PINNACLES OF ROMANTICISM / Take 5 Piano Quintet / Review

PINNACLES OF ROMANTICISM
Take 5 Piano Quintet
Esplanade Recital Studio
Sunday (29 September 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 October 2019 with the title "Take 5's take on Romanticism may be this year's top chamber concert".

Take 5, Singapore’s premier piano quintet, has now completed fifteen concerts in its exploration of the piano quintet (piano with string quartet) repertoire. After exhausting the popular and familiar favourites, the group has turned to the arcane territories of Philipp Scharwenka and Sergei Taneyev.

Both composers operated at the tail end of musical Romanticism, with their piano quintets arriving in 1910-11, just a couple of years before Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring was unleashed to the unsuspecting world. Both were academics who stoutly clung to past traditions, tenaciously defending their ground as modernism took over and irrevocably transformed the musical landscape.

The Pole Philipp Scharwenka (1847-1917) was the elder brother of pianist-composer Xaver Scharwenka, best remembered for his Polish Dances and piano concertos. His half-hour long Quintet in B minor, while maintaining a front of Teutonic objectivity and density, smouldered with Slavic passion and darkness. This was apparent in the unison voices of its opening, oozing pathos in the minor key before becoming slightly more optimistic in its second subject.

The lovely slow movement could be described a “Romance” with pianist Lim Yan’s calming opening answered by Chan Wei Shing’s cello plaint. With the other string players joining in, this love letter soon took off, fraught with tenderness and angst in equal measure. After a slow introduction, the finale became an exciting romp, with no let up in tension and energy.

The Russian Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915) was one of Tchaikovsky’s most famous students. His Quintet in G minor – in four movements and lasting some 45 minutes – could at least be called ambitious. Pianist Lim, also playing a curatorial role within the quintet, gave a short preamble to this sprawling work. Furnishing short examples and providing contexts, he struck a good balance between being theoretical and intellectual.

Taneyev was no dyed-in-the-wool nationalist, but the Russianess of his music still soaked through. The first movement’s opening theme, mournful and lugubrious, was worn heart-on-sleeve but tinged with Wagnerian harmonic ambiguities. A contrasting second theme, essentially a modified inversion of the first, radiated more light. The tense interplay between these two, for best part of the movement’s 20 minutes, was a catharsis of sorts.

As a change of tack, the scintillating Scherzo spun off sparks and tinsels ever so effortlessly, while the slow movement’s passacaglia was a plodding procession over a bass rhythm established by the cello. Despite the longueurs, the quintet showed little sign of toil or weariness.

The finale was skittish and filled with fantasy, and themes from the opening movement returned at a fast and furious pace. There was a moment of respite when Foo Say Ming’s violin soared to stratospheric heights, before a glorious reprise of the work’s most memorable melody. With violinist Lim Shue Churn and violist Chan Yoong-Han completing this “mighty handful”, Take 5’s take might just be this year’s top chamber concert. 

A FRENCH CONNECTION / Take 5 Piano Quintet / Review

A FRENCH CONNECTION

Take 5 Piano Quintet

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (27 March 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 March 2016 with the title "Piano quintet has fun with diabolical diversion".

There was more than one French connection in this latest concert by Singapore's foremost piano quintet, Take 5. Firstly, all three French composers featured were much better-known as organists than pianists. Secondly, Camille Saint-Saëns was a teacher of Charles-Marie Widor, who in turn taught Olivier Messiaen. Thirdly, all the three works performed were receiving local premieres.

Saint-Saëns' Piano Quintet in A minor (1855), a conscientious work of a youngster, is virtually unknown for good reason: it is an awfully boring piece. More academic exercise than something truly inspired, its four movements seemed to tick off the boxes of technical accomplishments which all composition students strive for.

Piano chords and filigree from Lim Yan dominated the 1st movement, while a prayer-like slow movement presented Chan Yoong Han's viola and Chan Wei Shing's cello with some melodic interest. The Presto 3^rd movement gave the pianist frantic runs up and down the keyboard while the finale had the obligatory fugue, as inevitable as some tiresome graduation speech.

The quintet completed by violinists Foo Say Ming and Lim Shue Churn, were as expected, good servants to this pleasant and innocuous music, making the best case as they possibly could. The first half concluded with a little sting in its tale: Messiaen's unpretentiously titled Piece for Piano & String Quartet (1991).

Its pungent 4 minutes said far more than what Saint-Saëns accomplished in an entire half-hour. Four incisively-driven notes on strings were ear-catching, ushering in the purposeful dissonance of Lim's piano mimicry of birdsong, in this case the garden warbler (fauvette des jardins). Even before the ears could come to grips with its rarefied idiom, the same four notes emphatically ended the piece.

For those imagining Widor's Second Piano Quintet in D major (1894) to be much like his organ music, notably that Toccata of countless wedding services, they would be pleasantly surprised. His idiom is decidedly darker here, more aligned to the Cesar Franck and Richard Wagner axis.

The chromatic language in the opening movement occasionally lapsed into moments of lyricism and levity which were refreshing. There was even a short final flourish at the movement's end for violinist Foo to relive his re:mix ringmaster act as leading showman. Bare piano octaves heralded the 2^nd movement's passacaglia, which for all its austerity led to a heartwarming climax of rare beauty.

Short and exciting, the scherzo-like 3^rd movement swept past like something out of The Flying Dutchman, filled with searing dissonances and malevolent intent. One suspects the players had the most fun with this diabolical diversion, somewhat reluctantly reverting to a more casual and lighter stance for the finale.

Themes from the 1^st movement were rehashed, but this time a salon-like charm took precedence, with some rhapsodic musing before a grandstanding close. Having clearly appreciated the experience, the audience applauded long after the quintet had taken its last bows, packed up and gone home.

PARTY OF FIVE / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Faculty Concert / Review

PARTY OF FIVE

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Sunday (13 March 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 March 2016 with the title "A close-knit quintet impresses".

After the superlative showing by cellist Qin Li-Wei and pianist Bernard Lanskey in their recital just a week ago, this concert by five other conservatory professors and heads of department was a follow-up of sorts. It was in fact a celebration of the familiar adage, that a family that plays together stays together.

The combo of piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass is an unusual one, based loosely on what talents of a group of musical friends can throw up, rather than the conventional piano and string quartet configuration. The archetypal work was Franz Schubert's Piano Quintet in A, popularly known as the Trout Quintet, but a far more recent addition was Englishman Ralph Vaughan Williams' Piano Quintet in C minor, which opened the evening.    

First performed in 1905, it was withdrawn by the composer but permission was given by his estate for a revival in 1999. The influence of Brahms informs the richly-textured first movement, with Albert Tiu obliged to play big piano chords, while melodies for Zhang Manchin's viola and Ng Pei-Sian's cello ensured the music be dabbed with darker hues.

If one sought RVW's trademark folksong pastoralism, the wait would be a long one. His choral-arrangement skills could however be found in the piano solo for the slow movement, which gave way to fluid lyricism in the strings led by Zuo Jun's violin, supported by Guennadi's Mouzyka's double-bass.

After a reverie-like wallow with sedate tempos, the variations on a folksong-like theme in the finale perked things up before concluding in a quiet calm. A fascinating if not great or representative work, the five players made it sound better than it actually is.        

Schubert's Trout Quintet was first heard at intimate Viennese house soirees (or Schubertiades), but only published after his death. Now his most popular chamber work, one wonders what he would have thought of it being performed in front of large concert-hall audiences.

Regardless of who is listening, the closely-knit work of five musicians remains key. Despite the piano having the biggest part, it was difficult to see who was the obvious leader here. Nonetheless the team worked well together, with the sonata-form 1st movement setting the tone. This was an energised and brisk performance, even if the 2nd movement displayed stretches of gemutlichkeit, or the state of being carefree.

The leading chords of the Scherzo were punched out with purpose, as homespun rusticity took precedence over politeness. And if there were concessions to virtuoso playing, that would be in the 4^th movement's Theme and Variations, based on Schubert's lied Die Forelle (The Trout, hence the nickname). Tiu was kept ever busy, while his string partners tooks turns to sing out its jaunty and catchy melody.

There was good reason to perform Schubert last, simply because the feel-good factor encompassed the entire work. Even if the party of five had performed close to 75 minutes of music, there was no sense of fatigue as the Allegro giusto finale romped to a joyous conclusion.