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.

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!

 

MOST HEAVENLY MUSIC OF THE SPHERES / 6th Singapore Lieder Festival / Review

MOST HEAVENLY MUSIC OF THE SPHERES!

6^th Singapore Lieder Festival

The Sing Song Club

The Arts House

Friday (28 October 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 31 October 2016 with the title "Shakespeare in songs".

Perhaps no figure in literary history has had the same impact of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) on the English language, with his plays, sonnets and poems. On the 400^th anniversary of his death, the Sing Song Club has devoted the entire 6^th edition of the Singapore Lieder Festival to song settings of Shakespeare's verses.

The second of four evenings was a programme of 20 songs drawn from his comedies and problem plays. Thirteen plays were represented, sung with spirit and verve by five local singers accompanied by pianist Shane Thio.

Sing Song Club co-founder tenor Adrian Poon alone sang in ten songs. His mellow, natural and unforced voice was ideally suited for songs with flowing lyrical lines, such as Martin Shaw's I Know A Bank (from A Midsummer Night's Dream) and Patrick Doyle's Sigh No More, Ladies (Much Ado About Nothing).

Yet when it came to varying styles, such as two settings of Fancy (The Merchant Of Venice), he was fully attuned to each idiom and their nuances. Benjamin Britten's Fancie was more rhythmic, emphasising bell-like staccato phrases, while Francis Poulenc's Fancy was serene and less animated, yet delivered with equal vividness.

If there were one song that was alone worth the price of entry, that would be the newly-commissioned Come Away, Death (Twelfth Night) by Zechariah Goh Toh Chai which received its World Premiere. Also the longest song, its predominant mood was bleakly placid, but giving way to an atmosphere of soothing calm, with Poon's sympathetic entreaties finding an uncanny resonance with quiet drones on the piano. 

Soprano Cherylene Liew's exquisitely poised voice accounted for Hugo Wolf's Lied Des Transferierten Zettel (A Midsummer Night's Dream, sung in German), Ernest Chausson's Chanson D'Amour (Measure For Measure, French) and Haydn's She Never Told Her Love (Twelfth Night, English), which provided further contrasts.

Baritone Daniel Fong was given the honour of opening the recital, where a nice boomy glow to his voice graced Glen Roven's I To The World (Comedy Of Errors) and Schubert's Was Ist Sylvia? (Two Gentlemen Of Verona). The latter was another song with two different settings presented, and Eric Coates' more lyrical Who Is Sylvia? (sung by Poon) resembled a popular song.

In between the songs, there were a couple of amateur readings of Shakespeare, including favourite lines of Poon and Thio which lent a more personal touch to the proceedings. Thio's best loved quote from Henry V turned out to be one of the Bard's wittiest (and cruelest) insults.

The songs for multiple voices included Frederick Keel's You Spotted Snakes (A Midsummer Night's Dream) with soprano Yap Shin Min and mezzo-soprano Ng Sheh Feng, Liza Lehmann's How Sweet The Moonlight (The Merchant Of Venice) and George Shearing's Fie On Sinful Fantasy (Merry Wives Of Windsor). Bob Chilcott's Come Unto These Yellow Sands (The Tempest) closed the delightful evening with three women's voices in the brightest of spirits.    

2ND SINGAPORE LIEDER FESTIVAL / Review

2^ND SINGAPORE LIEDER FESTIVAL

The Sing Song Club

The Living Room @ The Arts House

Friday (7 September 2012)

A slightly edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 10 September 2012 with the title "Splendid singers for festival".

Those who have been closely following these pages would have noticed a resurgence of vocal events in recent years, in the form of operas and performance of art songs. The latter, in particular, has been in large part through the efforts of the Sing Song Club, a collective of singers and pianist Shane Thio, responsible for founding the annual Singapore Lieder Festival and Alphabet Series of recitals.

This year’s Lieder Festival ran for just two evenings, a reduction from last year’s ambitious six nights of Schubert and Schumann song cycles. The German art song was again the focus, now broadened to include Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Wolf, Strauss and the Second Viennese School. Disappointingly not more than 30 people turned up to witness the first evening’s hour-long concert by four very different but splendid singers.

A pleasing symmetry was offered by the sets of Hugo Wolf songs that opened and closed the recital, a case of thoughtful programming. Soprano Rebecca Li ran the full gamut of emotions - of love gained and loved – in Die Spröde and Die Bekehrte, a pair of contrasting pastoral reflections. A more poignant rendition of Das Verlassene Magdlein (The Forsaken Maiden) would have been hard to find from this petite but deceptively powerful presence, who sang completely from memory.

The Verona-based bass-baritone Martin Ng lent an animated and highly dramatic edge to five Brahms songs, his big burnished voice filled the breadth and depth of the human experience within. In the hymn-like Erinnerung (Reminiscences), there was reassuring warmth which turned dark and smouldering for O wusst Ich doch den weg zuruck (O That I Knew The Way Back).    

There was some familiarity to the four Richard Strauss songs of Op.27, a wedding gift to his wife, sung by veteran baritone William Lim. His booming voice was one tempered with fine control; sombre in Ruhe, Mein Seele (Rest, My Soul), passionate in Cacilie, equally rapturous in Heimliche Aufforderung (Secret Invitation) and finally sensitive in Morgen! (Tomorrow). The exquisite piano parts found an equal in master collaborator Shane Thio.  

Malaysian tenor Peter Ong closed accounts with Wolf’s two Pelegrina lieder and the prayer-like Gebet, impressing with his enormous range and depth of feeling. The final number Abschied (Farewell) was no Mahlerian tear-jerker between departing lovers but a final riposte by adversaries, with an uproarious send-up to the Viennese waltz. Both singer and pianist hammed it up for an upbeat and spirited close.

Next year’s Lieder Festival goes French, with the complete chansons of Francis Poulenc. A curious and receptive audience is urgently invited!