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First performed in 1905, it was withdrawn by the composer but permission was given by his estate for a revival in 1999.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. 

4 HAND PIANO CONCERT / Helen Lee & Tong-Il Han / Review

4 HAND PIANO CONCERT

Helen Lee & Tong-Il Han, Piano

Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Recital Hall

Tuesday (19 February 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 21 February 2013 with the title "Audience troop on stage with placards declaring love for piano duo".

It is a supreme irony that Franz Schubert (1797-1828), one of the greatest composers ever lived, never got to hear his greatest works performed in concert. In his lifetime, he was known primarily as a song-smith, and was of minor importance compared alongside the giant Beethoven. Much of his music was heard in home concerts, known as Schubertiades (below), and enjoyed by a small group of his friends and colleagues.

It was in this same informal spirit that the Korean husband-and-wife duo of Helen Lee and Tong-Il Han presented an all-Schubert recital for piano four hands. Lee had been a piano lecturer at the Institute of Education and Nanyang Technological University for 14 years, while Han is one of Korea’s most celebrated pianists with a five-decade long career in USA.

It mattered little that Lee took on the primo and Han the secondo parts of the duets. Schubert’s pieces are so intricately woven that both roles are equally important and vital for the success of a performance. In that respect, the duo lived and breathed as one throughout.

The gentle lilt in the popular Fantasy in F minor (Op.103) was delicately coaxed, and its incipient melancholy soon built up to stout defiance as the temperature gradually rose. Amid all this, it was a pleasure to hear its unbroken chain of melody passing back and forth, seamlessly between each pianist, while maintaining a steady pulse and underlying tension.

That was only the appetiser to the main course, a rare performance of the monumental Sonata in C major (Op.140), also known as the Grand Duo. Its symphonic scope, four movements running over 40 minutes, led Schumann into thinking it was an arrangement of a yet-to-be- written symphony. Joseph Joachim later orchestrated it, and listeners gained a tenth Schubert symphony.

Its longeurs passed ever so swiftly in the hands of Lee and Han. Tempos were well judged, and repeats were omitted for the expansive first movement. More importantly, the lyrical quality of the themes was well projected on the Fazioli grand piano and the tendency to percussiveness minimised. The throbbing beat in the Beethovenian second movement – not exactly a slow movement – was palpable, as was the injection of audible humming, clearly from a male voice.         

The Scherzo could have done with more lightness, and here fast equated with loud. The Hungarian-flavoured finale brought back the air of fantasy, closing with the typically witty gambit of searching for definite ending chords. This spirited show was followed by an encore, the familiar Military March No.1.

The audience clapped along, and several members trooped on stage, marching uncoordinatedly and bearing placards declaring their love for the duo. This was an unabashed and spontaneous show of support, echoing after last Saturday’s events at Hong Lim Green. Who said Singaporeans were apathetic and undemonstrative?  

  

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, August 2012)

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV

Capriccio Espagnol / Overtures

Seattle Symphony / GERARD SCHWARZ

Naxos 8.572788 / ****1/2

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), the creator of Scheherazade, was a naval officer who later became a venerated professor of composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Largely self-taught and drawing inspiration from folk music of Russian and neighbouring Central Asian peoples, he became the longest-lived and most successful of the “Mighty Handful” clique of composers. His orchestral works are known for their extraordinary colour and imaginative use of instrumental resources. In his Capriccio Espagnol (Spanish Caprice), authenticity however takes a distant second place to a Russian’s stylised impression of sunny Spain and its dances. Its sultry serenade and hot-blooded fandango however leave an indelible impression.

His Russian Easter Overture quotes from Orthodox liturgical themes and is a stand-alone showpiece of grandeur, pomp and pageantry. If the Overture On Russian Themes sounds familiar, that is because it uses the iconic Slava theme that appears in Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov and other melodies to be found in Borodin’s Second Symphony and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Rimsky-Korsakov’s little march Dubinushka (Little Oak Stick) was adapted from a student’s song used in anti-Tsarist rallies. The much-recorded Seattle Symphony under long-time music director Gerard Schwarz put their stamp on further overtures to three operas, completing this enjoyable musical showcase of Slavic nationalism.  

    

SCHUBERT Operatic Overtures

Haydn Sinfonietta Wien / Manfred Huss

BIS 1862 / ****

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) may have been the world’s greatest songwriter but how many people know of his operas? He never got to hear most of these within his short lifetime, which makes one wonder why he composed operas in the first place. As a composer, Schubert lived in the shadow of Beethoven, while opera in Vienna was dominated by Rossini and Weber. Therein provides a clue to the ten overtures on this disc.

Other than Der Teufel Als Hydraulicus and Die Zwillingsbruder which last all but 3 minutes, all of the overtures are longer than Mozart’s overtures and contain a similar dramatic intensity as Beethoven’s overtures, and implicit humour of Weber’s overtures. Des Teufels Lustschloss, composed at the age of just 17, demonstrates a penchant for the sturm und drang (storm and stress) that is stirring.

As he matured into his 20s, one begins to discern a more individual voice. The opening of Alfonso Und Estrella, while casting a backward glance at Don Giovanni, looks forward to Verdi and even Bruckner. The string tremolos and brass chorale of Fierabras (1823) could have come from the pen of Wagner. These overtures were performed on period instruments, which account for an anaemic and strident quality to the sound. Putting aside issues of authenticity, it would have been nice to experience these on modern instruments.  

DEATH OF THE HARLEQUIN / T'ang Quartet / Review

DEATH OF THE HARLEQUIN
T’ang Quartet
Esplanade Recital Studio
Saturday (17 September 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 September 2011 with the title "T'ang Quartet's sterling, stirring effort".

Almost 20 years after it first broke into Singapore’s musical scene, the T’ang Quartet is still at it. Its innovative approach to programming and introducing new works for newer audiences remains undimmed. The latest concert had mortality and its polar opposite - vitality - as unifying themes, the result of which was an unusually stirring outing with modern classics.

One could have been easily distracted by the stage setting. The period furniture, three paintings (including one with the eyes of Michelangelo’s David staring at the audience), flowers in vases and a medieval chandelier with lit candles might have passed as the schizophrenic living room of Batman’s Joker, Despite these, music-making has always come first for the quartet.

True to form, the T'ang Quartet's programme leaflet was different, consisting of four playing cards, each representing the composers in the concert.

For Schubert’s brief Quartet Movement in C minor (D.703), the foursome instilled a sense of urgency and tension, with violinist Ng Yu Ying and cellist Leslie Tan providing the melodic impetus and counterpoint respectively. Both were unerringly united for the unison voice - much easier said than done - in the opening of Finn Aulis Sallinen’s Third String Quartet.

Such is the unspoken chemistry, or one might say telepathy, that exists with chamber musicians who have worked lifelong with each other. Subtitled Aspects of Peltoniemi Hintrik’s Funeral March, the work which is an ingenious theme and variations received the full measure of its poly-stylistic twists and turns.

Even better was the riveting reading of Chinese-American Bright Sheng’s Third String Quartet, the evening’s most modern work. T’ang Quartet was one of its earliest and most persuasive champions, and it showed. From the very first bars with the declamatory statement of a Tibetan folksong, working its way to an intoxicating dance (an Oriental counterpart to Bartok’s own quartets), the ever-pervading sense of incessant pulse and movement was palpable.

The reverse sides of the "playing cards" programme leaflet.

Closing with a lament for the wanton loss of life and innocence (from China’s turbulent history, Cultural Revolution and beyond), the impression was one of ultimate sorrow and regret. A tad less tragic was American composer and diarist Ned Rorem’s Fourth Quartet, where six short and varied movements were performed.

An arch-lyricist himself, these were lent the full gamut of emotional peaks and troughs in which the quartet trenchantly and eloquently expressed. In his engaging preamble, Leslie Tan said the quartet played the six “easiest” movements. Like the harlequin of the concert’s title, surely he jests.

Note: The T'ang Quartet has now returned to its original foursome: Ng Yu Ying & Ang Chek Meng on violins, Lionel Tan on viola and Leslie Tan on cello.