IMAGES OF EXOTIC LANDS / re:Sound / Review

 

IMAGES OF EXOTIC LANDS 

re:Sound 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Wednesday (13 November 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 November 2024 with the title "Impressive soloists and enjoyable romp by re:Sound".

If one thought that classical music was old-fashioned, staid and boring, one just needs to attend the latest concert by re:Sound, Singapore’s first professional chamber orchestra, for a serious rethink. Which famous orchestra had as its motto, “True Pleasure Is Serious Business”? That could very well apply to re:Sound’s collective identity as well. 

The concert opened with the world premiere of Cultural Medallion recipient Eric Watson’s Concerto Arabesque for flute and strings. A happy marriage of the Baroque concerto grosso and hallowed British string work tradition, its four movements were highly engaging and enjoyable. 

A more excellent soloist than Rachel Ho, familiar to concert-goers as Red Dot Baroque’s traverso player, would be hard to find. She comfortably surmounted the onerous technical challenges in its fast outer movements, yet yielded a silky smooth tone for the second movement’s filigreed and sinuous lines, accompanied by sliding string portamenti. 

Composer Eric Watson takes a bow.

The third movement’s slow tango oozed sensuousness over a palpable South American beat, and the solo arabesques for the finale had everyone’s attention captivated. Even its false ending had nobody fooled, with vociferous applause coming when it truly mattered. 

Programming Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin after Watson was elementary, a case of perfect symmetry. Its four neo-Baroque dance movements complemented and mirrored the earlier work. Fluidity of string playing defined the flowing opening Prelude, and the quirkily syncopated Forlane benefited from extrovert woodwind and discreet brass contributions. 

The slow Menuet was the only concession to formality, while the closing Rigaudon’s romp again had woodwinds in top form for its central interlude. Tay Kai Tze’s oboe stole the show, with cor anglais, flute and clarinet following up his good work. 

In case no one noticed, the entire first half was performed with the conspicuous absence of a conductor. For the second half, Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos had Adrian Chiang leading from the podium, if only to keep all the riotous elements in check. 

The impressive soloists were Nicholas Loh and Jonathan Shin, who had earlier played examples from the concerto during re:Sound founder Mervin Beng’s eloquent yet succinct preamble about its musical themes. Chief of these were tinklings of the Balinese gamelan, with pelog scales getting a workout, Mozartian niceties with a Gallic twist, and Parisian dancehall frivolities all wrapped up in three neat movements. 

Despite being very different pianistic personalities, Loh and Shin worked like hand and glove, with pinpoint precision and unfettered clangour. The hypnotic slow section at the first movement’s end was so filled with Oriental mystique that one could almost smell the incense. 

The joke-a-minute Finale, with fingers flying over both keyboards, seemed like too much of a good thing. However, the final word was left to the “gamelan” making its run of mass malleting before closing with several healthy slaps of the bottom. The duo’s encore of the uproarious Finale from Poulenc’s Sonata for piano four hands was just as rousingly received.

PULSE / Shane Thio, Nicholas Loh, Yiang Shan & Eugene Toh / Review

PULSE

Shane Thio & Nicholas Loh, Pianos

Yiang Shan & Eugene Toh, Percussion

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday (14 February 2023)

 

I cannot write with authority about contemporary music, so I will not try to, except to share what I got from this interesting programme of new music for two pianos and percussion. The performers this evening may be considered veterans in the field, having surveyed established classics of the repertoire, including Bela Bartok’s very well-known Sonata for two pianos and percussion and a work for this combo by George Crumb.

 

Every work on this Valentine’s Day evening (which I came sans wife, she will be compensated later, with another concert), especially the ensemble works, might have been Singaporean premieres. I am not certain but I cannot imagine anyone else with the abilities to master these works and present them publicly in a convincing way.  

 

Percussionists are vital in any orchestra, the reason being they provide the pulse for music to move along (think Ravel’s Bolero!), and without them, things can grind into a sludge. There were two works for percussion alone, opening with Jaouen Rudolf’s Elescarf (2014) for snare drum and three crotales, performed by (Sng) Yiang Shan.

 

If one thought a percussive beat to be monotonous, think again, as hers was a multi-layered and involving performance, and when the crotales (or zimbeln, those tiny cymbals heard to magnificent effect near the end of Debussy’s Prelude l’apres midi dun faune), were struck, there was even semblance of pitch.

 

Just as absorbing was Yousif Sheronick’s Manhattan Avenue, a primer for frame drum solo performed by Eugene Toh. This work was performed standing, sitting, the drum struck by hand and brush, and also involved konnakol, a form of scat vocalisation in Carnatic rhythm, albeit conducted at a measured tempo.  

 

The works involving two pianos opened with John Adams’s Hallelujah Junction (1996), arguably the most familiar work on show, performed by Shane Thio and Nicholas Loh. In three movements, this was not an overlong minimalist work, but the sheer amount of notes to be performed in perfect synchronisation and without skipping a beat or loss of pace must be hell to accomplish. And yet they did, their sheer doggedness and resilience conquering the odds, seemingly with lots to spare.

 

In Steve Reich’s Quartet (2013) for two vibraphones and  two pianos, the tasks were now doubled. Reich’s earlier works have been maddeningly repetitive, but not so this work as its colours and textures were allowed a shorter duration of time to change and metamorphose, thus transforming the complexion the work.

 

The harmonies were strangely soothing and warm, and there seemed lot to enjoy through its three movements (fast - slow - fast) and 18-minute or so run. The slow central movement had a New Age feel to it but was all too brief, before the tempo picked up again for a vibrant close. The quartet of Sng, Toh, Thio and Low gave an enthralling performance, which I cannot imagine to be bettered in within this island state. This evening was more than just an hour well spent.

27TH SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO FESTIVAL / Review

27^TH SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

PIANO FESTIVAL

Kseniia Vokhmianina, Li Churen, 

Nicholas Loh & Chang Yun-Hua, 

Piano Recitals

Victoria Concert Hall

Thursday to Sunday (3-6 June 2021)

 

AN EXTRAORDINARY TIME

Zhang Haiou, Piano Recital

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (5 June 2021)

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 9 June 2021 with the title "Extraordinary weekend of piano". 

The Singapore International Piano Festival was cancelled last year because of the Covid pandemic. It returned this year to limited audiences of 50 members per recital, featuring a cast of young pianists who are presently based here. There was however an international flavour with artists from Ukraine and Taiwan alongside two Singaporeans. Significantly, three of the four had completed undergraduate musical studies in local institutions, and for the first time, women pianists outnumbered the men.

 

On the opening evening, Kseniia Vokhmianina’s inclusion of Three Preludes by Ukrainian composer Levko Revutsky was an exploration of nostalgia and longing. The late Romantic and Slavic flavour, reminiscent of Rachmaninov and Scriabin, looked back to a bygone era of harmonic opulence. This was prefaced by J.S.Bach’s First Partita, six dance movements crisply articulated and buoyantly dispatched. The short preludes also ushered in Rachmaninov’s Six Musical Moments, more extended essays that traversed from grief to ecstasy through lyricism and prodigious fingerwork. Vokhmianina’s grand manner of pianism follow in the illustrious tradition of great compatriots like Cherkassky, Gilels and Richter.

 

It was curious to see music of American avant-gardist George Crumb (born 1929) championed by Singaporean pianists. This tradition was started by Margaret Leng Tan, and now carried on by Li Churen and Nicholas Loh. Crumb was a pioneer of the “string piano”, where the instrument’s interior is played as an extension of the traditional keyboard.

In Crumb’s Five Pieces (1962), Li plucked, strummed and scraped the strings, creating a nether-worldly soundscape that was atonal, violent yet intermittently soothing, but always provocative. Her programme was a masterclass of sonority, opening with her own Prelude After Bach, an improvisation before launching directly into the eight rhapsodic pieces of Schumann’s Kreisleriana.

 

Similarly, Crumb’s timbral ambiguities fused almost seamlessly with Ravel’s impressionistic Miroirs (Mirrors). Fantastic visions of night moths, sad birds, a boat assailed by surging waves and pealing bells gave way to the most extroverted reading possible of Alborada del gracioso (Morning Song of the Jester). Li’s sense of imagination and colour knows little bounds.    

 

The following evening, Loh’s take on Crumb’s Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik (A Little Midnight Music, 2001), built around a motif from jazzman Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round Midnight, was  just as impressive. In addition to afore-mentioned string piano techniques, Loh struck the piano’s wood, threw in quotes from Debussy, Wagner and Richard Strauss, before shouting out in Italian a countdown to midnight.

 

The companion work was Frederic Rzewski’s North American Ballades, essentially fantasies based on popular melodies. Its fourth and final piece, Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, seemed custom-made for Loh’s leather-clad burliness, with a bruising feat of piano pugilism, where palms, arms and fists rendered the keyboard black and blue.     

 

Completely separate from the Piano Festival and presented by Altenburg Arts were two recitals by Chinese pianist Zhang Haiou, the first overseas-based pianist to perform in Singapore since last year’s circuit breaker. Two pieces of transcribed Bach (by Samuil Feinberg and Dinu Lipatti) established a rich tonal palette for two late Beethoven sonatas that followed. Romantic era outpourings were served without reservation or apology. In the opening movements, mellowness and fluidity (Op.109) were contrasted with defiant vehemence (Op.111). Both works converged with variations on hymn-like subjects to  close. Zhang’s stunning mastery of the narrative was not without humour too, such as cheekily inserting the Ode To Joy motif in one of the final sonata’s variations.  

Two masterly sets of variations also distinguished Taiwan-born Chang Yun-Hua’s recital that closed the piano festival on a high. Aaron Copland’s Piano Variations were astringent but compact, carved out with a granite-like resolve, while Brahms’s Handel Variations gradually built on its expansivity, culminating with the most mighty of fugal finales. The 21-year-old’s enormous range also encompassed Beethoven’s programmatic “Les Adieux” Sonata and Spaniard Isaac Albeniz’s lilting Almeria from Iberia, both handled with sensitivity and idiomatic nous.

 

Four evenings and five recitals of piano music, uniformly of high standard and without a weak link, would scarcely be thought possible during a pandemic. One can only be grateful by quoting the title of Zhang Haiou’s recital, and count this as “an extraordinary time” indeed.   

  

For the record, the encores performed at the end of each recital were as follows:

 

Kseniia Vokhmianina (3 June, 7.30 pm):

Rachmaninov Elegie in E flat minor Op.3 No.1

Marcello-Bach Adagio in D minor

 

Li Churen (4 June, 7.30 pm):

Li Churen Butterfly

Li Churen Llama’s Land

 

Zhang Haiou (5 June, 3 pm):

Chopin Nocturne in C sharp minor Op.Posth

Chopin Nocturne in E flat major, Op.9 No.2

 

Nicholas Loh (5 June, 7.30 pm)

Kapustin Etude in Seconds, Op.68 No.1

Gulda Prelude and Fugue

 

Chang Yun-Hua (6 June, 7.30 pm)

Balakirev Islamey

 

 

INSTRUMENTAL CONCERT 2018 / Association of Composers (Singapore) / Review

INSTRUMENTAL CONCERT 2018

Association of Composers (Singapore)

Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre 
Recital Hall

Saturday (8 September 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 September 2018 with the title "12 composers, a myriad of styles".

Exactly how many composers are there in Singapore? The true figure will perhaps never be known. This chamber concert by the Association of Composers (Singapore) featured 12 of them, with none of the usual suspects patronised by the national orchestras. All belong to the Chinese-speaking community and many hail from the pioneer generation of citizens.

All the composers were seated in the
front row of the recital hall.

The works heard may be grouped as pieces for piano solo, erhu or violin accompanied by piano, and string quartet. These displayed a broad spectrum of influences, inspirations and styles, and one may surmise that there is no singular Singaporean way of composition. At least, not yet.

The concert opened and closed with works for erhu and piano, performed by Ng Rui Jun and Irene Law respectively. The huqin’s voice ensured a Chinese feel about them, while the accompanying piano sounded somewhat incongruent with Western harmonies and timbres. A guzheng or yangqin might have made more sense.

Lee Ngoh Wah’s My True Love was a short lyrical romance while Lee Chee Kung’s Erhu Capriccio was the most authentically Chinese-sounding work of the evening. Quek Yong Siu’s Garden Under The Morning Sun was an extended fantasy with the mimicry of birdsong, providing the original meaning to tweeting or twittering. The 3^rd movement of Toh Heng Guan’s First Erhu Concerto luxuriated in unusual harmonies and a virtuosic cadenza.

For violin and piano, violinist Siew Yi Li performed his brother Xiao Chun Yuan’s Homeland, which alternated between major and minor keys while engendering a sense of patriotism and nostalgia. Chiew Keng Hoon’s Little Creature delighted in dissonances and jagged rhythms, simulating some flitting stinging insect, while his Fantasy was a true study in the atonal idiom of  the Second Viennese School.

Lian Sek Lin’s Moonlight Song had the hint of bel canto but with offbeat harmonies to unsettle and create tension. Lin Ah Leck’s A Wandering Life was a rhapsodic fantasy in the Chinese idiom culminating in a striding march. Tan Chan Boon’s Ostinatissimo was surprisingly gentle as he employed a slow chordal bass over which the violin fashioned a masterly passacaglia.

Pianist Nicholas Loh, who accompanied Siew, went solo in Xiao’s Tensions, built on an obstinate idee fixe, and hammered out Lian’s Hibiscus Variations, based ironically on a march theme, played fortissimo throughout with a Satiesque sense of irony.

The violin and piano duo of Mac Chang and Elaine Xu contributed Lee Yuk Chuan’s Remembrance and Rondo, contrasting sentimental lyricism with vigorous dance rhythms. Both works conjured the aroma of Central Asia, and the violinist was commended for spicing up the Rondo with Paganinian touches.

The cellist's score of
Frederick Ng's Dance In Harmony.

Two works played by the Melody String Quartet completed the programme. Lee Khiok Hua’s Autumn Scene was a Chinese-styled dance with alternating fast and slow sections, while Frederick Ng Eng Thong’s Dance In Harmony a heady mix of Malay motifs, minimalism, syncopation and counterpoint. Reliving a rowdy Chingay procession, this was arguably the most interesting work, a veritable rojak one might consider quintessentially Singaporean. 

All the composers
and some of the performers.

Composer Tan Chan Boon with his students,
the next generation of Singaporean composers?

MUSIC FOR A SUMMER DAY / Nicholas Loh, Shane Thio, Sng Yiang Shan & Eugene Toh / Review

MUSIC FOR A SUMMER EVENING

Nicholas Loh & Shane Thio, Pianos

Sng Yiang Shan & Eugene Toh, Percussion

Lee Foundation Theatre

Thursday (5 January 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 January 2017 with the title "Beauty amid chaos".

The piano is a percussion instrument because it makes music when metal wires are struck by hammers. It is in fact the most highly-evolved of all percussion as it can be made to sing or sound like an orchestra. This innovative and very engaging concert of 20^th century music for piano and percussion proved that, and some more.

Its first half presented American avant-garde composer George Crumb's Music For A Summer Evening (1974), also known as Makrokosmos III, a reference to Hungarian composer Bela Bartok's Mikrokosmos for piano. Its five movements showcased the pianos – amplified and with their lids removed – played in every conceivable manner possible alongside a battery of percussion.

Crumb's enduring trademark was getting the pianists to play directly on the piano's strings, either by plucking, scraping, striking or “preparing” with foreign objects, thus not limiting its scope to 88 depressed keys. The effect was at once mystical and ethereal with an array of tinkling, metallic bell sounds, alternating with loud and violent crashes when the score demands for it.

At certain points, pianist Nicholas Loh had to drop a crotale (a small metal cymbal) heavily onto the strings, or slide a stick over the gourd-like guiro while letting its sound reflect against the strings. Percussionists Sng Yiang Shan and Eugene Toh were themselves busy with their “kitchen” department, which included shaking a large metal sheet, rattling a flexatone, sliding bows on cymbals and non-percussive activity like vocalising, playing a recorder and blowing on slide whistles. Everything save the kitchen sink.

All this seems to suggest a work of anarchic disorder and total chaos, but reality was something else. Well-structured and economically choreographed, there were many instances of transcending beauty eloquently expressed, including Messiaen-like birdcalls, and in the final movement Music Of The Starry Night, a Bachian chorale that echoed through to the work's serene and quiet end.

The second half was devoted to Bartok's masterpiece Sonata For Two Pianos & Percussion (1937), considered the “grandfather” of all piano-percussion works. Its three movements seemed comparatively straight forward and even conservative, but more than made up with its sheer density of themes and textures.      

    

It mysterious opening was very well-judged with Toh's timpani slide and low piano octaves from Shane Thio, one of two pianists in its Singapore premiere over 20 years ago. The pace gathered and sonorities piled up in counterpoint for the 1^st movement's virile main theme. Despite the music's percussiveness which led up to the climactic syncopated fugue, there was no shaking off the notion of Bachian influence.

What about the middle movement's “night music”, comprising ostinato figures and incisive interjections? Resembling the scurrying nocturnal world of birds and insects, were these also not heard in earlier music?  Loud applause and cheers greeted the conclusion of the Hungarian folk dance-influenced finale for the performers' fastidious efforts, but credit also goes to the symmetry of excellent programming by bringing Bartok and Crumb together.     

PAGANINI LOST AND FOUND / A Lecture-Recital at NAFA

Paganini Lost and Found was the title of a lecture-recital given at the Lee Foundation Theatre of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts on Wednesday 14 September 2016. It appears to be a new approach to public music education adopted by the Academy, involving an informal discussion between faculty members and performances by students and alumni. 

The talk about Niccolo Paganini and the legacy spawned by his famous Caprice No.24 was moderated by composer-lecturer Zechariah Goh Toh Chai and the information provided to the audience was simple and avoided all technical jargon. Attended by a fairly sizeable audience including many children (who were well-behaved), this looks like something NAFA could do more of to make classical music approachable to lay-people.

The concert began with Chan Yoong Han
performing Paganini's Caprice No.24
with all its fiendish variations.

The panel of violinist Chan Yoong Han,
Dean of Music School Lim Yau and pianist
Nicholas Loh discussed about Paganini's legacy.
Just look at Nicholas' space-age boots. 

Young pianist Chen Yue performed Liszt's
Paganini Etude No.6, which was a literal
transcription of the caprice on piano.

The duo of Song Yuexuan and Zou Yuanxu
gave an excellent performance on 2 pianos of
Lutoslawski's Paganini Variations,
filled with harmonic and dynamic quirks.

Winnie Chua performed Robert Muczynski's
Desperate Measures with much aplomb,
a jazzy look at the popular theme.

Arguably the best performance of the evening
came from saxophonists Michellina Chan & Alexis Seah
with pianist Jessica Leong in Jun Nagao's Paganini Lost,
a most exuberant jazz showpiece.