pitches, functioning like a choir of strummed sonorities. GENUS (Guitar Ensemble of the National University of Singapore) was founded in 1981 by Singapore’s “Father of the Guitar” Alex Abisheganaden and remains the nation’s premier Niibori ensemble. This disc comprises eight works representing three generations of composers associated with the group. Abisheganaden’s own Huan Yin - Vanakam and Gala Nexus (both 1995) are the most traditional and least complex. The former espouses the “Nanyang style” of composition, combining Chinese and Indian influences with its use of the erhu and sitar.

Current GENUS conductor Robert Casteels contributes the most ambitious work, the 20-minute long El Jardin de la Vita y la Muerte (The Garden of Life and Death, 2010) which combines voices, percussion, flamenco dance with the blood ritual of bullfights. Its visual spectacle is unfortunately lost in this audio recording. Taped sounds are heard in City Scape (2012, the chaos of urban construction) by Gao Yang and Casteels, and Kansalesa’s Bones (2011, a dog’s excited whimpers) by Balraj Gopal. Traditional Asian instruments also appear in Gopal’s Satyagraha (2011) and Chua Jon Lin’s Autumn Blues (2011). Finally, The Phunk Experiment (2011) by NUS students Alvin Ng and Calista Lee, a very listenable pop-inspired number with synthesisers and the disco beat, represents the future of the ensemble. Listen, and be surprised.

This recording retails at $10 and is available at the GENUS Concert on 24 March 2013. 

BOOK IT: INTROSPECTION / REFLECTION

Guitar Ensemble of NUS

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory 
24 March 2013, 7.30 pm  

Tickets at $16 

E-mail: nusguitarensemble@gmail.com 
Tel: Stephen at 9891 3312  

GREAT RUSSIAN SYMPHONIES

Naxos 8.501059 (10 CDs) / ***1/2

It looks like the major record labels have come up with the strategy of marketing multiple-disc sets, which retail at below super-budget price (at $6 per disc)  to entice the potential buyer as CD sales fall worldwide. With Naxos’s vast catalogue accrued over 25 years, it is possible to do just that. However, does one really want to hear the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra from Katowice conducted by Adrian Leaper and Antoni Wit play Tchaikovsky’s last three symphonies? The performances and recordings are more than competent but hardly world-beating. The same would apply to Prokofiev’s First and Fifth Symphonies or Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony from the national orchestras of Ukraine and Ireland respectively.

There are however exceptions, like an excellent Shostakovich Fifth Symphony, with its agonised final pages (very Russian indeed!) milked to the max from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by the dynamic young Russian Vasily Petrenko, or Borodin’s Second Symphony from the Seattle Symphony with Gerard Schwarz. The Shostakovich Seventh Symphony “Leningrad” from the Russian Philharmonic and Dmitry Yablonsky is also highly competitive. The rarities here are little-known symphonies by Glazunov, Kalinnikov and Myaskovsky, included for good measure. Naxos provides full programme notes, which are a definite plus for the first time listener. A gauntlet has been thrown for the Universal group of labels and their big-name orchestras to beat, which should not be too difficult.

This box-set retails at $59.90 at HMV 

Naxos Recordings by Cho-Liang Lin: Review

Here are a couple of reviews of recordings by violinist Cho-Liang Lin on the Naxos label. The first appeared in The Straits Times (30 May 2008) and the second on The Flying Inkpot.

GEORG TINTNER Chamber Music
CHO-LIANG LIN, Violin
HELEN HUANG, Piano
Naxos 8.570258 / Rating ****

The Vienna-born conductor Georg Tintner (1917-1999) is better remembered for his recorded cycle of Bruckner symphonies on the Naxos label. His little known original chamber compositions are now revealed for the first time on record. Youthful works completed before he turned 30, these dabbled with atonality but remain largely accessible. His possible influences: the Second Viennese School (Alban Berg in particular), prodigious film-music composer Erich Korngold and even virtuoso violinist Fritz Kreisler.

The most substantial work is a 25-minute Violin Sonata in four movements, which sounds modern on first acquaintance but retains substantial vestiges of Romantic sentimentalism. Finely crafted, it repays further listening. His Chopin Variations for piano (after the very brief Prelude in A major, Op.28 No.7) is witty and inventive while two funereal pieces – On the Death of a Friend and Trauermusik – uncannily foretell his tragic end by his own hand after being stricken by cancer. The high profile performers, both of Chinese descent, perform the music most sympathetically.

GORDON CHIN SHI-WEN
Double Concerto for Violin and Cello

Formosa Seasons for Violin and Strings
CHO-LIANG LIN, Violin

& FELIX FAN, Cello
Kansas City Symphony / MICHAEL STERN

Naxos 8.570221 / Rating ****

One could be forgiven for suspecting that Brahms and Vivaldi or Piazzolla had been ripped off, based on the titles of these concertos alone. But fear not, Taiwanese-born Eastman-trained Gordon Chin is a fine craftsman whose music can hold its own in the already crowded world of new compositions.

Chin’s idiom in both string concertos is tonal and accessible by 20th century standards, ranging from Waltonian wit and Bernsteinesque sense of pacing to the hair-pulling dissonances favoured by composers like Schnittke. Some parts could also pass off as well-written film music, in the manner of Bernard Hermann (think the score of Psycho, for example). All this may suggest formulaic eclecticism but Chin manages to make his music sound convincing, and definitely worth revisiting.

There isn’t much that is Chinese in the music. Only in the Double Concerto’s slow second movement, A Flowering Sacrifice, are there hints of Chin’s Chinese heritage – a powerful brooding lament with deftly placed portamenti and subtle use of percussion. Equally engaging is the third movement In Expectation, a nostalgic waltz reminiscent of sickly-sweet and demented “haunted house” music.

The Formosa Seasons were composed for Cho-Liang Lin as a companion to Vivaldi’s classic. In reality, they are as different as chalk and cheese. There are four poems (translated into English) to accompany each of the seasons, which begin with summer and close with the onset of spring. The music is more angular and spiky here than in the Double Concerto, but at 21 minutes, this engaging work may prove to be more programmable in the long run.

The Kansas City Symphony under Michael Stern (who definitely knows something about China, having followed his father Isaac in From Mao to Mozart) play well, and this enterprise benefits from having two excellent soloists on board.