Take Five: The Piano Quintets of Shostakovich & Joyce Koh / Review

TAKE 5
Piano Quintet Concert IV:

Shostakovich & Joyce Koh
Esplanade Recital Studio
Sunday (17 May 2009)

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 19 May 2009.

Local audiences have come a long way, especially when a chamber concert with Shostakovich as its most conservative item garnered a sold-out house. Add the fact that the majority of the audience was under 30 years old, one also pondered chamber music as a growth industry. The piano quintet Take 5, in four concerts has established itself as a name second only to the T’ang Quartet. No small feat.

Its first commissioned piece was by Joyce Koh (left), long considered the hardcore avant-gardist among local composers. The title What’ll We Do? comes from Samuel Beckett’s nihilistic play Waiting For Godot, the music a reflection on its pacing of dialogue and thought processes. In a concentrated 16 minutes, Koh made little concession for the audience yet did not talk down to them.

A verbal preamble by the composer was helpful in defining the themes and pivotal phrases, but it was the performance that resonated deeply. While the musical language was unapologetically atonal – recalling the most uncompromising of Schoenberg and Webern – the committed execution left no doubt about the players’ convictions.

Violinist Foo Say Ming and violist Chan Yoong Han (representing Vladimir) paired off against violinist Lim Shue Churn and cellist Chan Wei Shing (Estragon) as fellow protagonists in their shared fears and neurosis. Lim Yan’s piano (Godot?), both assertive and conciliatory, was the glue that held their parts together. In the final movement Let’s Stop Talking For A Minute, a brief but treacherous moto perpetuo for the piano’s benefit closed the work to much applause.

The audience was silent throughout, obviously gripped by a musical drama that never let off its pressure on the jugular. Like the play, this work would prove more respected than adored. Timing was crucial; anything longer might have proved unsustainable while any shortfall would have made much less sense. In this respect, Koh is a master (or mistress?) of musical suspense.

Alongside this, Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G minor – usually described as thorny and ironic - seemed a breeze. The substantial Prelude and Fugue revealed mastery of ensemble and contrapuntal playing. Even if there were some intonation problems along the way, these were slight in the face of the onslaught of angst and vitriol that coloured this masterpiece. Take 5 encored the madcap Scherzo, and why not? Its off-the-cuff jibes and hidden messages aptly summed up the evening’s enthralling fare.

Take Five: Review of Piano Quintet recital on 17 August 2008

Here is my review of the concert given by Take Five, a piano quintet formed by Singaporean musicians, which appeared in The Straits Times on 20 August 2008.

TAKE FIVE

Lim Yan, piano

with members of the SSO

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday, 17 August 2008

The chamber music scene in Singapore is really picking up and opportunities abound for local musicians to make history. Take Five, a quintet formed by pianist Lim Yan with violinists Foo Say Ming and Lim Shue Churn, violist-for-the-evening Chan Yoong Han and cellist Chan Wei Shing, seem to relish doing that.

Their bold ambition is to perform all the piano quintets in the classical canon. Going through the four warhorses (Schumann, Brahms, Dvorak and Franck) one at a time, their third recital also showcased a rarely heard quintet and one by a local composer.

Kelly Tang's six-minute-long Quintet of 1996 is a model of compactness and concentration. Opening like a Second Viennese School product, his bitty motifs peppered the ear with sparks and shards of sound. Melodic interest soon became discernable as an arch-like structure was formed, but it ended as the senses began to pique. This is a work that will repay further visits.

The concert began with the early Dvorak Quintet in A major (Op. 5), written before he became the distinctive voice of Czech nationalism. Its dark-hued tones channelled Wagner, while folk-like rhythms made themselves felt, albeit without the heart-on-sleeve transparency of the mature and familiar Quintet Op. 81, also in the same key. The reading of the angst-filled slow movement and hot-blooded rush that is the scherzo-cum-finale was invigorating, making the work sound greater than initially suggested.

This self-same vehemence and sense of purpose continued well into the second half, where the mighty Brahms F Minor Quintet (Op. 34) awaited. In the first movement's sonata form, white-hot playing on stage was matched only by the intensity etched on the faces of the performers. The quintet could have afforded to relax a little in the slow movement's Andante, instead of sounding tense in parts. Perhaps that was an inevitable lead-up to the Scherzo's unstoppable march to the abyss.

Where silence from the audience would have been much appreciated between movements, the well-filled venue erupted with applause. This altercation may have thrown the strings off-kilter as intonation went awry briefly in the beginning of the finale. The musicians, however, rallied in a hell-for-leather finish that finally brought the house down.

As a much-demanded encore, the quintet reprised the Tang work, proving that repeated listening does make the heart grow fonder.