UNBOXING THE ORGAN / SAYS HU / Phoon Yu & Lorong Boys / Ding Yi Music Ensemble / Review

UNBOXING THE ORGAN

Phoon Yu (Organ) and Lorong Boys

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (1 October 2023), 4 pm

 

SAYS HU

Ding Yi Music Company

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (1 October 2023), 7.30 pm

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 October 2023 with the title "Classics made approachable in innovative show; Ding Yi shines spotlight on huqin".

 

Classical music can be daunting for newcomers but innovative programmes can make appreciating the classics so much easier. That has been the approach of local organist-composer Phoon Yu and Lorong Boys, comprising David Loke (violin), Jonathan Shin (piano), Samuel Phua (saxophone), Eugene Chew (double bass and electric bass) and Joachim Lim (drums), in this 45-minute concert attended by many children.

 

Originally billed as a lecture, it was more a mini-history of the organ / classical music with boring bits left out. The comedic tone was set with Phoon opening with J.S.Bach’s Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring as the Boys trooped out in monastic habits. Phoon played the geeky character of Kevin from the Bukit Batok Benedictine Brotherhood who travels in time to be inducted as the newest member of the gang.

Kevin (Phoon Yu) gets knighted
as one of the Lorong Boys.

 

Along the way, there were nifty arrangements of the Sunrise from Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, now named Thus Rocked Zarathustra in its expanded heavy metal guise, Prokofiev’s Montagues And Capulets (from Romeo And Juliet) and Paganini’s Caprice No.24. It was all tongue-in-cheek, not to be taken too seriously. Did anybody notice that Shin’s The Other Swan for violin and piano was an inversion of The Swan by Saint-Saen, sounding more impressionistic, like Debussy’s Clair De Lune?

 

On a lighter side, the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby made an appearance with Shin’s none-too-shabby singing voice. The concert closed with Handel’s Passacaglia in G minor, better known in Halvorsen’s violin-cello arrangement. This “big band” version truly made its short variations rock.

 

Despite the title Says Hu (Hu Shuo in Chinese, literally meaning talking nonsense), Ding Yi Music Company’s chamber concert was far less irreverent but no less relevent. The showcase of huqins (bowed string instruments) opened with a huqin quartet led by Fred Chan Hong Wei. This unit functions like a Western string quartet, with instruments covering different registers including gaohu, erhu, zhonghu and cello.

 

Luo Mai Shuo’s scherzo-like Dance On Strings and Phang Kok Jun’s beautiful Rhapsody showed there was not much of a divide separating east and west. Add two more players, including double bass, the string sextet that resulted served Bao Yuankai’s Going To West Gate well. It included a lovely episode with Chan’s gaohu accompanied by plucked pizzicatos.

 

This 100-minute concert’s second half featured works with prominent solos. Bassist Chee Jun Hong displayed a vocally agile side in ancient song Yangguan Refrains, arranged by Huo Junxia / Lim Kiong Pin, accompanied by yangqin, sheng and percussion. Erhu player Chen Ning’s take on Li Bo Chan’s Reminiscences Of The Silk Road was more abstract and modernist. Its Central Asian idiom, accompanied by erhu, yangqin and ruan, was more subtly handled than most works of this persuasion. Both soloists were excellent.

 

The most impressive work saw guest huqin player Li Bao Shun, concertmaster of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, in the Singapore premiere of Zhang Zheng’s Sword Sorrow, conducted by Wong De Li. He was accompanied by ten players including piano, harp and percussion in an elegiac work that mourned the losses of war. It opened dramatically but settled into moving plaints showing the erhu's enormous emotional range, with suona offering a conflicting ceremonial voice. The cinematic quality was also heightened with vocalisations by orchestra members as the work closed.

 

That could have been the end, but it was left for the string sextet to close with Hunting The Tiger Up The Mountain, arranged by Chen Chunyuan / Sim Boon Yew, the perfectly-paced chase piece to conclude the evening on a virtuosic high.

 

Says Hu photographs by 

Andrew Bi Photography,  

courtesy of Ding Yi Music Company.

ILLUMINATIONS / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

ILLUMINATIONS

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (5 November 2022)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 November 2022 with the title "Symphonic celebration befitting Esplanade's 20th".

 

On 11 October 2002, Esplanade Concert Hall was inaugurated by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in a concert led by Shui Lan that featured a world premiere by a Singaporean composer, a double concerto and Beethoven’s Choral Symphony. The symphony concert to commemorate the art centre’s twenty years, part of the festival In New Light – A Season Of Commissions, had a similar of combo of works but with a more local twist.

Photo: Esplanade

 

On the podium was award-winning young Singaporean conductor Lien Boon Hua, who opened the concert with Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz’s Overture (1943). This is less of an unusual choice given that Lien was formerly an assistant conductor of the Polish National Radio Orchestra. With strings committed to virtuosic runs at the outset, answered by nippy woodwinds and incisive percussion, its form resembled Glinka’s popular Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture, making for a very effective opener.

 

Photos: Esplanade

The double concerto this occasion featured as soloists the More Than Music duo of violinist Loh Jun Hong and Abigail Sin in Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Piano and Violin in D minor. A precocious work by a 14-year-old, its overlong 40 minutes was guilty of note-spinning and over-indulgent display for its own sake.

 

Photo: Esplanade

It nevertheless had Mozartian moments of sturm und drang (storm and stress) and nice melodies for which the duo was grateful to dwell upon. Loh’s singing violin tone was well complemented by Sin’s limpid keyboard work, coming off best in the slow movement’s song without words. It was not always immaculate in the first movement’s repetitiousness, but the finale’s effervescent romp more than made up for earlier longeurs.

 

Photo: Esplanade

The concert’s highlight was young home-grown composers Jonathan Shin and Phoon Yu’s Illuminations, a symphony for organ, chorus and orchestra in seven movements, specially commissioned for the evening. Given the significance of Esplanade’s priceless twenty years to Singapore’s arts scene, the 35-minute-long work could be forgiven for trying to be a bit of everything – a Straussian tone poem, an organ concerto, a choral fantasy – while encompassing many different composers’ styles.

 

Wasn’t it Gustav Mahler who proclaimed, “A symphony is like a world, it must have everything!” or something to that effect? It opened with stillness as concertmaster Kong Zhao Hui’s solo violin rose ethereally above massed strings, much like in Pole Karol Szymanowski’s violin concertos. With the evocation of a new dawn over, voices of the Singapore Symphony Chorus and Youth Choir entered with “Break the earth and shatter sky... a symphony rises into the air made real by our dreaming”. Here the influence of Vaughan Williams’ English choral tradition came to bear.

Both composers also performed,
Phoon Yu on organ and Jonathan Shin on piano
Photo: Esplanade

 

Phoon as a soloist, then flexed his muscles, demonstrating the full might of Esplanade’s scandalously underused Klais organ. Earth-shaking and tumultuous, however brief, was his impact and now the listener was transported into the realms of the beyond like in Frenchman Olivier Messiaen’s visionary organ works.     

 

The Singapore Symphony Children’s Choir also got into the act in the fourth movement, Iridescent / Electric, which perfectly described its part. “Watching the world with shining eyes / To cast colours upon the bay”, one imagined Benjamin Britten’s many wide-eyed and whimsical children’s choral pieces.  

 

Shin, himself the obbligato pianist, was let loose on the orchestral canvas, which was as eclectic as it could possibly get. Avant-garde modernisms were hinted at, as were Pole Witold Lutoslawski’s scherzo-like orchestrations (now the choice of Bacewicz’s overture made even more sense), but the overriding idiom was more of Mahler and Hollywood film music, representing by the likes of Erich Korngold and John Williams.

 

 

There was a choral climax closing with the words, “This distant flame that grows, keeping the light!” but the stirring work chose to end on a subtler and quiet note with Kong’s violin returning for one last time. While this was not Beethoven’s Ninth, one is better off for having witnessed the world premiere of a momentous Singaporean symphony, still a rarity, and a little history being made.   

Post-concert photos by PianoManiac:

Three of Singapore's major composers:
Phoon Yew Tien, Ho Chee Kong & Bernard Tan.

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory deans
past and present,
Bernard Lanskey and Peter Tornqvist.

Singapore Symphony Orchestra CEOs,
future and present
Kenneth Kwok & Chng Hak Peng.

Two of Singapore's finest young pianists,
Churen Li and Abigail Sin.

The composers with their jedi-master,
Ho Chee Kong.

Fact: Without the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory,
Illuminations would not have been possible.

 

SEVEN / PHOON YU, Organ / Review

SEVEN

PHOON YU, Organ

Klais Organ of Esplanade Concert Hall

Centaur Records 3926 / TT: 49’05”

 

Strange as it may seem, this is the first ever CD recording of organ music by Singaporean composers. That it comes from Singapore’s brightest young organist, the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory and Juilliard-trained Phoon Yu, who commissioned all the works in the recital, is also significant. Its title Seven comes from the programme’s two groups of seven: seven Singaporean composers with their own personal takes on J.S.Bach’s Chorale Preludes from Clavier-Ubung Book 3, and the seven angels from the Book of Revelation as envisioned in a cycle by an eighth Singaporean composer Chen Zhangyi.

 

Phoon is Anglican by faith, which partly informs this album’s overtly religious programme. It was, however, the aim of showcasing the organ’s full range of colours and dynamic capabilities that really distinguished each of the fourteen pieces. It is perhaps best to appreciate the music as two separate recitals of seven works, playing for about 25 minutes each.   

 

The seven composers’ responses to the Bach chorales either took the form of (1) paraphrases, (2) pieces based on choral melodies (cantus firmus) or (3) pieces inspired by the words (text evocations).  Opening the recital is Jonathan Shin’s Postlude to Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr (Glory be to God in the highest), a jazzy paraphrase that imagined if JSB had arrived in Brooklyn and heard bluegrass.

 

The choral melodies in Tan Yuting’s Vater unser in Himmelreich (Our Father in Heaven) and Emily Koh’s Fantasia on Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir (I cry out to you in deep distress) are well hidden, embedded within the organ’s textures. The latter’s crunching and long-held chords come closest to espousing the avant-garde. In Lee Jinjun’s Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (Christ our Lord came to Jordan), the melodic line is more transparent and thus most readily discernible.

 

The text evocation preludes gave composers the widest freedoms of expression, hence how different each work sounds. Huang Dingchao’s Fantasia on Dies sind die heilgen zehn Gebot (These are the ten holy commandments) revels in liberal dissonances. Syafiqah ‘Adha Sallehin’s We all believe in one God reflects the radiance of ecumenism, of one uniting the three Abrahamic faiths. Wynne Fung’s Jesus Christus, unser Heiland, der von uns Gotteszorn wandte (Jesus Christ, our saviour, who turned away the wrath of God from us) closes the cycle with some questions instead of a comforting benediction.

 

Olivier Messiaen has previously been cited as an influence for some of Chen Zhangyi’s music. The subject of The Seven Angels certainly has Messiaenic overtones but Chen instead finds his own voice in the seven brief and concise (and therefore un-Messianesque) utterances. Birdsong and celestial chorales are absent, instead various manifestations of trumpets take over, heralding the apocalyptic events in Revelation. It is best appreciated while perusing the texts from Chapters 8, 9 and 11 of the New Testament book of Revelation (not reproduced in the sleeve-notes) while listening to the music. A mixed sense of fearful trepidation and reverential awe may be the desired outcome.

 

There is much to marvel in this music, all hailing from a rather troubled first two decades of the early twenty-first century. Guided by the keen vision, tremendous intellect and understated virtuosity of Phoon Yu, Esplanade Concert Hall’s scandalously under-utilised Klais Organ has hardly sounded this magnificent. This album is a prime candidate for the Singapore canon, established by composing legends like Leong Yoon Pin and Phoon Yew Tien.    

This recording may be sampled / downloaded at:

Seven de Phoon Yu, Syafiqah ‘adha Sallehin, Tan Yuting, Wynne Fung, Chen Zhangyi, Emily Koh, Huang Dingchao, Jonathan Shin & Lee Jinjun en Amazon Music Unlimited

A selection of works from this album may be heard in this Youtube video from the Episcopal Church of St Ignatius of Antioch in New York City (recorded on 22 April 2022):

'SEVEN: Organ Music of Singapore' Album Showcase (Archived Livestream) - YouTube

SINGAPORE SOUNDS / Review

SINGAPORE SOUNDS GALA CONCERT

Singapore Sounds

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory

Sunday (20 September 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 September 2015 with the title "Fresh take on the Singaporean sound".

As Singapore celebrates its 50^th year of nationhood, one is constantly posed with the question, “What is the Singaporean identity?” Along the same lines, one also asks, “What is Singaporean music?” Singapore Sounds, a new orchestra founded by young conductor Adrian Chiang (left) dedicated to performing Singaporean music, gave its debut and provided some of the answers to that poser.

Examples in history from Russian, Czech, Hungarian, English and American music all point to the vernacular, folk music and popular sources as the basis of national music traditions. So Singaporean music must at one point derive from the grassroots; folksongs in native languages, popular music and nationalistic jingles (yes, those NDP songs) all form the rich fabric from which real Singaporean music evolves.

This landmark 150-minute-long Gala Concert conducted by Chiang provided many examples of these in various guises. Arrangements of songs were the most recognisable ones, with the composers doing their best to dress them up in discernible forms for concert performance.

Young composer Phoon Yu's version of  the familiar Tamil song Munneru Valiba was a colourful set of variations, the melody first heard on sitar accompanied by piano and harp. Dick Lee's evergreen Home was worked by Phoon into a concertante work for violin, with SSO Co-Leader Lynnette Seah negotiating through multiple cadenzas in the Romantic style, playing on a specially crafted SG50 bow by Paul Goh.   

Syafiqah 'Adha's Singapura Medley made use of popular Malay dance forms including the asli, inang, joget, canggung and zapin for its four songs, beginning with Di Tanjong Katong with the melody first heard on the accordion, played by the composer herself. This exuberant showing was only matched by Zaidi Sabtu-Ramli's arrangement of Shabir Tabare Alam's Singai Naadu (Lion Country), a rousing tune originally in Tamil, now almost totally transformed. 

Other than a rather forgettable Count On Me Singapore, Lee Jinjun's arrangements took on a life of their own. His Chan Mali Chan Variations with Kang Chun Meng on euphonium was a virtuoso showstopper with many original ideas, while Fantasia On Rasa Sayang became a neo-baroque invention, include a chaconne, fugue and brass chorale dressed in dissonant harmonies.

This concert also recognised the contributions of foreign-born composers now living in Singapore. Briton Eric Watson's Constellations received its World Premiere, a meditation on the five stars and crescent moon of the national flag, represented by six traditional instruments (erhu, ruan, sitar, tabla, gambus and rebana) performing solos as if in a concerto grosso. His highly accessible tonal style, while not quoting local tunes, was redolent of film music.

More modernistic was Belgium-born Robert Casteels's Travelogue, conducted by the composer and now adapted for a larger orchestra with traditional instruments. A satire on Singapore in the year 2065, the protagonist, acted and sung by the irrepressible tenor Leslie Tay, was a Singaporean exile returning from Mars to find a homeland he does not really recognise. The use of colloquialisms, localities present and past and Singlish made this work undeniably Singaporean.

The concert concluded with Phang Kok Jun's lively Xinyao Medley, with Liang Wern Fook's Mandarin ballads from the 1980s best typified by Xi Shui Chang Liu (Friendship Forever). The encore Cheng Li De Yue Guang (Moonlight In The City), by Chen Jia Ming, sent the audience home humming its tune. Chinese, Malay or Indian, classical, folk or popular, these are our songs which nobody can take away from us.

SHUXIANG, ESTHER & FRIENDS / Yang Shuxiang and Friends / Review

SHUXIANG, ESTHER & FRIENDS

Yang Shuxiang, Violin et al

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (23 August 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 August 2014 with the title "When locks fly and bow-hairs fray".

There exists a “golden generation” of young classical musicians in Singapore born in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Violinists feature prominently, and Yang Shuxiang, graduate from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory and now studying in Boston, is arguably the most flamboyant among them. His imposing stature, matinee idol hair and passionate response to music rather makes him stand out.

Musically he is equal to the best of them, and when these factors collude, sparks fly in concert as this outing soon proved. It however began sedately with the World Premiere of young Singaporean Phoon Yu’s Elegy for violin, piano and string quartet.

In Phoon Yu's Elegy, the composer (seated left)
also served as the pianist's page-turner.

The second-generation composer (son of the esteemed Phoon Yew Tien) proved to be a chip off the old block, with his highly coherent tonal work sustaining an air of sombre anguish through its 6 minutes. The plaint of the strings was contrasted with series of piano chords and the solo violin’s attempts to establish a melodic line, ending definitively with a strum on a piano bass string by the composer himself.

The atmosphere lightened with Brahms’s Violin Sonata No.2 in A major (Op.100), where Yang’s sumptuous and full-bodied tone soon took flight. The performance was distinguished with a fiery vehemence in the outer movements, contrasted with singingly lyrical asides through its course. The balance achieved with Hong Kong-born American pianist Esther Ning Yau, whose clarity of articulation and pedalling were exemplary, was also excellent.

For film composer Franz Waxman’s Carmen Fantasy, which improves on the popular Sarasate warhorse, Yang took on a dramatic life and death stance from start to end. With locks flying and bow-hairs fraying, the level of intensity he achieved was frightening, and the frenzied ending saw him finishing a beat ahead of the piano.

The intermission was brief respite before the onslaught on the senses that was Ernest Chausson’s Concert for violin, piano and string quartet, the same forces that began the evening. Those who remember Yang’s impassioned take on the same composer’s Poeme at the President’s Young Performers Concert several years ago will take delight in tripling the dose of adrenaline here.

Cast symphonically in four movements and lasting almost three-quarters of an hour, Yang, Yau and the quartet formed by violinists Alan Choo and Gabriel Lee, violist Jeremy Chiew and cellist Cho Hang-Oh made every minute count. Interestingly, the arrangement of the musicians on stage made it appear that the work was scored for violinist and piano quintet.

The dominance of Yang as de facto leader was because he was the only player standing, thus becoming the focal point. His virtuosic flourishes and the floridly exuberant piano part were well supported by the quartet which traded every blow with equal trenchancy.

Seldom has the three note motif (D-A-E) of the bristling first movement been stated this emphatically, a portent of things to come. Even the laid-back rocking rhythm of the Sicilienne and dirge-like slow movement could not hold back the deluge of emotion that inundated the rapturous finale. This showing, greeted with a chorus of cheers,  just about eclipses the memory of past performances. But that is the essence of live music making, the secret of which is to play and live for “now”.

All photos by the kind permission of Yang Shuxiang and Friends.