FACE(T)S OF NATURE / Concordia Quartet / Review

 

FACE(T)S OF NATURE

Concordia Quartet

Chamber @ The Arts House

Friday (21 November 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 24 November 2025 with the title "Concordia Quartet deliver close ensemble work, precise timing and accurate intonation".

Despite changes in personnel within the past year, Concordia Quartet, the dedicated string quartet of Resound Collective, has been remarkably consistent in its concert programming. Violinists Wilford Goh and Kim Kyu Ri, with violist Edward Tan and cellist Lin Juan, have continued to surprise and challenge audiences and their expectations.

Where else but in the Chamber of The Arts House can one expect to hear great chamber music in a perfectly intimate setting? The delightful evening opened conventionally with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Quartet No.14 in G major (K.387), appropriately nicknamed “Spring” because of its freshness of thematic ideas and cheerful disposition.

Playing in Singapore's "Wigmore Hall".

See the resemblance, sort of?

Playing on a raised platform under a cupola, the setting superficially resembled that of London’s Wigmore Hall but the shared experience of close engagement between players and audience was real. Close-knit ensemble work, precise timing and accurate intonation were all part of the game, and the foursome generously delivered.

Gentility in the opening movement was well-realised and articulated, with the graceful dance of the second movement upping the tempo ever so slightly. Even when shades grew darker for the slow movement, the warmth of sonority never flagged. The finale was all sunshine and smiles, and one cannot get more congenial than this.

For the second half, the quartet literally moved to the floor of the house. The players were seated so close to the audience that one could even see the scored notes on their tablets. Four of Czech composer Antonin Dvorak’s Cypresses, string transcriptions of songs, were selected for variety of moods and feelings. One did not need to know the original words to understand the sentiments of love, grief, joy and contentment portrayed within.

Photo: @ Joelcaptures

The music then transplanted from Central Europe to the Sceptred Isles for six short pieces by two of England’s greatest composers. It was an artistic coup to alternate three of Henry Purcell’s Fantasias In Four Parts with Benjamin Britten’s Three Divertimenti. These transitions between baroque and 20th century aesthetics were both daring and ear-catching.

The order and form of Purcell, polyphony at its prim and prettiest, sounded well-groomed and decorous. His G major Fantasia soon gave way to the dissonance and irony of Britten’s March, music that was both acerbic and anarchic. Purcell’s F major Fantasia then dissolved into a slow and sentimental Waltz which later took on more sarcastic overtones.

Photo: @ Joelcaptures

Chalk and cheese, or oil and water, never the twain shall meet but to the many enthused listeners, these sounded totally plausible because of Concordia’s ardent advocacy. The quartet’s ability to skillfully shift between vastly contrasting dynamics and idioms was a credit to their technique, discipline and musicality.

Photo: @ Joelcaptures

The final D minor Fantasia would now morph into a bristling Burlesque, filled with quickfire responses and split-second surprises. The enjoyment of the small but keyed-in audience was clear and palpable.

Photo: @ Joelcaptures

DAL SEGN0 1825 / Resound Collective & Chamber Music & Arts Singapore / Review

 

DAL SEGNO 1825

Resound Collective & 

Chamber Music & Arts Singapore

Victoria Concert Hall

Saturday (8 November 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 November 2025 with the title "A joyous outing by Chamber Music & Arts Singapore, Resound Collective".

What happens when the two most important chamber music forces in Singapore join hands? While operating independently, Singaporean violinist Tang Tee Khoon’s Chamber Music & Arts Singapore (CMAS) and local impresario Mervin Beng’s Resound Collective have set the Singapore chamber music scene alight in recent years. Their collaboration, in a collegial spirit of partnership to make music, was inevitable.

Opening the evening was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor (K.466) with Hungarian pianist Zoltan Fejervari as soloist and British violinist Candida Thompson (of the renowned Amsterdam Sinfonietta) as leader. Although none of the performers onstage subscribe to the period instrument philosophy, some practices were in place.

Fejervari performed with his back to the audience, and played chords and accompanying figurations during the orchestral introduction, even before his solo entry proper. This practice harked back to a time when the keyboard was part of ensemble rather than a disparate entity. His playing was freshly minted, liberally dressed up with tasteful ornamentations, particularly in the central Romanze.

Photo: Clarence Aw

Solo cadenzas, including one by Ludwig van Beethoven for the first movement, was a reminder that Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) was still passionately in place. The finale’s shift into the key of D major was also a show of unfettered joy.

Photo: Clarence Aw

Only orchestral strings remained for the concert’s tour de force that was Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge (Great Fugue, Op.133). Originally written as a finale for his Op.130 String Quartet, its sheer dissonance and radically modern outlook saw it being cast aside for something more palatable. Standing on its own, it is still Beethoven’s toughest nut to crack, for both players and listeners.

Photo: Clarence Aw

Thompson and her 22 charges tore into its thorny thickets like persons possessed. The unison playing impressed with its fearlessness, togetherness and voluminous heft, fully aware that one false step would mean total chaos. The fugal entries came quick and fast but nobody missed a cue as the evening’s most intense quarter-hour drew the first half to an impressive close.

Felix Mendelssohn’s String Octet in E flat major (Op.20), composed at 16, is a miracle of precocity besides being a favourite of chamber festivals. Bringing together two string quartets, usually of different origins and countenances, as a harmonious whole is a secret to its success.

Photo: Clarence Aw

All the eight players, violinists Thompson, Tang and Yang Shuxiang (Singapore) and Liv Hilde Klokk-Bryhn (Norway), violists Julianne Lee (USA) and Ida Klokk-Bryhn (Norway), cellists Eckart Runge (Germany) and Cho Hang-oh (South Korea), sounded as if they had been playing as close partners all their lives.

Such unity was affirmed on its outset, the opening movement buzzing with activity, contrasted with the slow movement’s moving lyricism. The familiar Scherzo flew with the lightness of fairies’ wings, while the fugal finale with its quote of “And He Shall Reign Forever” from Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus became a ringing refrain. There can be no better advertisement for the joy of chamber music such as this.

Photo: Clarence Aw

ROMANTIC TRAVELOGUES / Concordia Quartet / Review

 

ROMANTIC TRAVELOGUES 

Concordia Quartet 

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall 

Saturday (27 July 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 July 2024 with the title "Concordia Quartet does justice to rarely heard Romantic works".

The Concordia Quartet, part of the Resound Collective family, has just returned from a successful concert tour to Malaysia, where it gave workshops and performed concerts in Kuala Lumpur and Malacca. Its homecoming concert was a showcase of rarely-heard Romantic repertoire which made one wonder why such good music is not so often performed. 

One reason is the need for excellent professional musicians in peak form to do these works justice, but violinists Edward Tan and Kim Kyu Ri, violist Martin Peh and cellist Lin Juan were fully up to the task. Four years of playing together, with challenges along the way (chiefly the pandemic), bore ample fruits of their labour for all to see and hear. 

Franz Schubert’s Quartettsatz (Quartet Movement) in C minor (D.703) opened the evening. This posthumously published 9-minute single movement of an unfinished string quartet is now recognised as a standalone work. 

Its tension-filled beginning was well-handled, revealing strong cohesion between the players, the stress later diffused by Tan’s solo violin melody in A flat major. This alternating between major and minor keys gave the piece an unsettling feel, which was kept on edge by the foursome all through its short but compact duration. 

Martin Peh demonstrates on the viola
what American-Indian drumming sounds like.

Malaysian violist Andrew Filmer served as an well-spoken host by introducing the works in an intelligent and engaging manner, later joining the quartet for Antonin Dvorak’s String Quintet No.3 in E flat major (Op.97). This is sometimes known the American Quintet as it was composed when he was director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City. 

The second viola gave the music an added warmth, which radiated through its four movements. The use of pentatonic melodies and percussively drumming beats was reflective of native American influences which Dvorak incorporated into the score. However, the music’s smiling congeniality and harmonic richness was all Slavonic. 

The Larghetto slow movement provided a calming respite, with Peh’s viola hymn-like melody a theme for the lovely set of variations to follow. The finale’s skipping dance rhythms and light-heartedness, performed with such infectious zest, made for a most satisfying conclusion. 

Felix Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No.4 in E minor (Op.44 No.2) was composed during his blissful honeymoon in Bavaria. Beethovenian elements of strife and struggle were dispelled, giving way to a sunny disposition to be found in his famous Violin Concerto (Op.64), also in the same key. 

United voices, so aptly reflected in the quartet’s name, made the music truly sing. The Scherzo flew with fairies’ wings, its repeated staccatos touched with feathery lightness, while the Andante relived in Tan’s tender violin melody Mendelssohn’s most lyrical Songs Without Words. The Presto agitato finale soared ahead with accurate rapid playing but whimsicality would never be far away. 

Warm applause was reciprocated with an encore which the Concordia had brought across the Causeway for its Malaysian audiences, with Kelly Tang’s wittily contrapuntal arrangement of Singaporean folksong Di Tanjong Katong providing sheer delight.