DING YI CHINESE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL 2024 / Review

 

DING YI CHINESE CHAMBER 

MUSIC FESTIVAL 2024 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Friday & Saturday 

(13 & 14 December 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 December 2024 with the title "A feast of traditional and avantgarde music".

One of Singapore’s best-kept musical secrets is the biennial Ding Yi Chinese Chamber Music Festival, bringing together Chinese chamber ensembles from the Asia-Pacific and the homegrown Ding Yi Music Company. Three evenings of concerts are a showcase of ensemble music more diverse than the sonatas, trios, quartets and quintets that commonly define Western chamber music. 

The first evening opened with the senior citizens of Singapore Teochew Ensemble playing traditional tunes Lamps in Thousand Homes and Reminiscence in basic unison heterophony. This is the recreational music often heard in events like weddings and communal ceremonies. 

More sophisticated were Ding Yi Music Company’s presentations, a slick huqin quartet in Yao Min’s Picking Red Water Chestnuts and a full ensemble in Zhou Jiaying’s Twinkling of Bonfire Night conducted by Dedric Wong. The latter was impressionist in colour, with a quiet introduction developing into a swift celebratory dance complete with rhythmic foot-stamping. 

There were a couple of cheesy pieces using
Western instruments including one work with a
title sounding like Angry Horse Shaking Its Balls.

Windpipe Chinese Music Ensemble (Hong Kong) was the Festival’s first invited guest, impressing with Cantonese melodies, old and new. Whether playing in unison heterophony in Yan Laolie’s United We Go, Luk Wai Chung’s Lan Kwai Tang Fong and Drunken Lady Yang at Pavilion of Hundred Flowers, or the more contemporary pop-inspired approach taken in Cantonese Medley (arranged by Wang Chenwei), the virtuosity in fast numbers was clearly evident. 

Both Ding Yi and Windpipe were united for two concertante works. Xu Qiwei’s New Rendition of Early Cantonese Music conducted by Szeto Kin featured five Hong Kong soloists which performed adroitly as a concertino group, while Wang Jianmin’s The Charm of Tianshan Mountain conducted by Festival Director Yeh Tsung had Festival Artist erhu soloist Yang Xue do the honours in a spectacular concerto with exotic Central Asian influences. 

Music of a far more intimate kind featured on the second evening, from the awkwardly named “Bows and Strings’ Dance” Erhu (Huqin) Ensemble (Beijing) comprising four members, Yang Xue and three young students. Liu Tianhua’s Nocturnal Peace was an erhu duet, displaying a similar polyphony encountered in Bela Bartok’s Duos for two violins. 

Chen Yunyun’s more sentimental Red Velvet saw two erhus (Yang and Feng Xiao) accompanied by Ding Yi’s Tan Jie Qing on yangqin. Yang’s own Play for two erhus and zhonghu was a playful showcase of rapid fire virtuosity, as was the Brazilian Zequinha Abreu’s Tico Tico No Fuba in a faithful and delightfully polyphonic arrangement by Rui Xue. 

The ensemble as a full quartet presented more substantial fare in Ho Chee Kong’s Whispers of Spring, an impressionist fantasy with a pastoral feel, distinguished by drone effects and Yang’s superb gaohu solo. Li Bo Chan’s modernistic Bows and Strings, named after the group, was a series of songs and dances, that vividly exploited all kinds of instrumental possibilities. 

Nothing could be more different when C-Camerata (Taipei), a mixed ensemble comprising Chinese and Western instruments conducted by Chen Tai-chi, took to the stage. Atonality does not respect the countenance of instruments, only their timbral potentials. 

Chian Yi-cheng’s Tok for six players belonged to the “ping qualified by a thud” aesthetic where extended techniques were applied to instruments, including prepared piano, a metal rod placed between a violin’s strings, blowing directly on the pipes of a sheng, and a most unsettling rattling sound produced by a guzheng. 

Tung Chao-ming’s Behind The Sounds III with added percussion and dizi was similarly explorative and experimental, necessitating vocalisations from the players. American composer Oren Boneh’s Sprout completed this avantgarde showcase, beginning with a palpable beat from Kuo Jing-mu’s guzheng, then progressing into a relentless ostinato crescendo reminiscent of the violence of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. It made for a deafening cacophony that will clear the sinuses.

CHAMBER SOIREE / Photographs from Ding Yi Music Company's Fundraising Dinner

Ding Yi Music Company, Singapore's only professional Chinese chamber ensemble, held its annual fundraising dinner at the Parkroyal Collection, Marina Square Floral Ballroom on Monday (14 October 2024). Attended by the cognoscenti and high society of Chinese music circles, it was a glitzy affair with good food, hard liquour and lovely performances from the classy outfit and celebrity guest performers. A total of $450,000 was raised to further the cultural, educational and outreach work. For its invaluable work in furthering Chinese instrumental music and culture in Singapore, one can only conclude, "Job well done. Keep up the good work!"

Some of the pre-dinner performances.

The VIPs line up for a group photo.

You can't get a bigger name than
Yeh Tsung to kick off the music-making.

Then it was the turn of Dedric Wong Deli to lead.

Bekhzod Oblayorov plays an eco-cello,
made from recycled waste paper. 

I was seated at the music educators' table, with
Professors Ho Chee Kong & Peter Tornquist
from Yong Siew Toh Conservatory.

Ding Yi erhu player Chen Ning,
SCO Associate Conductor Moses Gay &
FrancisTan, NUS Wind Symphony Music Director

Chua Ai Liang, Ding Yi Board Member
& Lee Ming-Yen, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

SCO Composer-in-Residence
Wang Chenwei samples the moutai

Celebrity guest performers, Eric Chua M.P.
leading singer Claire Teo.

Donors getting their awards.

Yeh Tsung always looks dapper on the keys.

After Mrs Goh Chok Tong sang,
the donations surged from
$400,000 to $450,000. Power vocals.

Here is our colourful table.
In absentia: Prof Chan Tze Law.

TSUNG YEH AND SCO / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

 

TSUNG YEH AND SCO 

Singapore Chinese Orchestra 

Singapore Conference Hall 

Saturday (17 August 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 August 2024 with the title "SCO and suona player Liu Wenwen deliver in demanding performance".

Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s conductor emeritus Yeh Tsung returned to conduct a very demanding programme which included three Singapore premieres. Among these was Li Bochang’s Dukezhong, a memoir of a thousand-year-old ruined city in Yunnan, which opened the concert. Dances of the Naxi and Tibetan peoples were remembered, with percussion dominating the score. This culminated in principal Benjamin Boo’s imperious solo display on drums which defined the meaning of exuberance. 

Kong Zhixuan’s Tone Poem of Wuxi was a musical travelogue of the famous Jiangsu river town, with eight picture postcard-like scenes inspired by poetry performed in quick succession. Even if its opening suspiciously resembled Dawn from Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, the play on the folksong Wuxijing (Wuxi Scenery) placed it firmly within Middle Kingdom sensibilities. 

The shortest work on show, Liu Qing’s Sha Wei, scored for a chamber-sized group of just nine players was perhaps the most unusual and interesting. Atonal for most part, the instruments including pipa, erhu, dizi, suona and guzheng supported by percussion relived various inflexions, devices and cadences from Beijing opera. After a suona tour de force from Chang Le which included mimicking of operatic characters, were fragments of melodies heard for the first time. 

Wang Danhong’s Strings on Yangko Dance was a villagers’ celebration of harvest time, the subject being the “yangge” which personalised the rigours of rural living. Suona principal Jin Shiyi’s wonderful extended solo, touched with a rustic and plaintive quality, came close to stealing the show in this spectacular piece. 

The mother of all suona displays came from guest soloist Liu Wenwen, who is a 13th generation suona player in her family and presently Artist-in-Residence of Guangdong Chinese Orchestra. Her performances in two concertante works have to be witnessed in person to be believed. Mere words simply do scant justice.

Taiwanese composer Lu Yun’s Lang Sai (Lion Dance) was no mere lunar new year dance routine but an elaborate quasi-spiritual ceremony involving six rites of passage. Liu played on two suonas of different registers like a woman possessed, involving extended techniques which bordered on the edges of believability. 

Were her seemingly interminable long-held passages a result of the art of circular breathing or some trance-like state induced by some psychoactive substance? For the sake of staying on the right side of the law, one would grant her the benefit of doubt, and an extremely healthy set of lungs and airways. 

This feat was repeated in Jia Daqun’s Rhapsody – Spirit Of The Tunes From Shaanxi Opera, this time on six suonas. This longer work, which could be a trial for both player and listener, again fully brought out the dramatic and operatic aspects to heart’s content. Suffice to say, she was still standing at the end and not blue in the face. A solo encore and orchestral encore of Hua Hao Yue Yuan yielded a standing ovation, an instant not regularly encountered at an SCO concert.

CONFLUENCE / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

 

CONFLUENCE 

Singapore Chinese Orchestra 

Singapore Conference Hall 

Saturday (6 July 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 July 2024 with the title "SCO's China tour programme celebrates Nusantara heritage".

When an orchestra goes on tour, it usually performs the chosen repertoire as a test run before embarking overseas. The Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO) did the opposite by having a homecoming concert instead, recounting its three-city China tour which took place in March and April. Led by conductor emeritus Yeh Tsung, it was a case of better late than never. 

What can an orchestra of Chinese instrumentalists from Singapore perform in China without “carrying coals to Newcastle” or “selling sand to the Saudis”? Very astutely, it was the repertoire that mattered most. By playing contemporary Chinese works and Nanyang music, the SCO could count itself unique among Chinese orchestras in Asia. 

Both the Chinese works were large-scaled concertante pieces involving virtuoso soloists. SCO concertmaster Li Baoshun performed on three huqins (gaohu, erhu and zhonghu) in Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun’s Fire Ritual, a half-hour of what has been described as “orchestral theatre”. Part orchestral showpiece, part religious ceremony, the music also involved vocalisations from the shaman-like Yeh and orchestral members, as well as extra-instrumental sounds like paper rustling. 

Offstage wind players strategically placed around the hall provided antiphonal effects, enveloping the hall with a temple of sonorities. The wails of suonas and guans, usually associated with funerary music, stood out. Adapted from Tan’s film score Nanjing 1937, the full ensemble memorialised victims of war, and did so with stunning and dramatic impact. 

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Perhaps even more riveting was Luo Maishuo’s Stairway To Heaven with SCO pipa principal Yu Jia, cladded in silvery tinselled finery, as trenchant soloist. She simply stole the show, opening with an imposing cadenza, then revelling in dance-like moves and a meditative slow movement for contrast. 

The work which included a prelude, five movements and finale was inspired by the Sanxingdui tree of Chinese mythology, adorned with animals including a golden crow and dragon. The link between human and spiritual realms closed kinetically charged, where rhythmic exuberance and violence became all but indistinguishable. 

Nanyang music, works which included Southeast Asian influences, came from two former SCO composers-in-residence who have long been residents here. The concert opened with Eric Watson’s Tapestries – Time Dances, which was awarded the top prize at the First International Competition for Chinese Instrumental Compositions in 2006. 

There were influences from Gustav Mahler and perhaps Ralph Vaughan Williams heard in the orchestration but percussive and gamelan-like textures placed this work right smack in the Indo-Malayan archipelago. Speaking of the Straits of Malacca, Law Wai Lun’s Zheng He – Admiral of the Seven Seas, adapted as a three-movement symphony, was a tour de force of programmatic writing and orchestral textures.

In Wandering Spirits, The Voyage and Sea Destiny, the last movement a heady marriage of Chinese and Nusantaran musical cultures, SCO’s Chinese audiences would have gotten the full sonic experience of Nanyang. The concert closed with an encore, the merry strains of Hua Hao Yue Yuan (Blooming Flowers and Full Moon) with a hearty clap-along.