RITES OF CHIMES / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

RITES OF CHIMES

Ding Yi Music Company

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (13 August 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 August 2016 with the title "Old-meets-new mash-up".

Conducted by Lim Yau, the Ding Yi Music Company gave the Singapore premiere of Zhou Long's Rites Of Chimes, a work first performed by Yo-Yo Ma and the National Traditional Orchestra of China in New York in 2000. Reprising the Ma role this evening was Lim's cellist son Lin Juan but this was not a cello concerto in the traditional sense.

Scored lightly for cello, six Chinese instruments and a battery of percussion, the Western instrument was no interloper but one tightly weaved into a web of sound that was both traditional and modern. It was as if the cello were a traveller in time, gazing into the past like an outsider looking into a faraway and exotic culture and telling his story as one with the ensemble.

Lin was not an overtly showy soloist but a highly dependable one to blend in, yet he expressed a voice of his own all through the work's six separate parts that played for 70 minutes. Spirit Of Chimes was the first piece, one which imagined a scene from prehistory, with sounds from bone flutes (represented by Ng Hsien Han's ocarina) and assortment of percussive sounds.

It was into this primordial fray that the cello's tones, microtones, plucks and slides were thrown into, and the result was a old-meets-new mash-up. Much more traditional was Impressions Of Wintersweet, based on the old melody Meihua Sannong (Plum Blossom), with just Ng's dizi, cello pizzicatos and discreet percussion creating an intimate spell.

Tipsy Improvisation showcased Chin Yen Choong's erhu with cello and ensemble in a fast and inebriated dance with frequent changes in meter as the title suggested. Inspired by Du Fu's Eight Unruly Tipsy Poets, a favourite subject of the composer's, it took all of conductor Lim's directorial nous to keep the forces in check and time.

Tang Court Music could be said to be the heart of the work. Its loud and portentous chords, filled with dissonances and sustained tensions, stood for the pomp and ceremony of Tang dynasty royalty. It is from this cacophonous banquet of sound that Japanese gagaku was derived, one which came to an end with a smart snap of two wooden strips.

It was back to earlier rusticity in Dunhuang Pipa, a melodious evocation of the ancient Silk Road, with Chua Yew Kok's pipa running in unison with huqin, cello, dizi, Soh Wee Kiat's sheng, Kenny Chan's zhongruan and Yvonne Tay's guzheng, each taking their turns if not all together. The final piece, Tales From The Cave, introduced the shrill high-pitched banhu (Chin) and three-stringed plucked sanxian (Chan) for a wild final dance.

One that celebrated the Buddhist iconography of the land, of graven images, sculptures and frescoes etched into history, an extended cello cadenza from Lin brought the work sharply into focus. As if emerging from a dream, the ensemble of ten virtuosos concluded Zhou's masterpiece of Chinese music with masterly aplomb. 

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, January 2016)

ZHOU LONG & CHEN YI

Symphony “Humen 1839”

New Zealand Symphony / DARRELL ANG

Naxos 8.570611 / *****

The Chinese husband-and-wife composing pair of Zhou Long and Chen Yi have highly successful individual careers, and Symphony “Humen 1839” (2009) represents their own only major joint collaboration to date. It was inspired by the 1839 burning of a thousand tons of opium in Humen, Guangdong, a Chinese version of the Boston Tea Party, but the event that sparked off the disastrous Opium Wars. 

Its four movements play for a half-hour, programmatic and almost Copland-like in its narrative. The music begins in Cantonese pomp, honouring the defiantly heroic figure of Lin Zexu, and depicts its humiliating capitulation under British aggression in the slow movement. This precedes China's inexorable ascent as a world power on its own right, represented by the finale’s triumphal music of the “Star Wars” kind. This is both a patriotic as well as cathartic work.

Two shorter pieces by Zhou complete the album. The Rhyme Of Taigu (2003) is a vigorously rhythmic work that celebrates the pomp and ceremonial role of the ancient dagu, the drum also known by the Japanese as the taiko. The Enlightened (2005) reflects on the contribution of ancient Chinese philosophies to a troubled world. 

This is a first-ever classical Grammy nomination by a Singaporean, the conductor Darrell Ang, and his spirited leadership of the splendid New Zealand Symphony is never in question. This is a disc befitting our SG50 celebrations.  

DON'T MISS:
DARRELL ANG conducts
Singapore Symphony Orchestra's
37th Anniversary Concert
Esplanade Concert Hall
Friday, 29 January 2016
7.30 pm, Tickets available at SISTIC

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, September 2014)

ZHOU LONG / CHEN YI

Wild Grass

Beijing New Music Ensemble

Naxos 8.570604 / *****

Here is an hour of chamber music by two of the world’s greatest living Chinese composers, Zhou Long and Chen Yi (both born in 1953), who happen to be husband and wife. While contemporary musical techniques are employed, the essence of being Chinese strongly permeates their music. The best known work here is Chen’s Romance Of Hsiao And Ch’in, where the violin and piano relive the combo of xiao (vertical flute) and guqin, with the distinct voice of ancient musical theatre. The revolutionary Chinese writer Lu Xun (1881-1936) figures prominently in this collection. Chen’s Monologue for solo clarinet is a 5-minute long meditation on the fate of Ah Q, Lu’s most famous literary anti-hero. Was he executed, or was it just our vivid imagination?

Zhou’s Wild Grass just includes the introduction to Lu’s collection of prose poetry Yecao (1924-26), with Zhou as the reader-narrator accompanied by solo clarinet. Zhou gets more air time with his Su (Tracing Back) for flute and guqin, a work that achieved cult status in China even before the advent of the internet. His Pianogongs for piano and opera gongs may be heard as the prototype of his Postures for piano and orchestra, recently premiered by the SSO. The intoxicating world of drumming dominates in Taiping Drum and Taigu Rhythm, the latter a vigorous work for clarinet, violin, cello and percussion that unites the dagu and taiko of Chinese and Japanese cultures. These performances by the Beijing New Music Ensemble, formed by both locals and expats, are unlikely to be surpassed.

GLAZUNOV Symphonies & Concertos

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

Russian National Orchestra

JOSE SEREBRIER

Warner Classics 2564 66467-4 (8 CDs) 

****1/2

Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936) was arguably the greatest Russian composer of symphonies between Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. That is scant consolation as his eight and a half symphonies (the ninth was incomplete) are hardly ever heard in concert. He was a superb craftsman whose symphonies are a joy to behold especially in performances as good as these. The early symphonies from the early 1880s contain strong Russian folk influences, and are reminiscent of Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov. The best are Nos.4, 5 and 6 where he finds his own voice, the same muse that distinguished his most popular music – the Violin Concerto, ballets The Seasons and Raymonda, also included in this budget-priced box-set.

By the time of his sprawling Eighth Symphony (1906), some 40 minutes long, he had withdrawn into the world of pedagogy (Shostakovich became his most famous student). This masterpiece has Wagnerian overtones and looks forward to the worlds of Elgar and early Stravinsky. All his concertos – for violin (with Rachel Barton Pine), piano (Alexander Romanovsky), cello (Wen Sinn Yang) and saxophone (Marc Chisson) – all highly engaging works also find a place here. The magisterial Uruguay-born conductor Jose Serebrier makes the best cases possible of each of these lesser-known works. The absence of programme notes (even the downloadable file from Warner Classics is non-functional) is a sore point, regrettable penny-pinching behaviour from a major label.

POSTURES / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

POSTURES

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (4 July 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 July 2014

The Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s opening concert of the 2014-15 season gave the audience a sneak preview of the programme to be performed at BBC Proms in London on 2 September. Aiming to make an impact at its Proms debut, the orchestra served a heavy dose of familiar Russian warhorses as well as a new work by an Asian composer.

Conducted by Music Director Shui Lan, the orchestra began with Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture, a showcase of its prowess in short pieces or lollipops. From its outset, the furiously running string passages were well matched by the players, and when called upon, solo woodwinds and brass shone brightly. Within five minutes, the appetiser which piqued the senses was over.

Receiving its World Premiere this evening was Chinese-American composer Zhou Long’s Postures, a piano concerto co-commissioned by the Proms and SSO, and performed by the renowned Swiss pianist Andreas Haefliger. Taking away all connotations of the work as a kung fu inspired piece, its 25 minutes duration highlighted the piano as a virtuoso percussion instrument.

The first movement Pianodance saw piano and orchestra as equal partners, sharing in the rhythmic pacing that dictates its narrative. It celebrates the hunter-shaman of Northeast China, one who imitates the movements of animals in its game, and the dynamics range from roaring fortissimo to still pianissimo.

The piano dominated the central and longest Pianobells movement, with the orchestra relegated to soft background string tremolos and the occasion percussion outburst. The piano simulated many kinds of bells, from the deep stroking of its innards, chord and trills occupying the high registers and drolly repeated figurations.

Its dream-like sequence was shattered in the tumultuous finale Pianodrums, which recalled Beijing Opera and the most recognisably Chinese of the movements. Here the piano was integrated into the wider percussion ensemble of the orchestra, yet it found its voice in the form of a shrill battle cry which relived the exploits of the Monkey God. Cymbals, xylophone and a battery of drums kept up with the action, and the work ended in outright exuberance.

Nothing quite sounds like this work. Not even the super-violent and ultra-percussive Bartok First Piano Concerto comes close.       

The concert closed with Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony  in E minor, a Romantic throwback to the lush and unabashed emotionalism of Tchaikovsky. This is one of the orchestra and conductor Shui’s favourite showpieces, yet the risk of over-polishing the work to blandness was thankfully avoided.

The key to sounding fresh was to take certain risks, and that was apparent in the first two movements and finale, which strained at the leash without breaking out of control. The slow movement with Ma Yue’s leading clarinet solo was a thing of beauty, but the orchestra’s use of portamentos (sliding between notes) was somewhat overdone. When heard for the first time, sentimentality is sufficiently evinced but repeated hearings tended to descend into bathos.

Nonetheless the orchestra maintained its momentum without flagging through the 55 minutes. The chorus of bravos that greeted its triumphant end could soon be repeated at the Royal Albert Hall come September. 

MODERN VOICES - CLASS OF 1978 / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

MODERN VOICES – CLASS OF 1978

Ding Yi Music Company

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (3 August 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 August 2013 with the title "Invigorating mix in new music".

The year 1978 was an important one for Chinese music. With Chairman Mao Zedong dead and the Cultural Revolution ended, the Central Conservatory in Beijing reopened its doors to a cohort of students whose lives had been disrupted by years of chaos, mayhem and forced labour. They would later become the voice of Musical China in the West in the 21^st century, their legacies celebrated in this two-hour-long concert by the Ding Yi Music Company directed by Lim Yau.   

The evening began with Zhou Long’s Mount A Long Wind (2004), scored for erhu, pipa, dizi, guzheng and percussion. Impressionist in colour, the work inspired by Li Bai’s Xing Lu Nan (The Hard Road) was evocative of wind, water and nature’s elements. Poetic and meditative in part, it also drew upon a raw primal energy that gave the concert a stirring opening.



Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera (1994) is one of his best known scores, almost a microcosm of his entire well-exposed output. The parts played by a western string quartet (violinists Siew Yi Li and Lim Hui, violist Mervyn Wong and cellist Lin Juan) and pipa soloist Chua Yew Kok, all of whom multi-tasked as percussionists and vocalists, were both visual and musical. The hall was cloaked in darkness, with spotlights on the soloists and glass bowls of water.

Music from a Bach Prelude merged with the Chinese folksong Xiao Bai Cai (Little Cabbage), shamanistic yelps and Shakespearean quotes, traditions representing the “past”. The sounds of water (and the effects of gongs being immersed), metal (percussion), stone (struck close to resonating open mouths) and paper (a long roll being flapped in space) were the symbols of “eternity”, played by performers of “now”.

This 40-minute theatrical experience played out as an enthralling dialogue between “ghosts” of the past and future, confronting the present. Its symbolism was not lost on the full-house audience, which greeted the convincing performance with a most stirring of ovations.

Chen Yi’s Huqin Suite (1997) was brought on tour by the Singapore Symphony to Germany in 2000. This was however the Singapore premiere of the version scored for Chinese instruments (2007), with Chin Yen Choong playing on three bowed instruments. The erhu with its mellifluous singing was contrasted with the lower and more guttural zhonghu recitations, and capped by the diminutive squeak of the gaohu in the furious final dance. 

The concert closed with Extase III (2010) by Chen Qigang, well known for having been the Music Director of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. A virtuosic score much in the tradition of Messiaen and Boulez, Veda Lin stood out for her ceaseless acrobatics and breathtaking long phrases (circular breathing being the secret) on the oboe. This fantasy on the folksong San Shi Li Pu also pitted her with Wong Deli’s suona, as the music drew to a feverish and raucous climax. Both soloist and ensemble emerged first among equals, in a concert of new music that was both invigorating and inspiring. 

Concert photographs courtesy of Ding Yi Music Company.