A GOTHIC HALLOWEEN / Singapore Symphony Chorus & Eudenice Palaruan / Review

 

A GOTHIC HALLOWEEN 

Singapore Symphony Chorus 

Eudenice Palaruan 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Sunday (27 October 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 October 2024 with the title "Spine-tingling music at Halloween concert".

What makes certain works of classical music scary? The human imagination is so susceptible that powers of suggestion can often hold sway. The annual Halloween Concert, part of Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s organ series, had the ideal setting in Victoria Concert Hall. 

Victoria Concert Hall was
aptly decorated for Halloween.

Its Klais pipe organ was the star, with the Introduction from French composer Leon Boellmann’s Suite Gothique performed by the Singapore Symphony Chorus’ director Eudenice Palaruan opening accounts. Loud stentorian chords and long-held resonances conveyed vibes of haunted houses and things that go bump in the dark. 

Then enter the men from Singapore Symphony Chorus, all 17 with grim expressions as those awaiting execution. Singing a brief movement from Francis Poulenc’s Four Little Prayers of Saint Francis of Assisi, led by assistant conductor Ellissa Sayampanathan, did not assuage their collective guilt. 

Johann Sebastian Bach’s infamous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor did not make an appearance, but his “Little” Fugue in G minor (BWV.578) did. This was, however, almost cheerful by comparison. More serious was De Profundis Clamavi (Out of the Depths, I Cry to You) with 18 women’s voices joining in. Its alternation of chant-like unison lines and polyphony in Latin, a dead language, sent chills down the spine. 

Low Jinhong’s celesta with its tinkling timbre accounted for the chromatic Notturno (Nocturne) by the Hungarian Bela Bartok, renowned for his creepy skin-crawling music. Interestingly, this had the same opening notes and E minor key as Robert Schumann’s Im Rhein (In The Rhine) which followed. This was a salute to Cologne’s gothic cathedral, with mixed chorus accompanied by celesta, piano (Shane Thio) and organ (Boey Jir Shin). 

The most ambitious and colourful work on show was Palaruan’s Cana, based on a Spanish term referring to a wide range of reed and pipe instruments. Here, staggered chants in unison (Veni Creator Spiritus and Santo Espiritu) were accompanied by handbells, glass harmonicas, bird whistles, khaen (bamboo pipes, played by the composer) and keyboards instruments to great effect. 

Eudenice plays the khaen (panpipes).

Back to the pipe organ, Palaruan completed Boellmann’s Suite Gothique with its soaringly sonorous Toccata. Does anybody else besides this reviewer think that the Malay words of Di Tanjung Katong could be sung to its main melody? Uncanny and bizarre. Edward Elgar’s well-known Nimrod from Enigma Variations, heard on piano and organ, was noble and imposing, but positively non-threatening. So why was it even included? 

On the other hand, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana can claim its fair share of casualties. The plain chant of Fortune Plango Vulnera (I Mourn the Wounds of Fortune) had a brutal edge to it. The exultant penultimate song Ave Formosissima (Hail, Most Beautiful One) led directly to the iconic O Fortuna, which was sung with the vehemence and bloodlust it deserved. 

Given the parlous state of world affairs today, security and good fortune are not a given. A Donald Trump re-election next week? That is the most frightening thought for this Halloween.

PULSE / Shane Thio, Nicholas Loh, Yiang Shan & Eugene Toh / Review

PULSE

Shane Thio & Nicholas Loh, Pianos

Yiang Shan & Eugene Toh, Percussion

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday (14 February 2023)

 

I cannot write with authority about contemporary music, so I will not try to, except to share what I got from this interesting programme of new music for two pianos and percussion. The performers this evening may be considered veterans in the field, having surveyed established classics of the repertoire, including Bela Bartok’s very well-known Sonata for two pianos and percussion and a work for this combo by George Crumb.

 

Every work on this Valentine’s Day evening (which I came sans wife, she will be compensated later, with another concert), especially the ensemble works, might have been Singaporean premieres. I am not certain but I cannot imagine anyone else with the abilities to master these works and present them publicly in a convincing way.  

 

Percussionists are vital in any orchestra, the reason being they provide the pulse for music to move along (think Ravel’s Bolero!), and without them, things can grind into a sludge. There were two works for percussion alone, opening with Jaouen Rudolf’s Elescarf (2014) for snare drum and three crotales, performed by (Sng) Yiang Shan.

 

If one thought a percussive beat to be monotonous, think again, as hers was a multi-layered and involving performance, and when the crotales (or zimbeln, those tiny cymbals heard to magnificent effect near the end of Debussy’s Prelude l’apres midi dun faune), were struck, there was even semblance of pitch.

 

Just as absorbing was Yousif Sheronick’s Manhattan Avenue, a primer for frame drum solo performed by Eugene Toh. This work was performed standing, sitting, the drum struck by hand and brush, and also involved konnakol, a form of scat vocalisation in Carnatic rhythm, albeit conducted at a measured tempo.  

 

The works involving two pianos opened with John Adams’s Hallelujah Junction (1996), arguably the most familiar work on show, performed by Shane Thio and Nicholas Loh. In three movements, this was not an overlong minimalist work, but the sheer amount of notes to be performed in perfect synchronisation and without skipping a beat or loss of pace must be hell to accomplish. And yet they did, their sheer doggedness and resilience conquering the odds, seemingly with lots to spare.

 

In Steve Reich’s Quartet (2013) for two vibraphones and  two pianos, the tasks were now doubled. Reich’s earlier works have been maddeningly repetitive, but not so this work as its colours and textures were allowed a shorter duration of time to change and metamorphose, thus transforming the complexion the work.

 

The harmonies were strangely soothing and warm, and there seemed lot to enjoy through its three movements (fast - slow - fast) and 18-minute or so run. The slow central movement had a New Age feel to it but was all too brief, before the tempo picked up again for a vibrant close. The quartet of Sng, Toh, Thio and Low gave an enthralling performance, which I cannot imagine to be bettered in within this island state. This evening was more than just an hour well spent.

MESSIAEN'S HARAWI / 10th Singapore Lieder Festival / Sing Song Club

MESSIAEN’S HARAWI

10^th Singapore Lieder Festival

Sing Song Club

Victoria Concert Hall 

Dance Studio

Wednesday (24 August 2022)

 

The Singapore Lieder Festival, named in these pages as the nation’s best kept secret, made a comeback for its 10^th edition with a single-night event. The Sing Song Club gave the Singapore premiere of twentieth-century French composer Olivier Messiaen’s song-cycle Harawi (1945), part of his love-and-death trilogy inspired by the legend of Tristan and Isolde. The two other parts include the massive Turangalila Symphony, performed by the SSO in 1994 and 2017, and the choral Cinq Rechants, which has yet to receive its premiere here.

  

 

Harawi comprises 12 songs in French (written by Messiaen himself), based on Peruvian Quetcha poetry, music and folklore on the said subject of love and death. The songs were shared by tenor Adrian Poon and soprano Jennifer Lien, partnered by Singapore’s very own Graham Johnson, the intrepid pianist Shane Thio. The music bears similarities with Turangalila albeit on a smaller scale, with its shared musical idioms of violent dissonances and paradoxically comforting harmonies, and by its use of recurring themes.

 

Birdsong abounds, notably the green dove (colombe verte) representing the forbidden love between protagonists Piroutcha and Toungou. Their eternal love can only be truly consummated in death, by the latter’s decapitation amid cosmic levels of upheavals. Erotic and gory in equal measure, this was what made Harawi the cult favourite it is. While Turangalila was the extroverted crowd pleaser, Harawi was the introverted sleeper of Messaien acolytes.

 

Both singers were excellent and well-matched in their selected songs, reflecting a kind of yin and yang in opposing yet complementary viewpoints. Poon was the grounded terrestrial spirit of sleeping cities (La ville qui dormant), mountains (Montagnes) and the realm of animals (monkeys and the ubiquitous birds) while Lien revelled in the mystic ideals, love (L’amour de Piroutcha), parting (Adieu) and celestial forces, the sun (L’escalier edit, gestes de soleil) and stars (Katchokatchi les etolies). Both conveyed the outward ruggedness and inner beauty of the music very convincingly.

Doundou tchil,
now repeat it 19 more times...

 

Besides singing in idiomatic French, repetitive onomatopoeic words also stole the show, such as the recurring doundou tchil and katchikatchi sung by Lien (representing a dance with ankle bells and grasshoppers respectively), and Poon’s shrieking cries of ahi and o (Repetition planetaire) as well as the monosyllabic pia (Syllables). Their synchronisation with Thio’s dynamic pianism in these rhythmically complex and extremely tricky numbers were a marvel to behold from start to end.

Ahi...ahi....O....
(Repetition planetaire)

 

Held in the high-ceilinged and mirrored space of Victoria Concert Hall’s Dance Studio, with its sonorous and not-too-reverberant acoustics, the performance was very well received by a small but extremely appreciative audience. The floor sprinkled with multi-coloured origami pieces (possibly celebrating the recent repeal of 377A) representing birds, grasshoppers and stars made a very nice and atmospheric touch for a landmark in Singapore music history.

 

Whence will the next performance of Harawi take place? Given that Messiaen’s Quatour pour le fin du temps and Turangalila, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, Bernstein’s Mass, Wagner’s Walkure, and the complete melodies of Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc (thanks also to Sing Song Club) are no longer strangers to Singapore audiences, one can hazard to say that cannot be too long from now, and coming from yet another adventurous group of musicians. Yes, a revolution of sorts has begun.

FAR, FAR, AWAY / REVERIE / Reviews

FAR, FAR, AWAY

Jeremy Chiew, Viola

Adrian Poon, Tenor

& Shane Thio, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday 26 September 2021

 

REVERIE: NICHOLAS HO IN CONCERT

Nicholas Ho, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday 28 September 2021

 

Concert life has begun to take shape again in Singapore, with multiple concerts in different venues springing up quite unexpectedly and often unannounced. Most are solo recitals or chamber concerts, which avoid over-crowding on stage, attended by size-restricted and socially distanced audiences.

 

Despite rising numbers of Covid cases and fatalities in Singapore, concert venues are still relatively safe havens, having recorded zero outbreaks from concerts all year round. Going to markets, food centres and shopping malls are far riskier propositions. Over the past week, I was treated to two excellent recitals, the variety of repertoire is staggering, representing the wealth of musical talent which exists within our modest island state.

 

First up was an hour-long vocal-cum-viola recital curated by the combined brains of Sing Song Club and Viva Viola. Both are among Singapore’s best kept secrets, thus the maximum capacity of 50 audience members was not close to being breached. This was also a concert of rarities, such that even Brahms’ two Op.91 songs with viola were not included. Instead, it opened with Benjamin Britten’s realisation of Bach’s Kommt, Seelen, dieser Tag (Come, Celebrate This Morn) with tenor Adrian Poon in his genteel best accompanied by pianist Shane Thio.

Photo: Yong Junyi

 

This freshness continued into Frank Bridge’s Far, Far From Each Other, with viola obbligato part provided by Jeremy Chiew, arguably Singapore’s most active proselytiser of viola repertoire. This was both hauntingly sad and beautiful, perfectly complementing Bridge’s Two Pieces for viola and piano, contrasts provided by the reflective Pensiero and self-explanatory Allegro Appassionato which closed the set on a rapturous high.

 

The programming with pairs of works for voice and viola was excellently thought out. Whoever dreamt of coupling Arthur Honegger’s rather substantial three-movement Viola Sonata and short Psalm No.138 deserves a prize. The Sonata traversed from a highly chromatic and dissonant opening to something far more agreeable before finishing with a Franckian flourish. Simply a journey from utter bleakness to life-affirming sunshine, with the brief sung psalm (I will praise you Lord, with all my heart) in French as the sweet icing on the cake.

Photo: Yong Junyi

 

Has anybody has heard of Benjamin Dale (1885-1943)? The English composer was a contemporary of York Bowen and composed in a similar tuneful neo-Romantic style. Come Away, Death is a soothing salve in the best English pastoral tradition, with the obbligato viola part adding to its poignancy. The Romance from Dale’s Viola Suite in D minor Op.2 (1906) is far more ambitious than its title suggests, sounding more like a rhapsodic tone poem. The tenderness of its first pages gave way to a more lively central episode before ending with the same deeply felt emotions as it began.   

 

To close the evening in a pleasingly symmetrical manner, Jeremy polished off the Courante from J.S.Bach’s Cello Suite No.4. Striking three lotteries with a single ticket, lovers of unjustly neglected rarities, fine singing and viola playing have been well-served.

 

The young pianist Nicholas Ho has progressed from a self-conscious teenaged hotshot to a bona fide virtuoso with uncommon talents, as evident in his latest recital. Its title Reverie only applied to the first piece, Chopin’s Nocturne in C minor (Op.48 No.1), which was dark and smouldering, exploring the mysterious and tempestuous nature of night.

 

He amply brought out its brooding qualities, before launching headlong into Schumann’s Fantasie in C major (Op.17), with its full flush of hot-blooded romanticism worn heart-on-sleeve. He is unafraid to relive the early Romantic excesses to greatest advantage, yet also wallow in moments of tenderness and vulnerability, as in the quote of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte near the end of the first movement. The second movement’s imperious march took no prisoners, and even if there were a couple of slips at its treacherous final two pages, these came at the extreme heat of the moment. One would not have it any other way. A pianist’s maturity is revealed in the slow Beethovenian final movement, and he did so by teasing out inner voices, plumbing the depths and building up to impressive climaxes. A more satisfying performance would be hard to find.

 

For the recital’s second half, one can only quote Monty Python, “And for something completely different”. Dutch minimalist Jacob ter Veldhuis’ Body of Your Dreams has cult status for its hilarious spoof on 20^th century American vanity and consumerism. Ho essentially accompanies a looped soundtrack (played on boombox) of the Abdominiser infomercial, with quotes like “that cellulite and flabbiness... how can you beat it?”, “oh wow, that’s incredible!”, “3000 muscle contractions” and “and its so easy!” peppering the score like obsessive earworms. Once heard, it cannot be unheard. This performance centred on the piano part in the expense of the soundtrack, a pity since the actual punchlines were in its words.

 

To close the recital was the World Premiere of the first six of Nicholas Ho’s Twelve Etudes Op.11, composed during the troubled months of the Covid pandemic. Each of these finger-twisters were dedicated to his mentors and teachers, including Tedd Joselson, Tan Chan Boon, Edward Auer and others. To say that a transcendental technique is required to perform these is itself an understatement. The first, written for Joselson, reminds one of the Chopin first etude (Op.10 No.1) with its firm tonal centres established by left hand pedal points. The second, for Tan, was written for left hand alone, but exceeds the difficulty of both Scriabin and Corigliano’s south paw wonders.

 

Nicholas’ playing is mercurial yet emphatic, exhibiting a light touch in running-flying passages, and applying necessary force in chordal segments when called far. The colours on his palette seem almost infinite. Having enjoyed these six etudes with score in hand, I can proudly proclaim that Singapore has found a set of piano etudes worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Debussy, Ligeti and Marc-André Hamelin. Handphones off, a genius!

 

POULENC'S LA VOIX HUMAINE / Review

POULENC’S LA VOIX HUMAINE

Jennifer Lien, Soprano 

Shane Thio, Piano

Ivan Heng, Director

Streamed on the Internet @ SISTIC Live

Saturday (18 July 2020)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 July 2020 with the title "Home-grown rendition of The Human Voice a rare gem".

Until the embargo of live concerts is lifted post-circuit breaker, music lovers will have to be content with pre-recorded digital concerts. Presented by the Singapore Symphony Group in its Victoria Concert Hall Presents series, this 2018 production of Francis Poulenc’s single-act, single-singer chamber opera La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice), first streamed last weekend, was a rare gem.

Performed before a live audience, its plot involved Elle (the generic “She” in French) in a final conversation with her former lover. Central to the 1958 opera, adapted from playwright Jean Cocteau’s 1928 script, was the telephone, a modern convenience and prop that was supposed to figure prominently throughout.

Wrong numbers, crossed connections and inept telephone operators were comedic elements in the serious melodrama. However, in director Ivan Heng’s conception, that physical means of communication was totally expunged. This allowed protagonist Elle the freedom of movement, to wander about onstage and sing without impediment.

The telephone’s only hint was a long red cord tightly wound around the grand piano on which pianist Shane Thio played. Also absent was Elle’s faithless lover, although his insidious presence might be inferred in furtive onscreen projections and Thio’s sockless red sneakers.   

Enlivening the anguished Elle was USA-based Singaporean soprano Jennifer Lien, whose monologue was a tour de force of lyrical and dramatic role-play. The former Business Times journalist turned operatic diva was fully immersed in the multi-faceted part and emoted brilliantly in idiomatic French (with the audience well served by English transliterations).

Through the opera’s compact 40 minutes, she brilliantly lived through Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief. Shifting effortlessly between denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, she often mixed these up in an intoxicating melange of fraught and barely-contained emotions. With hysterical outbursts alternating with episodes of lucidity, this was a multi-layered and grandstanding performance.

Poulenc’s music was unremittingly tonal, but liberally laced with dissonances and abrupt figurations. Lien flitted through recitative and outright song, where a penchant for sentimentality was revealed, albeit briefly. There was a short waltz-song sequence midway through, with a cascade of falling pills projected behind the performer. This was more than an allusion to a drug-induced fit of pique, also fortified by a well-placed bottle of liquor.

Whatever was Elle’s fate (suicide by overdose, gunshot or strangulation by telephone cord) became immaterial by the opera’s passionate but lyrical close. All that remained were the frenzied circumstances and states of mind that led to her fateful (and ultimately fatal) decisions. In short, The Human Voice was an in-depth treatise of the human condition, fragile psyche, warts and all. That it was captured with such trenchancy speaks volumes of all the artists involved.       

LOVE, POULENC / 9th Singapore Lieder Festival / Review

LOVE, POULENC
9^th Singapore Lieder Festival
Victoria Concert Hall Music Studio
Last Friday & Saturday (15 & 16 November 2019)
Chang Tou Liang

2019 marked the ninth edition of the Singapore Lieder Festival, organised by the Sing Song Club founded by tenor Adrian Poon and pianist Shane Thio. Over the years, the group performed over a thousand art songs, encompassing great German lieder cycles, English folksongs, French chansons and premieres of songs by Singaporean composers.

This year’s offering was a distillation of the 2013 festival, which showcased the complete melodies of French composer Francis Poulenc (1899 to 1963). In two short but intense recitals last weekend, three singers and the indefatigable accompanist Thio reprised some of the key song cycles. Given Poulenc’s penchant for melancholy, humour, irony and luscious tunes, that seemed irresistible.

The first evening opened with soprano Teng Xiang Ting in Poems of Louis Aragon, two widely contrasting songs dripping with socialist notions. Beautiful lyrical lines distinguished C (I Have Crossed The Bridges Of Cé) while her finely articulated French surmounted the tricky Fetes Galantes. While making her name as an operatic diva, Teng showed she was equally adroit as an art song interpreter.

Busier of two singers, she also sang Fiancailles pour rire (Light-hearted Betrothal) and La Courte Paille (The Short Straw), comprising some 12 songs. If there were a composer able to cram multiple layers of emotions and nuances into diminutive musical bon mots, that would be Poulenc. Make no mistake about the seemingly simple words and settings, as hidden meanings and entendres abound.

Tenor Adrian Poon sang in both evenings. The five songs in Banalites (Banalities), Poulenc’s most familiar cycle, received vivid characterisations. Smoky decadence in Hotel, the tipsy waltz-song in Voyage a Paris and moving plaints of Sanglots (Sobs), highlighting mercurial shifts of moods, were easily taken in his stride.

A minor controversy involved a male voice singing La Dame de Monte-Carlo - Poulenc’s longest song - about an ageing madame’s desperate plight, casting her last hopeless die in the gambling table of life. No worries. Considering Poon’s cross-dressing act in New Opera Singapore’s recent production of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this was par for the course.    

On the second evening, Poon tackled Tel Jours Telle Nuit (As The Day So The Night) and Calligrammes, 16 songs in all. These were darker and more aphoristic, with the piano part more pointillist and fraught. The former was a kaleidoscopic metaphorical journey from day to night, encompassing all shades in between, while the latter was inspired by war and personal loss.

The third singer, baritone Daniel Fong, covered the songs on animals and artists. Le bestiaire (The Book Of Beasts) included curiosities like a camel, Tibetan goat, grasshopper and crayfish, all under a minute long. More substantial was Le travail du peintre (The Work of the Painter) where Poulenc’s artist friends were portrayed in vignettes – Picasso, Chagall, Braque, Gris, Klee, Miro and the little-known Jacques Villon. The last provided a most noble of endings, a touch that was simply Poulenc.

Photographs from 7TH SINGAPORE LIEDER FESTIVAL 2017

With a lack of publicity and promotion bordering on stealth and secrecy, the 7th Singapore Lieder Festival presented by the Sing Song Club took place last weekend in the Music Studio of Victoria Concert Hall. This year's offering, held over two evenings, was modest compared with previous outings, featuring the complete songs of Maurice Ravel.

I attended only the first evening, featuring pianist Shane Thio with four singers, countertenor Glenn Wong, soprano Felicia Teo, tenor Adrian Poon and baritone William Lim. (The second evening showcased Poon, soprano Rebecca Li and baritone Daniel Fong.) The sequence of songs were well chosen, offering a variety of themes and colours. The small audience comprising mostly members of Singapore's small singing community (including several famous sopranos) enjoyed the evening's fare, which was presented in the usual unpretentious manner and high standards of the Sing Song Club.

Countertenor Glenn Wong made his Lieder Festival
debut with Ravel's Trois Chansons,
adapted from three a capella choral works.

Tenor Adrian Poon was his usual lively self
in Chants Populaires (sung in English, Spanish, Italian and
Hebrew, in addition to French) and Melodies Hebraiques. 

The ever-indefatigable Shane Thio must have performed
over a thousand songs in these Lieder festivals.

Soprano Felicia Teo Kaixing raised the roof with
Un grand sommeil noir, Les grande vents Venus d'Outremer,
Sainte, Si morne! and Vocalise-Etude en forme de Habanera.

Veteran baritone William Lim accounted for
Histoires naturelles and Don Quichotte a Dulcinee.

Take a bow, Sing Song Club!