ENGLISH PIANO TRIOS / Trio Anima Mundi / Review

ENGLISH PIANO TRIOS

Trio Anima Mundi

Divine Art 25158 / TT: 77’35”

 

Ever since Haydn dreamt about the idea of partnering a keyboard with violin and cello, the genre of the piano trio really took off. Like the string quartet (which Haydn also pioneered), the piano trio became a vehicle of musical expression that helped define the history and performance of chamber music. However, how many piano trios does one actually get to hear regularly in concert?

 

Perhaps not more than two dozen, including the likes by Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Ravel and Shostakovich, to name the usual suspects. This is where Australia’s Trio Anima Mundi fills in the gaping lacunae. Established in 2008, its ongoing project of Piano Trio Archaeology aims to revive a rich legacy of piano trios lost to time and posterity, by performing neglected and forgotten works. Its second album is wholly dedicated to five late Romantic English composers, whose waning fortunes have been mostly undeserved. 

Of these names, only Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (composer of the once popular cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast) and Rutland Boughton (of The Immortal Hour fame) are perhaps familiar, albeit at the fringes of one’s memory. Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), of mixed English and African parentage, did use African themes in his music, but his 9-minute-long Trio in E minor was not one of these. Its idiom is closer to Brahms and Dvorak, the finale being a vigorous Allegro con furiant, although shorter than most of the Hungarian or Slavonic Dances.  

 

Boughton (1878-1960) was well-known for the exploration and incorporation of Celtic themes in his music. His Celtic Prelude: The Land of Heart’s Desire packs in modal melodies in its compact seven minutes which end with somewhat of an anti-climax. More satisfying is the Folk Song Fantasy by James Cliffe Forrester (1869-1940), the winning piano trio entry at the 1917 Corbett Competition, which had the stipulation of a phantasie based on local folksongs from the composer’s home county. Its totally engaging 13 minutes are time well spent.

 

The Piano Trio No.1 in G major (composed 1889) by Rosalind Ellicott (1857-1924), at 29 minutes, is the most substantial work in this collection. It is also the most conservative, its pleasing melodies and dance-like rhythms being no more modern than her contemporary Edward Elgar at his pastoral best. The slow movement Adagio has lyrical Schumannesque moments to die for.

 

The Trio in A minor Op.22 (1921) by Harry Waldo Warner (1874-1945) is the most modern sounding work in the album. Winner of the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Prize, it is also the most satisfying; combining Romantic, fantasy and modal/pentatonic elements in an edgy, coherent and never random manner. It will actually make a good companion to the Ravel piano trio (in the same key) for any recital or disc.

 

This is a very enjoyable and well-filled disc of virtually unknown music, performed with passion and conviction by the Trio Anima Mundi, ensemble-in-residence of the International Academy of Musical Arts in Melbourne, Victoria. The recorded sound is realistic and of demonstration quality, a hallmark of Divine Art recordings.

Photographs from MINA ILANO'S CELLOBRATION!

MINA ILANO'S CELLOBRATION!

The Blue Room @ The Arts House

Sunday (1 July 2018)

A musician's legacy may be measured by the performances, recordings or fine reviews one has garnered over the years. More often, it is one's legacy as a teacher and mentor that is most treasured. 

The Philippines-born cellist Mrs Herminia Ilano has been in Singapore for close to 40 years, having been a pioneer member of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra since its inception in 1979. In those years in the 1980s and 90s, she became one of Singapore's most respected cello teachers. A fair number of her students have themselves turned professional and are leading lights in Singapore's musical scene today.

Five of them came together to perform in a concert celebrating her 80th birthday this year. Five years ago, a similar concert was held at the same venue for her 75th birthday. By the looks of things, there should be another birthday bash in five years' time as well, as Mrs Ilano is still actively teaching, having an average of two students a day!  

The cellists starring in this concert were:

Chan Wei Shing, 

Singapore Symphony Orchestra 

& New Opera Singapore conductor

Leslie Tan, T'ang Quartet
& Yong Siew Toh Conservatory 

Song Woon Teng, 

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Loke Hoe Kit, freelance cellist and concert organiser

Noella Yan, cellist based in Melbourne.

The concert opened with Leslie Tan, Noella Yan, Song Woon Teng and Chan Wei Shing performed Yuriy Leonovich's transcription of the Prelude from J.S.Bach's Suite No.5 in C minor. The piece already sounds rich on solo cello, so imagine how it would have sounded on four cellos! 

Mina listens intently to her former student's performances.

The duo of Loke Hoe Kit and Song Woon Teng were accompanied by pianist Selena Lai in Handel's Sonata in G minor (Op.2 No.8) as transcribed by H.Beyer. The work was in four movements - alternating slow and fast - in the sonata da chiesa form. 

Then it was the turn of Leslie Tan and Noella Yan in Jean-Baptiste Barriere's Sonata No.10, and they were joined by Selena in a Shostakovich Prelude, one of those short and very melodious pieces written without a hint of irony. 

Loke Hoe Kit and Chan Wei Shing returned to play four movements from Reinhold Gliere's 10 Duos Op.53. Despite being a 20th century Russian composer, Gliere's works are romantic in character and there was much virtuosity on show in the fast movements.

The final work was Wilhelm Fitzenhagen's Ave Maria Op.41, which is as gorgeous and operatic a work can get. Tugging on the heartstrings, that cannot be many dry eyes at its conclusion. By the way, Fitzenhagen was the cellist for whom Tchaikovsky wrote his Rococo Variations.  

Mrs Ilano was the most vociferous in applauding
her ex-students. She had certainly taught them well. 

At the end of the concert, Mrs Ilano was asked to say a few words. She expressed her gratitude and how fortunate she was to figure in the lives of this Singapore generation of cellists when they were young and growing up. We, are indeed fortunate to have had her help mould and shape our musical scene through the decades, and the results are nothing short of spectacular.

COMING HOME / Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra / Review

COMING HOME

Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra

SOTA Concert Hall

Sunday (13 April 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 April 2014 with the title "Impressive acrobatics performed on the cello".

Curious fact: The Singaporean who has had most concertos performed this millennium is Bernard Tan, a National University of Singapore physics professor who composes in his free time. Following the first performances of his Piano Concerto (2002), Violin Concerto (2006) and Guitar Concerto (2013) by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, his Cello Concerto received its world premiere by its dedicatee Noella Yan with the Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra conducted by Adrian Tan.

Yan is a Singaporean cellist residing in Australia, and daughter of the orchestra’s founding conductor Yan Yin Wing. This concerto marked her return to Singapore and to performing after a lay-off to mother two young boys. Any concessions to technical ability were dispensed with in this demanding work that called for utmost concentration and no little agility.

In a way, Tan resembles the Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian in that he uses a few simple themes of local and ethnological flavour and works these exhaustively in a show of soloistic exuberance. The opening movement balanced a repetitive scherzo-like first motif with a lyrical second subject of Asian origin, while the central slow movement was a seamless Chinese melody of Tan’s own device. Here Yan’s cantabile playing, full-voiced yet never cloying, invitingly came to the fore.

The finale took off in a head of steam, in a perpetual movement that obliged the soloist to jump through a seemingly unending series of hoops. The orchestra, hitherto mostly supportive in role, saw its flautist, oboist and clarinettist reciprocating in florid flourishes of their own. The ante had been upped, and following an acrobatic cadenza by Yan, the concerto closed on a dizzying aplomb.

The concert began with just the first movement of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. While that might sound incomplete, it had the effect of an overture. The orchestra warmed up quickly to conductor Tan’s cues, and there was some very satisfying playing from the strings, especially the cello section in the movement’s most familiar melody.

Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony closed the concert. Conductor Tan spoke informally about the moods that coloured the work, and the transformations from darkness to light as the music progressed. While there were moments in its four movements which taxed the musicians and thus revealing their amateur endeavours, these were more than made up by the passion exhibited in the playing.

While clarinettist Ian Lam and French horn Darren Sim impressed with their solos, it was the general ensemble that rose to each climactic high with brass in imperious form. It was not difficult to follow the thread; pensiveness in the slow movement, a more relaxed waltz rhythm for the third movement, before the all-out triumph to end the symphony. This orchestra has made tremendous strides since the homecoming of its music director from his studies. Long may this continue.

Composer Bernard Tan with his wife Jennie.

Music lovers, not politicians:
Mr Goh Kien Chee (son of Dr Goh Keng Swee) with
Dr Lee Suan Yew (brother of MM Lee Kuan Yew).