NOW WATCH THIS AMAZING PIANO VIDEO! TWO GREAT SINGAPOREAN PIANISTS PERFORM STRAVINSKY'S THE RITE OF SPRING!

Witness two of Singapore's greatest pianists perform. Melvyn Tan and Churen Li represent two different generations of Singaporean pianism. Melvyn left Singapore as a pre-teen to study in UK (Menuhin School and Royal College of Music) during the 1960s, while Churen was entirely home-grown, having completed her undergraduate years at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory and further degrees at Yale and Cambridge. 

In their first collaboration together, one could scarcely tell their age-gap (about 40 years) but just appreciate two great musical minds at work, in this ground-breaking performance of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring on two pianos. 

One can only wonder what it was like witnessing Stravinsky and Debussy playing this music in a reading at Satie's home back in 1912. The performance on 27 October 2023 at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, part of the Performers(') Present Symposium would come close to it, or perhaps even better that.

ENJOY!

(4) Melvyn Tan x Churen Li: Dances & Dreams – Rite of Spring｜ YST Performers(') Present 2023 - YouTube

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, February 2017)

STRAVINSKY The Rite Of Spring

GIUSEPPE ANDALORO 

& ILYA RASHKOVSKIY, Pianos

GIOVANNI SOLLIMA 

& MONIKA LESKOVAR, Cellos

Alpha Omega Sound 14-01-12 / *****

This is a live recording of a concert held in Hong Kong's City Hall Concert Hall on 17 October 2013 to commemorate the centenary of Igor Stravinsky's epoch-making The Rite Of Spring, which premiered to a famous riot in Paris. Receiving its first Asian performance (and now World Premiere recording) was an unusual transcription of the ballet for 2 pianos and 2 cellos by Italian pianist-conductor Giuseppe Andaloro.

Adapted from the orchestral score rather than the four-hands piano version, there is a symphonic scope to its conception. Giovanni Sollima's cello replaces the famous bassoon solo with an other-wordly quality to its timbre. The cellos produce a wiry tone and are also employed percussively, thus extending the range of sonorities on the pianos. This vivid performance truly brings out the music’s virility and savage intensity.

Also employed for the same forces is Andaloro's arrangement of Ravel's La Valse, a sweeping performance contrasted with the languid and atmospheric stillness to Sollima's transcription of Debussy's Prelude To The Afternoon Of The Fawn for just 2 cellos. The memorable programme is completed by Lutoslawski's witty Paganini Variations for two pianos. 20^Th century music has never sounding this engaging or enticing.

  

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, October 2013)

CHOPIN De l‘enfance à la plénitude

ANNE QUEFFÉLEC, Piano

Mirare 096 / *****

This is not a new recording, but its 81 minutes contain a microcosm of Frederic Chopin’s art of pianism  and composition, from his prodigious childhood (hence the title which translates roughly as Childhood of Plenty) to his all-too-premature death at the age of 39. His earliest recorded work and last creative utterance are the bookends to this marvellous anthology. The first 20 minutes are virtually unknown, beginning with two juvenile Polonaises, in B flat major and G minor, remarkable efforts by a mere 7-year-old.

By 18, the Polonaise in F minor, with its more sophisticated touches, begins to reveal an originality that we recognise as the adult Chopin. His love for native Poland is also deeply felt in his last work, the Mazurka in A minor (Op.67 No.4), from 1848, his penultimate year. Its simplicity, also found in the late Waltz in A minor, shows that he had come a full circle.

In between these are the great stand-alone works from 1842 to 1846, including the sublime Berceuse (Op.57) and endlessly lyrical Barcarolle (Op.60). Veteran French pianist Anne Queffélec mines the rich vein of cantabile in these, and nimbly scales the torrid virtuosic heights of the Fourth Ballade (Op.52) and Fourth Scherzo (Op.54), which form the pinnacle of Chopin’s oeuvre. The transformation of talent and potential to outright genius and “industry leader”, to use modern parlance, is the overriding joy of this album.     

STRAVINSKY Le Sacre du Printemps

100^th Anniversary Collector’s Edition

Decca 478 3729 (20 CDs) / *****

Igor Stravinsky’s epoch-making ballet The Rite Of Spring for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes premiered to an infamous riotous reception 100 years ago in Paris. Yet a year later it was hailed as one of the 20^th century’s great masterpieces. This handsome box-set brings together 38 orchestral recordings of this iconic classic from the vast catalogue of the Universal labels. The earliest dates from 1946 with Eduard van Beinum conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra in grainy monoaural sound, while the latest is the slick 2010 account by Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. How times have changed and orchestras have progressed.

While most performances take between 32 and 34 minutes, the range of timings can differ widely, from Antal Dorati’s Minneapolis Symphony (1959) account that frenetically flies under the half hour to Leonard Bernstein’s expansive 37 minutes with the Israel Philharmonic (1982). There are two versions from Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic from 1965 and the mid-1970s, his pristine unruffled approach in the former drawing disparage from Stravinsky himself, who called it, “too polished, a savage pet rather than a real one”.

For this pair of ears, the version by Riccardo Chailly and the Cleveland Orchestra (1985) is the one to beat, uniting primal savagery and sumptuously balanced orchestral sound, with all the fine details to boot. There are three versions of Stravinsky’s original score for piano duet here, the glitziest coming from Vladimir Ashkenazy and Andrei Gavrilov (1990). A further bonus is Stravinsky conducting his own Violin Concerto with violinist Samuel Dushkin from 1935. For lovers of this endlessly fascinating score, this release is a godsend.   

THE RITE OF SPRING: A PEOPLE'S STRAVINSKY / Reflections

THE RITE OF SPRING:

A PEOPLE’S STRAVINSKY

The Philharmonic Orchestra / Lim Yau

Arts Fission Company / Angela Liong

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (22 June 2013)

I was originally going to write a review of this concert for The Straits Times, but the editor had a dance reviewer to cover it instead. As I still had my ticket, I enjoyed the concert on a non-reviewing capacity. Here are some of my reflections which I had promised to share on this blog. 

One century after the riotous first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), young orchestras in Singapore have been queuing up to perform it. The Orchestra of the Music Makers led by Chan Tze Law fired the first salvo at the Singapore Arts Festival in June last year. The Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra conducted by guest Eiji Oue made its emphatic mark on Esplanade barely two months ago. Now was the turn of The Philharmonic Orchestra (TPO) and Lim Yau, and never has the work been in greater currency here than ever.

TPO’s account was not a one-off, but rather a culmination of a series of Stravinsky concerts conducted by Lim entitled One Hundred Years Later, which began with The Firebird in 2010 and Petrushka one year later. Interspersed in between were further performances, also conducted by the indefatigable maestro, of The Soldier’s Tale (TPO), the Symphony in C major, Symphony in Three Movements (TPO), Symphony of Psalms (Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Choruses) and the ballet Apollon Musagetes (SSO). Clearly Lim Yau is Singapore’s new Stravinsky proselytiser, much as Choo Hoey was in the 1980s and 90s.

TPO’s Rite was to be more than just a concert. It had to be, given that the ballet in two parts does not last more than 35 minutes, or half a CD’s worth of time. To this end, the collaboration with The Arts Fission Company, one of Singapore’s more innovative independent dance troupes under the direction of Cultural Medallion recipient Angela Liong, was a coup of sorts. This production was to include not just professional dancers but also common folk. After all, the rites celebrated by primeval Central Asians, the original subject of Stravinsky’s ballet, was an affair involving real flesh-and-blood people; adolescents, elders, shamans and, yes, vestal virgins.

The Chosen One, and the bond-maidens (Photo: Guek Peng Siong)

The sacrifice of pure blood, to appease pagan gods of the land and seasons, is still practised albeit with modifications in some parts of the world today. Without being judgemental on certain religions, cults and cultures, the thrust of the message was to remind the more enlightened peoples of the world (Singaporeans among them, I suppose) that injustices against the weak and oppressed (like female circumcision, child marriages, honour killings, white slavery and the like) are still being carried out in the name of religion, tradition, culture and commerce.

The Chosen One is given her hood which seals her fate (Photo: The Pond Company)

The dancers and movers were attired in ceremonial red, the colour of blood, in costumes that resembled those of hill tribes in Southeast China or Indochina (no human sacrifice has been recorded here, or at least we think so, and thus politically acceptable). Among them were six professional dancers from Arts Fission, a group of young girls (thus satisfying Stravinsky’s description of “dancing lolitas”), and by far the largest group - of elders and sages, and their minders. The stage was extended to accommodate the orchestra and the dancers, but the latter had only a narrow strip of space from which to operate, and that somewhat hindered their manoeuvrability. Just enough space, I would hasten to add.

Both dramaturges, Lim Yau and Angela Liong, appeared on stage to give a preamble on the history and inspiration of the work (in English, and Mandarin for the sake of the many heart-landers in the audience), and the action began. The group of girls gambolled onto the stage, and one of them is ensnared with a red sash against her will and dragged away, and the music began with the solo bassoon. I will not go into detail about the orchestra’s performance, but suffice to say, the playing was very accomplished, with the solos confidently dispatched and all the sections admirably coping with the music’s thorny dissonances, treacherous cross-rhythms, and abrupt shifts of meter and dynamics. The score looks hellish enough, and what it must be for each player to encounter the music for the first (and last) time; every rehearsal and the actual performance must have been a trial of sorts, but the ensemble outdid itself. Having mastered The Firebird and Petrushka was certainly good preparation for the Rite.

The Oldies and their parasols (Photo: The Pond Company)

The choreography generally emphasised violence and cruelty, and that was accomplished with minimum of fuss and personnel. What was missing somewhat was the sheer spectacle of it all with a grande corps de ballet, and that was made up by the elders seated in the choir gallery behind the orchestra. On the signal of the Procession of the Sages, they literally tottered in with their walking aids and their younger minders (to forestall apoplexy, sudden cardiac arrest and fractured hips – those Esplanade steps are indeed treacherous). That was a spectacle in itself, leading to one member of the audience sitting behind me to blurt out audibly in Hokkien, “They are coming now…”  Thank you for the commentary.

The oldies played their part well, which consisted of simple ritualistic movements, all faithfully carried out in mostly in perfect synchrony. And there was a mass opening of umbrellas (also bright red) to further the ruddiness of the gallery, the symbolism of which is completely lost to me. I can only think the involvement of the sages (the oldest being an nonagenarian of 92 or 93) was symbolic of the fact that old habits (including ritual homicide) die hard, and one needs someone from the older generation to declaim, “Let’s stop this killing nonsense, and life will still carry on anyway. Let’s become sceptics and atheists.” Alas, that is not to be the case.

The dancers from Arts Fission Company (Photo: The Pond Company) 

Other than the above serial commentator (always in Hokkien, and his name is probably Lim Peh, and no relation to Lim Yau), the audience was generally respectful and well-behaved. There was no inappropriate applause between the two parts, despite The Adoration of the Earth ending on a loud cataclysmic note. And the ovation at the conclusion of The Sacrifice was long enough to ensure multiple curtain calls. The music was played continuous and without interruption except for two moments in The Sacrifice, where the orchestra stopped for a few second to allow certain vital movements to take place. That was unfortunate as it disrupted the momentum and direction of the performance. A second performance would have seen that kink ironed out, unless that was deliberate.

The performers take their bow. (Photo: The Pond Company)

Overall, I greatly enjoyed the experience and wondered if this would have been a good addition to the Singapore Arts Festival had it taken place this year. It certain engaged the community at large, bringing many people (including the Lim Pehs) to attend an arts event in which they would have otherwise missed. The concert ended at 8.35 pm, which gave me ample time to scoot off to the School of the Arts where the Singapore International Piano Festival was taking place, to see Benjamin Grosvenor in recital. No rest for the wicked, so they say.

Photos by courtesy of The Pond Company (www.thepond.com.sg) and Guek Peng Siong.

Performers take a bow (Photo: Pianomania)

CENTENNIAL RITES / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra / Review

CENTENNIAL RITES

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Thursday (18 April 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 April 2013 with the title "Rites of raw, primal energy".

The national Conservatory has invited renowned artists and conductors over the years as Artists-in-Residence to lead and inspire its students to excel. Visiting conductors have included Leon Fleisher, Takuo Yuasa and Mark Wigglesworth, but it will take some doing to better Japanese conductor Eiji Oue’s impression and impact on the conservatory orchestra’s young minds.

Oue was once a protégé of Leonard Bernstein, and has adopted some of his very physical movements and mannerisms on the podium. He conducts with his whole body, including making animated faces (below), stamping on the ground, shaking his fists with approval, the very suggestive swaying of hips and occasional leaps into the air. All this effort would have been naught if the orchestra did not respond with appropriate urgency.

In the Charlie Harmon-orchestrated Suite from Bernstein’s musical Candide, the ensemble exuded polish with a fine sheen, distinguished by excellent solo playing. Spanish rhythms were deliciously served up in the Old Woman’s song I Am Easily Assimilated, and the build-up to Let Our Garden Grow had true poise and stature. Close your eyes, and one thinks of the Boston Pops.

As an accompanist, the orchestra also shined in the tricky idiom of Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto, partnering Conservatory Head of Strings Qian Zhou’s alternatingly silky and spiky solo part. Her tone, incisive yet ethereal, was exemplary while the command and control of her 1757 Guadagnini was breathtaking. Here is a case where searing dissonance goes hand-in-hand with seamless lyricism, and one marvelled how this tightrope act was finely balanced from start to end.

The YSTCO with Qian Zhou in Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto. 

The enfant terrible in Prokofiev had a precedent that was Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite Of Spring, premiered to a riotous reception a century ago. Its innumerable discords and irregular meters still confound and jar the senses, but the head-scratching nowadays is reserved to how young orchestras in Singapore swallow its daunting challenges whole and with relish.

The Orchestra of the Music Makers conducted by Chan Tze Law had set the bar in the 2012 Singapore Arts Festival, and the Conservatory Orchestra did not disappoint on the night. The desolate opening bassoon solo was taken on with great confidence by Guo Peiling, around whom the woodwinds swarmed about in what must be three or four minutes of the most hellishly exposed and difficult passages.

Overcome with aplomb they did, and when the crunching Dance of the Adolescents imposed by its sheer presence, the playing simply took the listener by the scruff of the neck and held on tenaciously. The music’s raw, primal energy never flagged for a single moment as the ensemble fired on all cylinders with Oue, conducting from memory, firmly at the driving seat.

The percussion section, centred around a livewire timpanist, held sway, very much in its top form. In reality, all the sections impressed and there was little room for error in this high stakes game. By the time The Sacrifice came on, one was ready to put down one’s critical pen and be willingly swept away by the sheer momentum of the occasion.

Playing of such fervency and virtuosity is becoming a norm these days, but treasured nonetheless. The Rite marks a major landmark in every young musician’s performing career, one not easily forgotten. The best part is this: they will build upon this experience to reach new and greater heights.  

Post concert, there was a mad rush for the Maestro's autograph.

This lucky girl has her viola case autographed by Eiji Oue. (Another viola joke: How do you prevent a violin from being stolen? Keep it in a viola case.)

Concert photos by courtesy of Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.

Four Hands Piano Recital / Jean-Jacques Balet and Mayumi Kameda / Review

FOUR HANDS PIANO RECITAL

Jean-Jacques Balet and Mayumi Kameda

Conservatory Concert Hall

Tuesday (21 August 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 23 August 2012 with the title "Great contrasts from piano duo".

Recitals of piano music played by four hands are rare events, and when the repertoire avoids usual suspects and unearths rarely performed works, these become even more treasurable. The Geneva-based piano duo of Jean-Jacques Balet and Mayumi Kameda served up a treat of the familiar and the arcane.

Schumann’s Pictures from the East (Bilder aus dem Osten) is a positive rarity but make very pleasant listening. Although inspired by 11^th century Arabic writings from the Maqamat, the six varied impromptus do not contain a shred of Oriental music. What enlivened their appeal was the well-coordinated play of voices from both primo and secondo parts, evenly delineated and clearly articulated throughout.    

This merely served as warm-up for the undoubted masterpiece that is Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor. It is very well known but seldom performed here because its utmost musical demands elude the skilled amateurs for whom it was originally written. The Swiss duo had their hands full, but their whole-hearted performance never stinted on poetry and drama.

The lilting opening over which a melancholic melody floated was beautifully hewn, not too slow nor too impatient such that the march-like second theme came across well contrasted. There was no let-up in the ensuing busy central episode, which was free-flowing and exciting. When the opening theme returned, it made for a welcome déjà vu. Good performances tend to create that feeling, making one forget about the notes.

The second half was devoted to just one work, the Singapore premiere of the original piano version of Stravinsky’s epoch-making ballet The Rite of Spring. Lest one imagined it to be a mere reduction of the fully-scored orchestral work, this is not the case. Every strident chord, every ear-shattering cluster, mounted on irregular and jagged epileptic rhythms, was already conceived on four hands in this score.

Thus the listener does not actually miss the orchestral colours when this leaping skeleton launches into full flight. One instead marvels at the ingenious invention, outrageous audacity, and the sheer frenetic pace at which all the intriguing details falls into place. For this, Balet and Kameda applied themselves with great industry and agility, scarcely missing a note amid the throng.

One also exults at the intricate choreography of twenty fingers on a single cramped keyboard, the expert crossing of hands without getting in each other’s way. The final orgiastic Sacrificial Dance further upped the ante, by which time the kinetic pace and forward momentum almost left the poor page-turner in its wake.

The tumultuous applause was rewarded with two far-quieter encores: Ravel’s gamelan-inspired Empress of the Pagodas and Fauré’s Mi-a-ou  from Dolly Suite. Fascinating contrasts indeed.