COMPASSION / Singapore International Festival of Arts / Review

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

FESTIVAL OF ARTS 2021

 

THE CONSOLER

Take 5

The Arts House

Wednesday (19 May 2021)

 

GHOSTS OF YESTERYEAR

Morse Percussion

Esplanade Concert Hall

Thursday (20 May 2021)

 

ALONE TOGETHER

Li Churen, Yang Shuxiang & Leslie Tan

The Arts House

Saturday (22 May 2021)

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 26 May 2021

 

Compassion is the series of eight chamber concerts in this year’s Singapore International Festival of Arts, specially curated to reflect on the Covid pandemic and its tragic toll. Over the past year, the nation had gone into partial lockdown, lives and livelihoods were lost, but ways of coping were found and an indomitable spirit prevailed.

 

Four concerts involving voice and wind instruments had been cancelled, but the remaining recitals still had cogent stories and messages to convey. The Consoler provided an hour of 20^th century piano quintet music, forged from the trials of two world wars.

 

The Russian Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet was conceived under a pall of Stalinist totalitarianism, hence its seemingly traditional forms were coloured by a tragicomic personal voice. Frenchman Charles Koechlin’s Piano Quintet composed in the wake of First World War carnage and the Spanish influenza pandemic gave the impression of sunshine breaking through a sea of dense clouds.

 

Take 5, comprising pianist Lim Yan, violinists Foo Say Ming and Lim Shue Churn, violist Janice Tsai (replacing Chan Yoong Han) and cellist Chan Wei Shing, wrung out every bit of pathos possible from both works. While Shostakovich’s faux congeniality posed an illusion of hope, it was Koechlin’s humanity which yielded true consolation.

 

The four young musicians of Morse Percussion - Derek Koh, Joachim Lim, Julia Tan and Cheong Kah Yiong – had a field day in two works by American composers. David T. Little’s Haunt of Last Nightfall memorialised the 1981 massacre of innocents during the El Salvador civil war. Pitched (marimbas and metallophones) and unpitched (drums) percussion with the aid of electronics painted a harrowing scenario which traversed from serenity to violence, climaxing with the simulation of gunshots and machine-gun fire.

 

By contrast, four movements from Philip Glass’ Aguas De Amazonia (Waters of the Amazon), adapted for percussion from piano pieces, provided soothing balm to the ears. The novel use of slung cow-bells, crotales, wine bottles, water-filled glasses and bowls conjured an ethereal and other-worldly sonority and feel, suggesting that a reconciliation with Mother Nature be the best salve for the world’s ills.   

Trio of Li Churen, Yang Shuxiang and Leslie Tan
at the Poland Constitution Day concert.

 

Alone Together saw solos, duos and a trio from the newly formed trio of pianist Li Churen, violinist Yang Shuxiang and cellist Leslie Tan. The music of Poland prominently in various degrees of carthasis works by Penderecki, Wieniawski and Panufnik. Li’s original solo compositions included improvisations on Schumann, Mozart and Chopin and were strong on nostalgia. 

The concert’s most poignant moments came in the Intermezzo from Francis Poulenc’s Sonata For Violin and Piano, composed in memory of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, murdered during the Spanish Civil War. The trio’s encore, Piazzolla’s melancolic slow tango Oblivion, showed that music - in all its infinite variety - had the power to heal. 

PINNACLES OF ROMANTICISM / Take 5 Piano Quintet / Review

PINNACLES OF ROMANTICISM
Take 5 Piano Quintet
Esplanade Recital Studio
Sunday (29 September 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 October 2019 with the title "Take 5's take on Romanticism may be this year's top chamber concert".

Take 5, Singapore’s premier piano quintet, has now completed fifteen concerts in its exploration of the piano quintet (piano with string quartet) repertoire. After exhausting the popular and familiar favourites, the group has turned to the arcane territories of Philipp Scharwenka and Sergei Taneyev.

Both composers operated at the tail end of musical Romanticism, with their piano quintets arriving in 1910-11, just a couple of years before Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring was unleashed to the unsuspecting world. Both were academics who stoutly clung to past traditions, tenaciously defending their ground as modernism took over and irrevocably transformed the musical landscape.

The Pole Philipp Scharwenka (1847-1917) was the elder brother of pianist-composer Xaver Scharwenka, best remembered for his Polish Dances and piano concertos. His half-hour long Quintet in B minor, while maintaining a front of Teutonic objectivity and density, smouldered with Slavic passion and darkness. This was apparent in the unison voices of its opening, oozing pathos in the minor key before becoming slightly more optimistic in its second subject.

The lovely slow movement could be described a “Romance” with pianist Lim Yan’s calming opening answered by Chan Wei Shing’s cello plaint. With the other string players joining in, this love letter soon took off, fraught with tenderness and angst in equal measure. After a slow introduction, the finale became an exciting romp, with no let up in tension and energy.

The Russian Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915) was one of Tchaikovsky’s most famous students. His Quintet in G minor – in four movements and lasting some 45 minutes – could at least be called ambitious. Pianist Lim, also playing a curatorial role within the quintet, gave a short preamble to this sprawling work. Furnishing short examples and providing contexts, he struck a good balance between being theoretical and intellectual.

Taneyev was no dyed-in-the-wool nationalist, but the Russianess of his music still soaked through. The first movement’s opening theme, mournful and lugubrious, was worn heart-on-sleeve but tinged with Wagnerian harmonic ambiguities. A contrasting second theme, essentially a modified inversion of the first, radiated more light. The tense interplay between these two, for best part of the movement’s 20 minutes, was a catharsis of sorts.

As a change of tack, the scintillating Scherzo spun off sparks and tinsels ever so effortlessly, while the slow movement’s passacaglia was a plodding procession over a bass rhythm established by the cello. Despite the longueurs, the quintet showed little sign of toil or weariness.

The finale was skittish and filled with fantasy, and themes from the opening movement returned at a fast and furious pace. There was a moment of respite when Foo Say Ming’s violin soared to stratospheric heights, before a glorious reprise of the work’s most memorable melody. With violinist Lim Shue Churn and violist Chan Yoong-Han completing this “mighty handful”, Take 5’s take might just be this year’s top chamber concert. 

A FRENCH CONNECTION / Take 5 Piano Quintet / Review

A FRENCH CONNECTION

Take 5 Piano Quintet

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (27 March 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 March 2016 with the title "Piano quintet has fun with diabolical diversion".

There was more than one French connection in this latest concert by Singapore's foremost piano quintet, Take 5. Firstly, all three French composers featured were much better-known as organists than pianists. Secondly, Camille Saint-Saëns was a teacher of Charles-Marie Widor, who in turn taught Olivier Messiaen. Thirdly, all the three works performed were receiving local premieres.

Saint-Saëns' Piano Quintet in A minor (1855), a conscientious work of a youngster, is virtually unknown for good reason: it is an awfully boring piece. More academic exercise than something truly inspired, its four movements seemed to tick off the boxes of technical accomplishments which all composition students strive for.

Piano chords and filigree from Lim Yan dominated the 1st movement, while a prayer-like slow movement presented Chan Yoong Han's viola and Chan Wei Shing's cello with some melodic interest. The Presto 3^rd movement gave the pianist frantic runs up and down the keyboard while the finale had the obligatory fugue, as inevitable as some tiresome graduation speech.

The quintet completed by violinists Foo Say Ming and Lim Shue Churn, were as expected, good servants to this pleasant and innocuous music, making the best case as they possibly could. The first half concluded with a little sting in its tale: Messiaen's unpretentiously titled Piece for Piano & String Quartet (1991).

Its pungent 4 minutes said far more than what Saint-Saëns accomplished in an entire half-hour. Four incisively-driven notes on strings were ear-catching, ushering in the purposeful dissonance of Lim's piano mimicry of birdsong, in this case the garden warbler (fauvette des jardins). Even before the ears could come to grips with its rarefied idiom, the same four notes emphatically ended the piece.

For those imagining Widor's Second Piano Quintet in D major (1894) to be much like his organ music, notably that Toccata of countless wedding services, they would be pleasantly surprised. His idiom is decidedly darker here, more aligned to the Cesar Franck and Richard Wagner axis.

The chromatic language in the opening movement occasionally lapsed into moments of lyricism and levity which were refreshing. There was even a short final flourish at the movement's end for violinist Foo to relive his re:mix ringmaster act as leading showman. Bare piano octaves heralded the 2^nd movement's passacaglia, which for all its austerity led to a heartwarming climax of rare beauty.

Short and exciting, the scherzo-like 3^rd movement swept past like something out of The Flying Dutchman, filled with searing dissonances and malevolent intent. One suspects the players had the most fun with this diabolical diversion, somewhat reluctantly reverting to a more casual and lighter stance for the finale.

Themes from the 1^st movement were rehashed, but this time a salon-like charm took precedence, with some rhapsodic musing before a grandstanding close. Having clearly appreciated the experience, the audience applauded long after the quintet had taken its last bows, packed up and gone home.

NORTHERN LIGHTS / Take 5 / Review

Review: Concert

NORTHERN LIGHTS

Take 5 Piano Quintet

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (24 May 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 May 2015 with the title "Northern lights shine".

Northern Lights is the twelfth concert of piano quintets by the crack local chamber group Take 5. Given that as few as four piano quintets – by Schumann, Brahms, Dvorak and Franck – are regularly performed in concert, this is an astonishing feat of curatorship. The focus this evening was on  Nordic music, with what were most likely Singaporean premieres of quintets by Christian Sinding (1856-1941) and Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). 

The Norwegian Sinding was one of those unfortunate “one-work wonders”, known only for his piano miniature Rustle Of Spring, beloved of amateur pianists because it sounds more difficult than it actually is. His Piano Quintet in E minor (1884) is a massive work, with four movements playing over 40 minutes. No amateur could possibly survey this, given its pretentions as a virtuoso piano concerto with multitudes of notes. 

Lim Yan is no ordinary pianist, and as de facto leader of Take 5, took charge from start to end. His sombre opening solo was replied by his string partners violinists Foo Say Ming and Lim Shue Churn, violist Chan Yoong Han and cellist Chan Wei Shing in rapt attention. Their keen sense of chemistry, borne of years of playing together, soon told as the work gained in tempo and volume.

One reason why this work is hardly ever heard is its sheer density of Romantic excesses. Too many notes was what Lim had to contend with in all its four movements, which included florid chords, scintillating runs and cascading octaves, all well supported by the strings. There were some folksy moments in the scherzo-like Intermezzo, and even an Oriental-sounding second subject in the Finale, but the overall idiom was strongly Germanic, including throwing in a fugue for good measure.

Lim in his programme notes revealed that the great Italian pianist Ferruccio Busoni was involved in the premieres of both piano quintets. That would certainly explain the preponderance of the piano, but that was less obvious in Sibelius' Piano Quintet in G minor (1890). An early work, it predated his landmark symphonies and tone poems but contained glimpses of future greatness, especially in his development of motifs and themes.

Sobriety dominated the first of five movements, while two lighter salon-like movements sandwiched an Andante which was the true heart of the sprawling 40-minute work. Here there was a lovely viola melody, accompanied by pizzicatos from violin and cello and harp-like runs from the piano. Later in Scherzo, the flow came to a shuddering halt when a tuning peg on Chan Yoong Han's viola came loose. Being true professionals, the movement was re-started and completed beautifully without further incident or fuss.

The vivacious finale brought out folk-like elements that were previously sublimated, and like the Sinding had all five musicians stretching themselves for a triumphant and breathless close. So what further piano quintets can the public expect from Take 5? From this humble (and humbled) listener, the quintets by Medtner, Zarebski, Bacewicz and Schnittke all sound like fascinating future prospects. Are you all game?

 

PIANO QUINTET SERIES CONCERT IX / Take 5 / Review

PIANO QUINTET SERIES CONCERT IX

Take 5

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (31 March 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 April 2013 with the title "5 take on Russian piano quintets".

There are about six piano quintets that are heard with any regularity in concert halls around the world today. So kudos go to local chamber group Take 5 for reaching its ninth concert without repeating a single work. But that also meant scouring the fringes of the repertoire, and the ensemble came up trumps with the Singapore premieres of two rarely-heard Russian piano quintets.

Anton Arensky (1861-1906) was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov and in turn was the teacher of Rachmaninov. His quintet in D major (1900) was the epitome of Romanticism and traditionalism, opening with a Tchaikovskyan melody in the usual sonata form. Not the most original or inspired of works, it nevertheless has a high charm factor, not least when the violin solos fall upon Foo Say Ming’s reliably steady and unfailingly sweet tone.

The slow movement’s theme and variations were not unlike those in Schubert’s Death And The Maiden, showcasing Chan Wei Shing’s cello in full bloom. The light-hearted scherzo, full of Mendelssohnian ebullience, was a playground for piano acrobatics which Lim Yan lapped up most gratefully. The finale, predictably for a schoolmaster, was textbook example of how to conjure up a fugue from earlier themes. Its apparent seriously was soon exhausted as the quintet ably wound up for a heady close.

Made of far sterner stuff was the Piano Quintet in F minor (1944) by Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996), also known as Moisei Vainberg, the Polish-born Jewish composer who fled the Nazis by escaping into the Soviet Union. A close friend of Shostakovich, it was inevitable that his music would share the same introspection and dark mordant humour as the more famous Russian.

Curiously, the quintet opened with the piano playing a plainchant-like melody an octave apart, with the melancholy redolent of another Russian, Rachmaninov. How Weinberg used simple, even unremarkable motifs and built them into powerful statements was classic Shostakovich. The level of angst invested into its pages soon piled up, along with discords and dissonances, relieved time and again by attempts at satire and wit.

The central Presto revolved around a psychotic little waltz, but the starkest of Largos, built upon sustained and repressed rage revealed a bare-knuckled anger waiting to burst free. Its denouement was however a most peculiar of finales, with strings playing repeated notes a tone apart – like a demented version of Chopsticks – with the piano commenting in the background, before launching into the mock-gaiety of a highland jig.

Like the deliberately ambiguous finale of Shostakovich’s piano quintet composed four years earlier, Weinberg had found his own release. The members of Take 5, which also included second violinist Lim Shue Churn and violist Chan Yoong Han, delivered with a convincing aplomb and the straightest of faces. A standing ovation accorded by segments of the audience was rewarded with a welcome reprise of the Scherzo from Arensky’s Quintet, something far less intimidating.

3 Best Classical Concerts of 2010

As published in The Straits Times on 29 December 2010, here are my picks for the 3 best classical concerts in Singapore for 2010. Indeed we were spoilt for choice, which is why I have included more than three top concerts. The true winners, however, are the lucky concert-goers who get to experience classical music as it should be performed - with unwavering commitment and passion.

Orchestral
MAHLER Resurrection Symphony
Orchestra of the Music Makers 

& Combined Choruses
10 July 2010, Esplanade Concert Hall

The Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) has been well-served in his anniversary year, with memorable performances of symphonies by the Singapore Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras. Pride of place however goes to the young musicians of the Orchestra of Music Makers, joined by the Singapore and Queensland Festival Choruses, with their stupendous showing in Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony.

Conducted by Chan Tze Law, this blockbuster not only demonstrated an amazing maturity for the barely 2-year-old ensemble, but also a wealth of prodigious talent among the musicians, whose average age was 20-21 years old. The vocal soloists were locals too – mezzo-soprano Rebecca Chellappah and soprano Jeong AeRee – making this a truly Singaporean affair.

Besides being feted in the pages of The Straits Times, this concert also received high praise from music critics from Japan, Canada and UK.

Vocal / Choral
VERDI Requiem
Singapore Symphony Chorus 

& Combined Choruses
with Singapore Symphony Orchestra

17 April 2010, Esplanade Concert Hall

The Singapore Symphony Chorus marked its 30th year with one of the great masterpieces of the symphonic choral repertoire – Verdi’s Requiem with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra

These days, this venerable institution is augmented by voices from three other choirs, and the combined strength of 180-200 singers led by Lim Yau is a force to be reckoned with. The fearsome Dies Irae, delivered with awe-inspiring magnificence and with brass resonating from different parts of the hall, provided genuine spine-tingling moments that will remain long in the memory.

Honorable mention also go to The Philharmonic Chamber Chorus’ A Bridge Of Silk (18 September 2010 / Esplanade Recital Studio), an a cappella recital of contemporary Asian songs conducted by Lim Yau, and the superb artsong recital Night Songs by young tenor Melvin Tan (20 August 2010, Esplanade Recital Studio), accompanied by pianist Shane Thio, which showcased rarities by Korngold, Berg, Rachmaninov and Debussy.

Chamber Music
LIM HUI Violin Recital

  20 June 2010 

  Esplanade Recital Studio
TAKE 5 Chausson Concert

  1 September 2010 

  Esplanade Recital Studio
ZARA Schumann Fantasies

  28 November 2010 

  Esplanade Recital Studio

There was so much good chamber music on show that honours were evenly divided. Lim Hui, 2nd prize winner in the 2003 National Violin Competition, has blossomed to become a very fine virtuoso, one combining poise and purpose in her playing. Her demanding recital of Beethoven, Brahms, Pärt and Prokofiev, partnered by her cousin pianist Lim Yan, was a joy to behold.

Lim Yan and violinist Chan Yoong Han helmed their piano quintet Take 5 to give the Singapore premiere of Ernest Chausson’s Concert for violin, piano & string quartet, a monumental work of light, shade and overwrought emotions. A more passionate yet sensitive performance would be hard to find.

Zara is the international chamber group formed by former violin prodigy Tang Tee Khoon, playing on the National Arts Council’s 1750 J.B.Guadagnini violin. Their tribute to Robert Schumann and his circle was both moving and technically impeccable.

PIANO QUINTET Series Concert VI / Take 5 / Review

Piano Quintet Series Concert VI
Take 5
Esplanade Recital Studio
Wednesday (1 September 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 September 2010.

When a piano quintet dedicated to performing every repertory piano quintet reaches its sixth concert, familiarity becomes short in supply. Pleasant surprise, thus, to find a sold-out house for an evening of rare French works, all receiving first Singapore performances.

Jean Francaix’s (left) Eight Bagatelles opened the evening. Hold your breath and you will miss some of these miniatures, written for various combinations of strings with piano. Insouciant charm, quiet solemnity and dance-like playfulness inhabit these aphorisms, serving as a piquantly flavoured palate-tickler.

Then Korean-Singaporean soprano Jeong AeRee emerged in an ultramarine floor-sweeping Korean-styled evening gown for Ernest Chausson’s Chanson Perpetuelle. Written in the 19th century’s penultimate year, its hushed atmospheric strains, a setting to Charles Cros’ poem Bois Frissonants, Ciel Etoilés (Trembling Trees, Starry Sky), reflected profound sadness.

Jeong’s dreamily sensuous voice mused yearningly about love lost, merging seamlessly with the dark and undulating music imbued with Wagnerian echoes. The allusions to the wind left one with little doubt that love is but a transient and elusive quality.

Chausson’s (left) monumental Concert for violin, piano & string quartet filled a longer second half. A work unique in the classical canon, its four movements worked more like a symphony than concerto. The stage setting saw violinist Chan Yoong Han centrestage, backed by string quartet (violinists Foo Say Ming and Lim Shue Churn, violist Marietta Ku and cellist Chan Wei Shing) and pianist Lim Yan.

For extended stretches, the music featured Chan and Lim as a violin-piano duo, reliving the sonatas of Franck and Fauré. However the use of pivotal motifs, such as the D-A-E that so emphatically opened the work, and symphonic nature of the accompaniment owed more to Wagnerian influences.

Light and shade alternated, with the sunny Mediterranean sicilienne of the second movement sharply contrasted with the dirge-like bleakness in the third. In the latter, the ensemble drove relentlessly, achieving an intensity that was unremitting and harrowing. Overwrought emotions, bottled up and ready to erupt, were all but released in a finale of sheer excitement and ecstasy.

Soprano Jeong returned for a haunting encore in Ravel’s Kaddisch, but the memory of Les Six holding their own in the nearly 50-minute Chausson was the abiding memory, capping one of the great performances of the year.

TAKE 5 + 1: Korngold & Schumann Piano Quintets / Review

TAKE 5 + 1 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Sunday (6 December 2009)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 December 2009. 

The quest to perform all the piano quintets in the classical repertoire has taken the musicians of Take 5 to well-trodden environs as well as obscure nooks and crannies. No endeavour has been as adventurous as its Singapore premiere of Wolfgang Erich Korngold’s Piano Quintet of 1921. Korngold (below) was the brilliant Viennese composing children prodigy who later found fame and notoriety as a Hollywood film composer.

His half-hour long quintet did not sound like movie music; instead it was the other way round. Korngold‘s blend of bittersweet melodies, aromatic harmonies and heart-wrenching climaxes, like those of Rachmaninov, became the widely imitated stuff of celluloid fodder. His style is however closer to that of Richard Strauss and Fritz Kreisler, mildly flavoured with the decadence of Second Viennese School dissonance. 

Take 5 luxuriated in the sheer opulence of the music, wallowing in the receding embers of once-lush Romanticism. There were dark clouds for sure, but silver linings abounded, not least in the suffocating orgasmic climaxes of the central slow movement, a set of variations on the most popular of Korngold’s own Songs of Farewell (Lieder des Abschieds). 

Each string instrument had its own solos in the limelight, but they rallied around the overworked pianist Lim Yan, whose arpeggio cascades and crashing chords flew from one high to the next, before consummating in an intoxicating finish.

Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat major (Op.44) is a well-established classic, but one never tires of its familiar strains, especially with a performance of the caliber of Take 5. From start to end, a palpable sense of purpose coursed through the ensemble (with the sixth player Tan Wee Hsin (left) substituting for Chan Yoong Han on viola), one that kept the reading taut and gripping. 

The fine art was not just in delivering the notes accurately but its togetherness and fine control, which allowed the music to alternate between resolute unisons and singing episodes, portraying sorrow and irony to joy and ecstasy. 

Take 5 has progressed with each outing, and should no longer be seen as a pianist with a string quartet, but five independent virtuosos united in one resonating voice.