THE TROUT / NAFA Music Faculty / Review

THE TROUT

Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Music Faculty

Lee Foundation Theatre

Thursday (12 January 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 January 2017 with the title "Chamber music with lots of heart".

Chamber music is the most pleasurable activity for musicians and listeners alike. Originating from works written for royal court musicians, this later evolved into hausmusik (house music), played by members of 19^th century middle-class households for their own entertainment. A collegial spirit exists in chamber music performance, hopefully allied by excellent techniques and refined tastes.

There were strong doses of all that in this concert featuring faculty of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Music Department. It opened with 20^th century Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski's Trio D'Anches for woodwinds, written during the dark years of the Second World War. Far from being a sombre work, oboist Joost Flach, clarinettist Tang Xiao Ping and bassoonist Aw Yong Tian gave a lively and ebullient reading.

There were dissonances aplenty, and a spicy brand of humour ran through its ten minutes. The fast outer movements were tautly delivered with pin-point cues and accents, contrasted with a slow and doleful central movement, housing a canon where the oboe carried its tune. A dance-like finale with a witty end completed a fine reading.

Further contrasts came in the four-movement Horn Trio by Johannes Brahms, a well-known but not often performed work here. Its paucity is due to a lack of willing French horn players and a strenuously acrobatic piano part. Thankfully hornist Marc-Antoine Robillard was a total natural. Shaping the instrument's singing lines and possessing accurate intonation are often taken for granted.

Pianist Nicholas Ong's role was jumping through musical hoops, especially in the fast 2^nd and 4^th movements, accomplished with no little confidence. Violinist Foo Say Ming completed the threesome, which galloped through the “hunting-call” finale with a fearless panache. Anything slower would have been lead-footed, so their natural impulses were to go for broke. This was very well received by a noisy audience which had far too many fidgety children for its own good.

Too many children behaving poorly and treating
Lee Foundation Theatre like their private playground.
Their parents should be sent for re-education.
Photo taken during the intermission.

Foo was joined in the second half by violist Janice Tsai, cellist Lin Juan, bassist Wang Xu and pianist Lena Ching for Franz Schubert's popular Piano Quintet in A major, nicknamed the Trout Quintet. The performance was by no means note-perfect, but it possessed that pre-requisite of chamber music: lots of heart.

A smart and brisk pace rightly dictated the 1^st movement, helmed by Ching's incisive playing that was anything but mechanical. There were lots of moments to heave a breath and savour the scents, and Ching was always alert to her partner's notes and nuances. The alternating fast and slow movements were contrasted to good effect; the 2^nd movement's congenial indolence found a foil in the punchy rhythms of the 3^rd and 5^th movements.

The work's heart was the 4^th movement, based on Schubert's lied Die Forelle (The Trout, hence the concert's title), which unfolded beautifully with each variation. Here the heart throbbed, and the warmth of camaraderie filled the hall with a glowing presence. That was, simply, the true essence of chamber music.   

ALL MOZART CONCERT / Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Orchestra / Review

CONCERT SERIES: MOZART

NAFA Orchestra

Lee Foundation Theatre

Tuesday (29 October 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 31 October 2013 with the title "Moving moments of Mozart".

Late Mozart was the subject of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Orchestra’s latest concert, which had an earlier planned performance of the Austrian composer’s Requiem Mass substituted with something lighter. The concert also had an interactive element in the participation of visiting American musicologist Robert Winter, who introduced each work with well-chosen words of authority and brimming enthusiasm.

The virtuoso clarinettist Anton Stadler was Mozart’s muse for the first two works. It was for him that Amadeus wrote the sublime Clarinet Concerto in A major, his final instrumental work. Singapore Symphony Orchestra clarinettist Tang Xiao Ping, also a NAFA faculty member, put a shine on the work with a show of natural and unforced virtuosity.

In the swifter outer movements, the tricky articulations were negotiated with the free-wheeling agility of an improvising jazzman. In many respects, that was the art of the instrumentalist in the 1790s, to ornament and embellish with freedom and creativity. The famous Adagio slow movement lingered but without excessive sentimentality. Its seamless aria-like quality is prescient of the bel canto operas which would occupy the next generation.

Tang remained centrestage to play the basset horn solo in the Confession Aria from Da Clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus), Mozart’s final opera. That instrument is not a horn but the lower-ranged first cousin of the clarinet, with a deeper and mellow timbre. It was Mozart’s perfect foil with counter-melodies to mezzo-soprano Jessica Chen’s impassioned plaints of Non piu ii fiori (No More Flowers), which had many moving moments.

Mozart’s Symphony No.39 in E flat major, the least celebrated number of his final symphonic trilogy, closed the concert conducted by Lim Yau. After its emphatic opening chords, the slow introduction had a tentative start, with difficulties in intonation from several sections. With the onset of the Allegro, the ensemble was sparked to life and a well-oiled facility.

The NAFA Orchestra is a work in progress, but could be credited for its sensitivity in accompanying, as in the preceding concerto and aria, as well as discerning contrasts in dynamics and shades. This was evident in the grace and deportment of the slow movement, even if it sounded four-square in parts, and the rustic rumblings of the third movement’s Minuet.

The perpetual motion of the finale, based on the inventive repetition and development of a single motif, found the ensemble at its most mercurial. Winter mused about this symphony as a tribute to Mozart’s sometime teacher Haydn, with the chirpy humour and high spirits of the older composer shining through.

Mozart keeps the listener guessing when and how the work would close. With several false endings to fool the ear, he finally does so with an understated eloquence. The young orchestra understood its message well and duly delivered.