SINGAPORE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL: FRIENDS, NEW & OLD, GALA CONCERT: CELEBRATION! / Review

SINGAPORE CHAMBER 

MUSIC FESTIVAL 2024 

FRIENDS, NEW & OLD 

GALA CONCERT: CELEBRATION! 

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall 

Wednesday & Saturday 

(31 January & 3 February 2024) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 February 2024 with the title "Chamber music festival closes with eclectic programme and touching tribute".

The third evening of the Singapore Chamber Music Festival showcased locally-based professional musicians fronted by the Concordia Quartet in partnership with overseas friends. An eclectic programme spanning the classical to contemporary eras was the result. 

Performed first was Mozart’s Oboe Quartet in F major (K.370), with veteran Dutch oboist Joost Flach, a resident in Southeast Asia since the 1980s. Partnered with Concordia’s violinist Kim Kyu Ri, violist Martin Peh and cellist Lin Juan, this tuneful work highlighted the reed’s piquant timbre over backing by mellow strings. The ensemble blended beautifully, not least in the chirpy closing Rondo. 

Much sterner stuff was Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G minor which saw Japan’s splendid Aoi Trio teaming with violinist Yang Shuxiang and violist Peh. Although the first two movements were a neoclassical Prelude and Fugue, jarring dissonances informed the work’s grimmer agenda. Pianist Kosuke Akimoto projected authority, balanced by paradoxical moments which included the Scherzo’s madcap vitriol and the finale’s unsettling light-heartedness. The five players demonstrated in the music that one could still bring out a smile while under severe duress. 

The Concordia Quartet – Edward Tan (violin), Kim, Peh and Lin – were on their own for two movements from Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in E minor (Op.44 No.2), contrasting smooth congeniality with swift elfin lightness. The 4-year-old quartet, formed just before the Covid-19 pandemic, is now an assured and seasoned outfit. 

Tchaikovsky’s very popular String Sextet in D minor, or Souvenir de Florence, for pairs of violins, violas and cellos, generated rich sonorities. Leading was Singaporean violinist Jonathan Ong (first violin of the USA-based Verona Quartet), with the juiciest solos. His repartee with cellist Leslie Tan in the slow movement’s gorgeous melodies was a joy to behold. The group completed by Kim, Jeremy Chiew and Edward Tan (violas) and Lin made the best case possible for the usually morose Russian’s sunniest score. 

The festival’s grand finale featured no less than 32 musicians in a celebration of chamber music’s myriad varieties. There were three string quartets, the youngest being Pythagorus Quartet (average age of 11) which cut their teeth in Haydn with much confidence. 

Pandan Quartet from Oberlin, Ohio comprised undergraduates with Asian ancestry, and their maturity displayed in Mendelssohn was just as astounding. Jurong Quartet, formed by young local professionals gave a crisp and clear-headed account of Beethoven. All performed first movements from string quartets. 

An outlier was the opening movement from Mozart’s Horn Quintet in E flat major (K.407) with Alan Kartik, the concert’s only wind player, partnered by violin, two violas and cello. Even more arcane was a rare performance of 20th century Russian Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Quartet by The Music Circle (violinist Tang Tee Tong, violist Christoven Tan, cellist Leslie Tan and pianist Cherie Khor), a work of grating dissonance and deep disquiet. Both received gripping performances. 

“Grand Dame” of Singaporean pianists, Toh Chee Hung, still sparkling in her seventies, partnered with Akimoto in two of Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances. She was joined by violinist Ong, violist Peh and cellist Tan in the final two movements from Brahms’ Piano Quartet No.3 in C minor (Op.60), contrasting sheer lyricism with outright passion. These were a touching tribute to Penang-born pianist Dennis Lee, Toh’s husband and ardent supporter of the re:Sound Collective, who passed away last year. 

What could top the sight and sound of eight string players coming together for Mendelssohn’s Octet? Its rapturous finale, performed by all the strings from Concordia, Aoi and violinist Yang and violist Chiew, quoted Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, which more or less summed up what everybody on and off stage were feeling. 

So what is the big deal about chamber music? It is ultimately a meeting of minds, a celebration of talented and inspired people working and playing, and having a great time together.

A FAURE FETE / AN EVENING WITH CHELSEA GUO / Review

 

YOUTH & SERENITY: 

A FAURE FETE

The Music Circle

TMC Studio, Queen’s Road

Saturday (15 July 2023)

 

AN EVENING 

WITH CHELSEA GUO

Chelsea Guo (Piano & Voice)

School of The Arts Concert Hall

Sunday (16 July 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 July 2023 with the title "Engaging chamber concert and unusual piano-vocal recital at two weekend shows".

  

Two unusually different musical events took place last weekend, a chamber concert and a piano/vocal recital. The first saw about 50 people, including many children, packed within a cosy studio in The Music Circle’s school premises at Queen’s Road. This was an interactional concert meant to introduce young people (and their parents) to the joy of chamber music performance.

 

On show was a rare airing of late Romantic Frenchman Gabriel Fauré’s autumnal Piano Quintet No.2 in C minor (Op.115) performed by some of Singapore’s finest chamber musicians - pianist Cherie Khor, violinists Tang Tee Tong and Clarissa Lim, violist Christoven Tan and cellist Leslie Tan. Presenter Moegi Amano, a pianist herself, gave a short spiel on impressionism and Faure’s life history.

 

Strictly speaking, Fauré was not classed as an impressionist composer like Debussy or Ravel, but his more traditional music still provided instances where imaginations were allowed to run freely. As youngsters was busily colouring pictures of Eiffel Tower or pasting paper strips, the quintet performed as they would in a serious concert. In the flighty second movement, the audience was suggested to visualise children playing in a park, while the stillness of the slow movement reminded them of a peaceful river scene.

 

Applause between movements was not discouraged and all through this rarefied and sometimes austere music, many moments of beauty were illuminated, with listeners kept attentive and enraptured. Musical outreach has seldom been this engaging or unstuffy, and more schools are encouraged to win more followers to classical music by pursuing such persuasive means.   

 

Photo: Aceolution

The second concert featured one artist in dual roles of pianist and singer. While this is a given in pop music and jazz, it is virtually unheard of in classical music. Enter American-Chinese pianist and soprano Chelsea Guo, an undergraduate at New York’s Juilliard School, whose delightful programme centred on the love triangle of Robert Schumann, his wife Clara, and their friend Johannes Brahms.

 

The recital’s first half was all piano, opening with Robert’s Kinderszenen (Scenes From Childhood), musings on juvenile memories rather than didactic pieces for children. Innocence and simplicity were well brought out, the popular Traumerei (Dreaming) and the closing Der Dichter Spricht (The Poet Speaks) being particularly poignant.

 

Photo: Aceolution

Two contrasting Romances, Clara’s Op.21 No.1 and Robert’s Op.28 No.2, confirmed that she was no less of a serious composer than her husband. Brahms’ youthful Variations on an Original Theme (Op.21 No.1) provided the most technically challenging moments for the fingers but Guo prevailed.

 

 

The second half was all vocal, with Guo multi-tasking by being her own collaborative pianist. In Mir Klingt Ein Lied (In Me Sings A Song) is based on the melody of Chopin’s Tristesse Etude (Op.10 No.3) with the difficult bits left out, a mellifluous prelude to three songs by Clara which revealed far more of Guo’s art as interpreter. Her German was idiomatic, her tone pure but resolute, paving the way for Robert’s song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben (Woman’s Love and Life).

 

The words by Adelbert von Chamisso seem to modern sensibilities anachronistic and misogynist, that a woman is forever in the thrall of her man. It thus worked best just to pay attention to the music, and Guo expressed in its eight songs a wealth of emotion and colour, her voice never overshadowed by the piano’s rich details and textures. 

The recital closed with Robert’s Du Meine Seele (You My Soul), better known as Widmung (Dedication) written for Clara as a wedding gift, in the showy transcription by Franz Liszt. That heartrending romp and the Chinese song Molihua as encore brought down the house.