ROMANTIC SCHUMANN / KUN WOO PAIK Piano Recital / Review

ROMANTIC SCHUMANN
KUN-WOO PAIK Piano Recital
Victoria Concert Hall
Friday (14 February 2020)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 February 2020 with the title "Schumann afresh".

There has been no composer with a more tumultuous life than Robert Schumann (1810-1856). The epithet Romantic wholly applies to the German, whose love life, trials and tribulations was often stranger than fiction. That was the basis for celebrated Korean pianist Kun-Woo Paik’s all-Schumann recital, fortuitously held on what today’s romantics know as Valentine’s Day.

Even the fear of Covid-19 virus transmission did not deter a sizeable audience (including many Koreans) from witnessing Paik’s marvellous two-hour long show which was substantially expanded from its original programme. The selection encompassed very early to very late works, familiar pieces and rarities, from the technically simple to ferociously virtuosic, with a multitude of nuances captured within.

Schumann’s very first opus was Abegg Variations (Op.1), based on the five notes in the name of an early romantic interest. Encumbered with the fussy filigree which obsessed early Romantic composers, Paik easily overcame relentless note-churning without losing the thrust of its melodic interest. Equally note-laden was his Toccata (Op.7), a notorious finger-twister which could have easily descended into vacuous machine-gun rapid fire. Again, his prodigious fingers were fully in service of the music.  

Between the barnstorming were five Album Leaves from Bunte Blätter (Colourful Leaves, Op.99), character pieces traversing varied moods and shades of disposition. The first, which famously became the theme for Brahms’ Schumann Variations, was a study of calm and melancholy. Turbulence, geniality and pensivity followed before the set closed with hymn-like lyricism.

By now, one would have discerned that Schumann was a miniaturist non pareil, and the entire recital consisted of suites with multiple short movements. Waldeszenen (Forest Scenes, Op.82) comprised nine such pieces, exploring a world of woodland rusticity and mysticism. It was the latter that found most traction in Verrufene Stelle (Haunted Place) and Vogel Als Prophet (The Prophet Bird), slow numbers which were quietly haunting.

The two most frequently-heard works were Arabeske (Op.18) and Papillons (Op.2), which can often be tainted with over-familiarity. Not so, in Paik’s case. With multiple and quixotic shifts in dynamics and mood in both, surprises may be expected in each and every turn. These he negotiated with a sense of wonder and fantasy, such that the music always sounded fresh and newly minted.

This sense of discovery applied to the least familiar works, Fantasiestücke (Fantasy Pieces, Op.111) and Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn, Op.133), conceived near the close of Schumann’s tragic life which ended in an insane asylum. The former were championed in concert by the great Vladimir Horowitz during his late years, and Paik’s view was every bit as vivid.

The latter are elusive and cryptic, but he unlocked their secrets through a near-seamless emotional arc spanning all possible cerebral and visceral experiences. His encore was a continuation of this poetic and lyrical bent: the Aria slow movement from Schumann’s First Sonata (Op.11), dedicated to his beloved Clara, whom he later married. Such is the measure of a true artist.  

A CHAMBER EVENING WITH WEBERN AND SCHUMANN / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory / Review

A CHAMBER EVENING

WITH WEBERN AND SCHUMANN

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory

Conservatory Concert Hall

Friday (13 March 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 March 2015 with the title "Webern, Schumann cast in new light".

The first of two concerts devoted to the music of Anton Webern and Robert Schumann by faculty and students of Yong Siew Toh Conservatory with musicians from the Orchestre des Champs-Elysees (OCE) was an evening of chamber music. No two Austro-Germanic composers could be as different as Schumann (1810-1856) and Webern (1883-1945), although both are considered giants of classical music for different reasons.

Schumann represented the epitome of early Romanticism, whose works fused musical and poetic sensibilities in an indelible way. He died in an asylum for the insane, from syphilis contracted in his unbridled youth. Webern, a disciple of Schoenberg, furthered the cause of atonality and serialism, influencing an entire generation of 20^th century composers. He died at the end of the Second World War after being shot by an American soldier who had mistaken him as a black-marketeer.

Schumann's congenial Andante & Variations Op.46 opened the concert, in a rarely-heard version for two pianos, two cellos and horn. Most of the work came from pianists Ho Kai-Li and Jeong Han Sol, with counterpoint and ornamentation added by cellists Christopher Mui and Mao Cheng Yu. A most interesting aspect was the contribution by OCE's Pierre-Antoine Tremblay who performed on a natural horn (as opposed to French horn), which uses no valves, and how he cooly assembled and disassembled its pieces of coiled brass tubing through the course of the work.

The warmth of Schumann was tempered by the chill of Webern's single-movement Piano Quintet, composed in 1907 under Schoenberg's tutelage. Taking off from Romanticism's last legs, tonality was stretched to its seams with pianist Thomas Hecht and T'ang Quartet's gripping performance filled with angst and nervous tension. After traversing a multitude of dissonances, it finally settled on the reassuring home key of C major.

A return to less rarefied air was Schumann's Three Fantasy Pieces Op.73 for clarinet and piano. OCE clarinettist Nicola Boud's mellow and creamy tone was a pleasure to behold, with pianist Yap Sin Yee's fluid and lyrical accompaniment an equal to match. Its alternating fast and slow movements brought out the best of contrasts from both performers.

After the interval, young conductor Adrian Chiang led nine conservatory students in Webern's Concerto Op.24. This compact work lasting about 10 minutes was a textbook example of tone rows employed in serial music. Basically, a tone row is a sequence of 12 notes in a chromatic scale played without repeating a single note until the row is completed. This apparent randomness added to the mystery of the sounds produced, especially when heard on different wind, string instruments and piano. Chiang and his charges displayed confidence and conviction in this experiment of spatial orientation and tonal colour.

The final work was Schumann's familiar Piano Quintet in E flat major Op.44 with OCE members Marion Larigaudrie (violin) and Catherine Puig (viola) partnering violinist Orest Smovzh, cellist Wang Zihao and pianist Albert Tiu. This was a breezy performance that had everything one could hope for; passion in the opening movement, drama in the march-like slow movement with rapid shifts of mood and emotion through its pages.

The Scherzo's scalic runs were breathtakingly negotiated but it was the finale's grand display of contrapuntal mastery, combining themes from both first and last movements in a heady confluence, that impressed most. The players' love for this music was indisputable, and this was not lost on the audience which readily responded in kind.  

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP / Tang Tee Khoon & Friends / Review

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

Tang Tee Khoon (Violin) and Friends

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday (24 September 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 September 2014 with the title "Chamber music treat from virtuosos".

Local musicians are the mainstay in Singapore’s active chamber music scene, but once in a while, it is good to have foreign musicians inject variety and diversity to the list of usual suspects. Singaporean violinist Tang Tee Khoon, presently based in London, has forged successful partnerships with British musicians and their performances here have never been less than sterling.

Her latest collaboration, with pianist Sam Haywood and cellist Matthew Huber, focused on the close interwoven lives of Felix Mendelssohn, Robert and Clara Schumann, and the young Johannes Brahms. Here was a meeting of the giants of musical Romanticism, which got the requisite response from a trio of young virtuosos they deserved.

The moment Huber’s 1685 Francesco Ruggieri cello sang the opening phrase in Schumann’s Three Fantasies Op.73, one knew it was going to be a musical treat. His use of gut strings ensured a mellowness of timbre that was simply gorgeous, and his singing tone rode through the music’s melting lyricism with rapturous fervour.

Haywood’s control of pedalling on the Steinway grand was close to perfection in the sometimes over-reverberant acoustics of the Recital Studio, and he blended ideally with both Huber and Tang, who performed Clara Schumann’s Three Romances Op.22. Her 1750 J.B. Guadagnini, on loan from the National Arts Council, shone prettily in the tender moments of these rarely-performed miniatures.

How Clara Schumann was able to maintain a semblance of hope and optimism in 1855, when her beloved husband was dying a slow death in an asylum for the insane, was testimony to her fortitude and dignity. Her spirit was buoyed by the presence of Brahms, who remained a close confidante till their deaths in the 1890s. All this was detailed in the helpful programme notes that accompanied the evening’s marvellous programme.

The main works on show were two of the greatest piano trios of the classical canon. Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No.1 in D minor is regularly played here, but rarely does one find a performance that radiated such warmth and true feeling as this evening’s outing. The overall balance was excellent, with both stringed instruments raising their stakes to meet the piano’s multitudes of notes.

The Scherzo flew on fairy-wings, and there was an audible gasp of delight from the audience as the music simply evaporated into the ether. The ardency and passion on display carried the outer movements which stormed and stressed, but there was never a moment of impetuousness or misplaced power.

Brahms’s Piano Trio No.1 in B major, in its revised version, provided even greater scope for expression and an emotional outlet. The broad opening melody, one of his most memorable, received a grandstanding treatment, contrasted with the Hungarian-inflected Scherzo, the slow movement’s longeuers and the finale’s breathless rush to the finish post. Performances like these leave listeners craving for more, and Tang with her friends will return in May next year with the late works of Franz Schubert, which should be an exciting prospect.        

Photographs by the kind permission of Tang Tee Khoon and Friends.

AZARIAH TAN'S Senior Recital / Some Reflections

AZARIAH TAN Senior Piano Recital

Conservatory Concert Hall 

Wednesday (20 April 2011)

One thing that separates Conservatory students from other NUS students is that their final year exams get to be scrutinised by members of the public. Thank God nobody else but the examiners got to witness my fumbling through a case of tuberculosis and diabetes mellitus in my finals way back in 1989, which duly earned me six months of extra tuition. Nobody would also want to watch me excise a sebaceous cyst in the terminal stages of purulence, but music students will do nothing more than just delight whoever is fortunate to attend their senior recitals.

Young pianist Azariah Tan is one musician well worth watching out for. His senior recital presented two totally different works which exemplify his ability to perform in disparate genres. In what was possibly the Singapore premiere of Australian composer Carl Vine’s First Piano Sonata (1990), he brought out a brilliant range of colours and nuances. Its tonal, New Age, quasi-jazzy style fell comfortably within his able hands. Performing on a beautifully-voiced Steinway, the luxuriant harmonies of its quiet improvisatory introduction resonated like many facets of a polished gemstone. This was the contemplative lead-up to oncoming tidal waves of sound, overwhelming but not pulverising in its intensity. His mastery of the work’s violent shifts in dynamics was breathtaking, the glissandi and forearm clusters providing startling effects just at the right moment.

The second movement’s opening “wind over the graves” played with both hands, in prestissimo two octaves apart (after Chopin, Prokofiev and Ginastera), was chilling in its accuracy. Elsewhere, the bell-like sonorities recalling ancient chants of ages past and the distant birdcalls provided the much needed contrasts before the next onslaught from this keyboard tsunami. Lasting just under 20 minutes, this performance was a stunning display of someone clearly identifying with its idiom, shaded with amazing sensitivity and armed with remarkable endurance.

After a short interval, Azariah had changed from informal wear to concert attire for Robert Schumann’s monumental Fantasy in C major (Op.17), dedicated to Franz Liszt. He launched fearlessly into its heady pages with throes of passion. However this was not just a heart-on-sleeve confession of lovesickness but an intelligent reading as well. Never once over-pedalled, the utmost clarity from the left hand’s repetitive figurations was matched by the right hand’s statements of emphatic intent. In its pages, freshness and vitality radiated, tinged by a sense of world weariness. He certainly knows what “bittersweet” means, and judging by the well-written programme notes, he truly understood what Schumann’s separation from his beloved Clara meant.

The second movement’s imperious march of the Band of David was equally trenchant, never once allowing the pace to slacken. Its quixotic rhythmic shifts were easily overcome, and as always, one waited with baited breath for the chordal callisthenics and acrobatic octave leaps of the final pages. Like a showjumper, he cleared these with much aplomb. Alas, I had to miss the valedictory final movement, having to rush off to fetch my son from school. I also had to miss Liszt’s return gesture of his B minor Sonata to Schumann, played by Azariah’s classmate Akkra Y. From what I had witnessed, this young man deserves nothing less than a distinction (something which sadly eluded me in all my years at NUS).

Aza caught on CCTV

SCHUMANN FANTASIES / Zara / Review

SCHUMANN FANTASIES
Zara
Esplanade Recital Studio
Sunday (28 November 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 November 2010.

In a year of music dominated by Chopin and Mahler, it is always gratifying to note that the underrated Robert Schumann (1810-1856) receiving due recognition by chamber music circles. After all, he wrote the best chamber music among the three composers whose anniversaries are being celebrated.

Zara is a young international chamber group formed by Singaporean violinist Tang Tee Khoon and her friends from Korea, Israel, Belgium and Britain. They have only performed together for one year but already sound like seasoned veterans. Every member is a true virtuoso, and it was immediately apparent in the opening work, Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in A minor (Op.13). Mendelssohn was a close member of Schumann’s inner circle, which merited his inclusion.

The members of ZARA:

Tang Tee Khoon, Dimitri Murrath, Adi Tal,

Sam Armstrong & Julianne Lee (from L)

Refined playing, ultimate control and the ability to listen to each other distinguished its slow introduction, and that remained a hallmark and constant for the whole concert. Four string players breathed as one, led by Korean first violinist Julianne Lee, as they launched the Allegro with Beethovenian vigour. Commanding the full gamut of emotions and colours, the performance sang and sighed, contrasting declamatory salvoes with gossamer lightness, before closing in sublime stillness.

It was all Schumann after that. More passion flowed in the Piano Trio No.3 In G minor (Op.110), where British pianist Sam Armstrong partnered Tang and Israeli cellist Adi Tal. Here the tragically short-lived German’s Romantic heart and soul was laid bare, where its dark desires and impetuous surges gradually underwent a transformation to the sunny G major daylight of the joyous finale.

After the interval, Belgian violist Dimitri Murrath (with pianist Armstrong) than polished off the Adagio & Allegro (Op.70), with aching lyricism so typical of the composer giving way to ecstatic rapture. Such authority and conviction followed into the final offering, the rarely heard Piano Quartet in E flat major (Op.47).

It was Schumann’s heart-on-sleeve vulnerability that made his music so appealing and memorable. From Beethoven-influenced fist shaking gestures of the opening, the restless perpetual motion of the Scherzo, that lovely song without words with each of the string instruments taking turns on the melody, to the busy counterpoint of the finale, Zara’s performance showed what it meant to be alive and in love with life itself.

The audience in attendance must rank as one of the least initiated ever encountered for chamber music. It clapped inappropriately in between movements for all the works, trooped off after the first work thinking it was the intermission, leaving the hall half-filled for the second piece, and then re-entering in dribs and drabs with the music already in progress, in full view of the performers. Our international guests must think us a bunch of yokels and bumpkins. Pearls before swine come to mind, but one must not be unkind. Did they have any clue that they had just witnessed (and almost spoiled) easily the best chamber concert of the year?

Zara performs more Schumann on Tuesday (Tonight!) at 8pm in Esplanade Recital Studio. Do not miss it.

The members of Zara at their Youth Interactive event.

3RD SINGAPORE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL: ROBERT, CLARA & JOHANNES / Review

ROBERT, CLARA & JOHANNES
3rd Singapore Chamber Music Festival
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall
Sunday (31 January 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 February 2010.

There are many nooks and crannies of the chamber music repertoire that deserve to be explored but for a number of reasons remain obscure. The Singapore Chamber Music Festival, organised by The Chamber Players, has played a massive part in introducing these to a receptive local audience. The first concert of the festival’s third edition was an excellent example of this.

The eternal triangle of Robert Schumann, his wife Clara and the young Johannes Brahms was celebrated with a piano trio each, performed by nine musicians representing a Who’s Who of classical music in Singapore today. In lieu of programme notes, each performance was preceded by carefully chosen words from the ever-thoughtful Dennis Lee.

He was also the pianist in Robert Schumann’s Piano Trio No.2 in F major (Op.80), bringing freshness and exuberance to the music, trading interwoven melodic lines with violinist Ike See and cellist Natasha Liu (above). This is an unfamiliar work, one brimming with energy and optimism, yet balanced by a gentle lilting lyricism. The very crisp articulation by the threesome in the skittish staccato-filled finale was a joy.

Even rarer still was Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio in G minor (Op.17), the slightest work on the menu. Oozing Mendelssohnian lightness and charm, its salon-like quality was delightful and unpretentious. Ironically, an all-male trio of pianist Lim Yan, violinist Seah Huan Yuh and cellist Leslie Tan (above) all clad in Chinese New Year hongbao red did the honours, alternating sensitivity with the odd spot of virility.

The greatest of the three trios fell to Brahms, forever rumoured to be more than platonic soul buddies with Clara. His Piano Trio No.1 in B major (Op.8) was the longest and most expressive in the evening. It also had the most memorable melodies. Two women, pianist Toh Chee Hung and violinist Qian Zhou, partnered cellist Chan Wei Shing (above) in a performance that might be described as rough and ready in parts.

It nevertheless had enough passion and the sense of being on the edge to make it absorbing. One would easily accept a handful of wrong notes here and there than sit through than a squeaky clean but sterile outing. The intimacy of chamber music at its most sincere was more than well served.

Long-time cello pedagogue Mrs Herminia Ilano

(extreme left) was honoured at the festival.

This concert and the 3rd Singapore Chamber Music Festival was organised by The Chamber Players, and supported by the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.