SHLOMO MINTZ Chamber Recital / Review

SHLOMO MINTZ Chamber Recital
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall
Wednesday (13 November 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 November 2019 with the title "Unusual musical choices lead to patchy performance".

Russia-born Israeli violinist Shlomo Mintz is the Ong Teng Cheong Professor in Music for Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in the 2019/20 academic year. Also Distinguished Artist-in-Residence in last year’s Singapore International Violin Competition when he performed all six Eugene Ysaye unaccompanied Sonatas, his showcase this year was a chamber recital with faculty members of the Conservatory.

Unusually, the recital opened with Mintz on the viola, in two works which were not conceived for the instrument. The first was Schubert’s popular Arpeggione Sonata in A minor, originally written for the arpeggione, an obsolete six-stringed bowed instrument with frets. Nowadays, it is always heard played on the cello.  

Neither as deep nor mellow as the cello, the viola would struggle in comparison. Nevertheless Mintz maintained a firm and throaty singing tone throughout its Biedermeier gentility. However the tempos adopted by him and accompanying pianist Ge Xiaozhe in the opening movement were so broad that there seemed little differentiation in dynamics continuing into the actual slow movement.

Leisurely to some, and draggy to others, life seemed to be sucked out of the music. Moving from the early Romantic to the late Romantic, Brahms’ Viola Sonata in E flat major (Op.120 No.2, originally for the clarinet), there gained some semblance of vitality, not least in the central Allegro Appassionato movement. With fire in the belly, much credit went to Ge’s rock-steady partnership which did not stint on keyboard vigour.

Lighter music occupied the recital’s second half, now with Mintz playing the violin. Darius Milhaud’s surrealist ballet Le boeuf sur le toit, crafted as a cinema-fantasy for violin and piano, was a weird choice. The music was inspired by Brazilian dance rhythms, ragtime, cabaret and popular music hall idioms. Also throw in the Frenchman’s experiments with polytonality, meaning the instruments often played in different keys.

This sounded like some disaster, with excruciating off-pitch and approximate playing which became increasingly embarrassing by the minute. Perhaps all that was deliberate, given that the work’s absurdist title, named after an actual 1920s Parisian nightclub, means “ox on the roof”.   

Thankfully there was Astor Piazzolla’s tango suite The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires to save the day. Here Mintz was partnered with members from the Conservatory, namely Qian Zhou and He Shucong (violins), Zhang Manchin (viola), Ng Pei-Sian (cello) and Guennadi Mouzyka (double bass). They performed a string sextet arrangement by Fabian Bertero, which is shorter and less florid than the more often heard Leonid Desyatnikov version.

Here was a collective letting down of hair, with the infectiously rhythmic music being the tonic for the evening’s mixed fare. Mintz also seemed more in his element, wallowing in the high spirits and bittersweet asides. Opening with celebratory Summer and closing with vibrant Spring, the performance was loudly and rapturously received, with fugal Winter being encored to even more cheers.  

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL VIOLIN COMPETITION 2018: FINALS / Review

FINALS, SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL

VIOLIN COMPETITION 2018

with Yong Siew Toh 
Conservatory Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Monday & Tuesday (5 & 6 February 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 February 2018 with the title "Talent galore at violin competition".

The 2^nd Singapore International Violin Competition has reached its Finals round. Twenty-nine international competitors were whittled down to just six, each performing a violin concerto by Mozart with the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra conducted by the competition's Distinguished Artist-in-Residence, the Israeli violinist-conductor Shlomo Mintz.

Held over two evenings, there were four performances of the Third Violin Concerto in G major (K.216) and two of the Fourth Violin Concerto in D major (K.218).  Mozart's concertos are small-scaled early works that call for sensitivity and musicianship rather than mere outright display, and it was very interesting to see how these young virtuosos responded.

The petite physical stature of Chisa Kitagawa (Japan) did little to deter a highly confident showing of Concerto No.4, which projected an outsized sonority that was both incisive yet musical. Its cantabile lines were gracefully delineated, especially in the stately slow movement, and the outer movement cadenzas tastefully crafted to suite the Rococo style.

In contrast, the burly Sergei Dogadin (Russia) was more of a showman in Concerto No.3, totally comfortable with his sleights of hand. He skilfully kept emotional excesses in check except during the outsized cadenzas which sounded almost disproportionate. His was otherwise a highly nuanced performance with lots of character.

Closing the first evening was another Concerto No.3, from Laurel Gagnon (USA) who was a towering physical presence. Her violin looked puny in her hands but she made it sing with a naturalness that was both disarming and distinctive. Her show of delicacy and restraint was admirable, and so were the very idiomatic cadenzas as she proved that less was more.

Two Third Concertos bookended a Fourth Concerto on the second evening. Oleksandr Korniev (Ukraine) and Shi Xiaoxuan (China), both alumni of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, did their alma mater proud with rather different but equally valid showings in the G major concerto.

Korniev, attired in just plain shirtsleeves, was as cool as they come. He matched Dogadin's flair with a deep and penetrating sonority of his own, and had equally showy cadenzas on offer. Other than a momentary straying of intonation in the slow movement, there was little to dislike in his outing.

Shi struck an even finer balance in the same concerto. An epitome of grace and refinement, her slow movement was one to be savoured over and over. Lisa Yasuda (Japan), the youngest finalist at 19, put on a virtuosic twist to the D major concerto, standing out for its resoluteness and slickness when tenderness and warmth would have been preferred.  

The international jury of nine members voted to advance Kitagawa, Dogadin and Korniev to the Grand Final with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Joshua Tan. To be held on Thursday evening at Esplanade Concert Hall, the great concertos by Sibelius and Tchaikovsky await. A surfeit of violin pyrotechnics beckons.  

And the finalists are:
Chisa Kitagawa (Japan),
Sergei Dogadin (Russia) &
Oleksandr Korniev (Ukraine)

SOLO VIOLIN RECITAL / SHLOMO MINTZ / Review

SOLO VIOLIN RECITAL

Shlomo Mintz (Violin)

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Wednesday (31 January 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 February 2017 with the title "The luxury of Ysaÿe's six Sonatas at one sitting".

For violinists and violin fanciers, there are three pinnacles of the solo repertoire. J.S.Bach's six unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas, and Paganini's 24 Caprices are well-loved and established monuments. The six Sonatas (Op.27) of Belgian violinist-composer Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931), dedicated to eminent violin virtuosos of his time, have gained a strong foothold helped by excellent complete recordings by the likes of Leonidas Kavakos, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Alina Ibragimova and Yang Tianwa.

Live performances of Ysaÿe (above) are often limited to single sonatas, or shorter single-movement sonatas (notably Sonata Nos.3 and 6) as encores. However to hear all six sonatas in a single sitting was a rare and unusual luxury, so amply illustrated by Russia-born Israeli violinist Shlomo Mintz. Mintz is presently the Artist-in-Residence of the Singapore International Violin Competition 2018 and Ong Teng Cheong Professor of Music.

Those who remember his Deutsche Grammophon recordings of solo Bach and Paganini will be pleased that he has lost none of the phenomenal technique, tonal lustre and impeccable musicianship that distinguished those albums. Without pomp or ceremony, Mintz emerged from the wings and played as if his entire existence depended on it.

Dedicatees of Ysaÿe's sonatas were an illustrious bunch.
Top: Szigeti, Thibaud & Enesco
Bottom: Kreisler, Crickboom & Quiroga

J.S.Bach was the inspiration for the first two Sonatas, both in four movements. Sonata No.1 in G minor was dedicated to the Hungarian Joseph Szigeti after hearing him play Bach's Sonata No.1, also in the same key. Sonata No.2 was written for Frenchman Jacques Thibaud, filled with in-jokes of the fiddlers' trade.

The 1^st movement, entitled Obession, began with the unmistakable opening of the Preludio from Bach's Partita No.3 before morphing into brutal slashing as indicated in the score. The medieval chant Dies Irae (portending the Day of Judgement) was quoted in all movements, sounding more frenzied with each turn. The fugal movements were very well voiced, contrasting with the diabolical hairpin turns and twists of the fast movements. The furious finale, called Les Furies, seemed to say it all.

Even after the exhausting encore-like Sonata No.3 “Ballade” written for the Romanian Georges Enesco, there was no recourse for an intermission. Mintz just carried on, harnessing a second wind for Sonata No.4, a pastiche of Baroque traditions. Specially gifted to that notorious fabricator of old Viennese waltzes, Fritz Kreisler, he amply demonstrated that the violin could really dance.

Of a more earthy variety was the Danse Rustique that concluded Sonata No.5, a work for fellow compatriot Mathieu Crickboom that luxuriated in long-held drones, produced by skillful multiple stopping. Time seemed to pass so quickly that before long, Sonata No.6, crafted for Spaniard Manuel Quiroga, heralded the end of Mintz's 70-minute test of musical, physical and spiritual endurance.

There was a false start, but he shrugged it off, beginning over without mincing or missing a note till its a glorious end. His encore was most apt, Bach's Preludio from Partita No.3 now heard in its entirety. Needless to say, that was glorious too.  

Shlomo Mintz will hold violin, viola and chamber music masterclasses on 3 & 7 February at the Conservatory Orchestral Hall, and conduct the Finals (Mozart concertos) of the Singapore International Violin Competition with the Conservatory Orchestra on 5 & 6 February at Victoria Concert Hall. 

Post concert: Shlomo Mintz meets with
members of the SIVC jury:
(From L) Kam Ning, Viktor Tretyakov, Mintz,
Silvia Marcovici, Qian Zhou and Boris Kuschnir.