pianomania

J.S.BACH Concertos for 2 Harpsichords

MASAAKI & MASATO SUZUKI

Bach Collegium Japan

BIS 2051 / *****

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) left the world with just three concertos for two keyboards (all dating from 1736), which seems like a real pity. These are some of his most enjoyable concertos, not just because of its melodic content or digital virtuosity but also its immaculate play of counterpoint. No autograph scores exist, but two of these - both in the key of C minor - will be familiar to listeners in other guises. The best known is BWV.1062, which has the same music as the famous Double Violin Concerto in D minor (BWV.1043). The work sounds slightly different now, with the busyness of both harpsichords replacing the more pared-down violin textures.

The other, BWV.1060, is more regularly heard as the Concerto for Violin and Oboe, distinguished by one of Bach's most beautiful slow movements. The Concerto in C major (BWV.1061) is his most cheerful and extroverted keyboard concerto by far. The father and son combo of Masaaki and Masato Suzuki on two harpsichords are ideally matched, and the balance struck with the accompanying string players is close to perfection. The bonus is Masato's transcription for 2 keyboards of Bach's Orchestral Suite No.1, conceived idiomatically as if the master wrote it himself. A delightful disc all round.

BOOK IT:

MASAAKI & MASATO SUZUKI

with the

Singapore

Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

27 & 28 August 2015 at 7.30 pm

Tickets available at SISTIC

THE BUTTERFLY LOVERS

LU SIQING, Violin

Taipei Chinese Orchestra

Chung Yiu-Kwong (Conductor)

BIS 2104 / ****1/2

Given China's inexorable rise as economic power and cultural giant, Chen Gang and He Zhanhao's Butterfly Lovers Concerto sitting pretty alongside with violin repertoire favourites has become inevitable. Gil Shaham had previously coupled Butterfly Lovers with Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto (with the SSO), but this new recording is wholly accompanied by Chinese instruments. Chinese violinist Lu Siqing cements his place as one of the work's most persuasive advocates with this moving account which also boasts of the best sound on CD.

The traditional instruments of the Taipei Chinese Orchestra, in the arrangement by its conductor Chung Yiu-Kwong, also lend a touch of the authentic. Does the evocative introduction not sound better with dizi than the modern flute? At its climaxes, the piercing sound of suonas add to the pathos of the music. Its fillers include Chen's Sunshine On Taxkorgan, Ma Sicong's Nostalgia (from Inner Mongolian Suite), Kreisler's Tambourin Chinois (now sounding even better with Chinese percussion), Tchaikovsky's Melodie(from Souvenir D'un Lieu Cher), Sarasate's Gypsy Airs and Wieniawski's Legende. The last receives an idiomatic arrangement by award-winning young Singaporean composer Wang Chenwei. That's globalisation for you.

PIANO++

Robert Casteels et al

Esplanade Concert Hall

Thursday (20 August 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 August 2015

Some thirty years ago, a duo called the Cambridge Buskers concocted a work for recorder and accordion which compressed all nine symphonies of Beethoven into a matter of a few minutes, and performed it at the 1988 Singapore Arts Festival to a bemused audience. Belgium-born Singaporean composer Robert Casteels has done something similar in his Grosse Sonate (Great Sonata) for piano solo, which incorporates themes from every movement of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas.

A work in four movements lasting some 55 minutes, its world premiere was given by three young Singaporean pianists at this recital, a supplement to the Piano Concerto Festival organised by The Performing Arts Company. Casteels did not add a single note of his own nor did he need to transpose any passages, instead skilfully stitching together “bleeding chunks” which cohered surprisingly well as it worked its way from Beethoven's Op.2 No.1 to Op.111, a musical journey spanning some 27 years.

Purists will balk at this “Frankenstein's monster”, but listening to it was an illuminating experience. Familiar measures sat comfortably with some which made one wonder, “Was this really Beethoven?” More importantly it displayed Beethoven's wealth of expression and inexhaustible creativity. Leslie Theseira (above) was tasked with the two most difficult movements, the 1^st and 4^th, which corresponded with the opening movements and finales. Although one would scarcely imagine him to have played all 32 before, his solid technique suggests that some day he will.

Muhammad Nazzerry (above) played the 2^ndmovement, interpretively the most demanding because it coalesces all the slow movements. He got through the notes, but the draggy pacing suggests that some editing might have helped the course. Most witty was the Scherzo and Trio 3^rd movement, the shortest but one with the most surprises. Choon Hong Xiang (below) sounded under-rehearsed here and could have done with some coaching as to where to better place his accents.

The second half opened with a 2-piano arrangement of Saint-Saens'Danse Macabre, which saw Nazzerry and Choon giving an exciting, rough and ready account. Casteels'Tintinabulum for 2 pianos was premiered by Choon and Theseira. Its six short movements of bell-like variations were all based on a theme formed by the notes C-E-C-B, taken from the initials of the Crédit Industriel et Commerciel Bank, which commissioned the work.

Casteels himself joined in the games with Nazzerry and Ng Chian Tat in Rachmaninov's Waltz and Romance for six hands. Originally written for three young sisters on one keyboard, the three grown men were spared from falling off the piano stool by spreading themselves out on two pianos. They oozed salon charm and did anyone notice Casteels playing a theme in the Romance that would later become part of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto?

The final work, Casteels'Rakhmania for 2 pianos was a tribute to the great Russian himself. It was an expansion and elaboration of Rachmaninov's Prélude in B flat major (Op.23 No.2), playing on the canon-like quality of its main theme. Ng and Nazzerry did the honours in this thundering number, which was both a deconstruction as well as a conflation. Bells sounds filled the air, again, bringing this most unusual piano recital to a satisfying close.

Photographs by the kind permission of The Performing Arts Company and Robert Casteels.

UNFORGETTABLE TUNES II

Singapore

Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (22 August 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 24 August 2015

There have been remarks that the Singapore Chinese Orchestra does not play enough traditional Chinese tunes or classics. The plain truth is: unlike the Western orchestra which has centuries of music to choose from, there is not enough traditional repertoire for Chinese orchestra to sustain an entire season. Hence the need for SCO to commission new works and fresh orchestrations of pre-existing melodies.

This concert conducted by Assistant Conductor Moses Gay looked back at some Chinese classics, through the prism of contemporary orchestrations. It did not take one long to recognise the melody of Tang Jian Ping's Overture for the New Century, a vigourous and festive arrangement of Dance Of The Golden Snake by Nie Er, who also composed the Chinese National Anthem. Also familiar was Liu Wen Jin's Great Wall Capriccio, a condensed version of the erhu concerto with the same title, which rehashes its most memorable melody.

Peng Xiu Wen's 1961 composition Yue Er Gao (The Moon On High) is an acknowledged classic. He had orchestrated nine of twelve pieces from Hua Qiu Ping's Pipa Anthology dating from the Qing Dynasty. There was a stately air to this medley which relived the chamber music origins of Chinese music in its gentle treatment of dizi and guzheng textures, and graced by principal Yu Jia's lovely pipa solos.

Contrast this with the two concertante works, newer orchestrations much in line with the virtuoso Western concerto. Zhang Yin (above) was the spectacular pipa soloist in Wang Dan Hong's Yun Xiang Hua Xiang (Clouds And Flowers Fantasies). Her mastery of the instrument and its myriad nuances was exquisite, a portrayal of feminine grace and beauty personified in the tragic concubine Yang Guifei.

Erhu soloist Tan Man Man (above) coaxed a sonorous and earthy tone for Wang Jian Min's Erhu Rhapsody No.2, a work which transitioned from slow and meditative to a fast and brilliant conclusion. SCO can be proud of these rank-and-file members who are truly consummate virtuosos.

Xu Hui's guzheng solos highlighted Chen Ning-chi's Ancient City Xian, a picturesque travelogue of the city of terracotta warriors, from vivid night scenes to historical monuments. Gu Guan Ren's The General Command's used another Qing melody but dressed in martial garb, with grouped suonas providing the raucous edge that would vanquish any foe.

The excellent young conductor Gay conducted the two-hour-long completely from memory. His pluck, and chutzpah in requesting a standing ovation, did not fall on deaf ears. The audience duly obliged, and was rewarded with an encore, Bizet's Farandolefrom L'Arlesienne. As they say in the Bible, “Ask, and it shall be given.”

MENDELSSOHN, GRIEG

& HOUGH Cello Sonatas

STEVEN ISSERLIS, Cello

STEPHEN HOUGH, Piano

Hyperion 68079 / *****

How does British pianist-composer Stephen Hough's Cello Sonata figure in this new album of Romantic cello sonatas? Interestingly it is scored for cello and piano left hand and carries the Beethovenian subtitle “Les Adieux” (The Farewell). A single-movement work playing for 20 minutes, it is a darkly introspective work that distils the fraught and melancholic emotions of Romanticism through a tonal musical language that is as approachable as Shostakovich, Ravel and Fauré. Perhaps expressing regret, sorrow and parting, it receives a heartfelt performance from British cellist Steven Isserlis and the composer himself as pianist.

The work sits comfortably two rather different and not so often heard Romantic sonatas. Edvard Grieg's Cello Sonata in G minor (Op.36) was the closest thing he wrote to a cello concerto, and includes familiar themes to be found in his earlier Piano Concertoand Sigurd Josalfar incidental music. Another instance of musical deja vu(“Where have we heard this before?”), Mendelssohn's Second Cello Sonata in D major (Op.38) is typical of his ebullience and tunefulness, a good example of the early Romantic style. The juxtapositions on this album make total sense, and the high musicianship displayed by both performers is to be savoured.

NEW SEASONS

GIDON KREMER, Violin

Kremerata Baltica

Deutsche Grammophon 479 4817 / ***

Is it blasphemous to state that “emperor's new clothes” is the reason why every new work by American composer Philip Glass is greeted with nothing but adulation? In his Second Violin Concerto (2010), also known as The American Four Seasons, he rehashes just about every cliché he has worked to death in earlier works, including his First Violin Concerto (1987). The Seasons are in 8 parts, with a Bachian solo (entitled Prologue and Songs Nos.1 to3) preceding each movement proper. As expected, the limited musical material is built upon tonal triads and repeated endlessly to pad up its 40-plus minutes. So what else is new?

Georgian composer Giya Kancheli's Ex Contrario (2006) for violin, cello, keyboard, bass guitar and strings is minimalist in a different way. Its static pace, long stretches of pianissimo and gaping silences are drawn out to an almost interminable half hour. As brief fillers, the Estonian Arvo Pärt but cheerful Estonian Lullaby features the Girls Choir from the VilniusChoir School, while Shigeru Umebayashi Yumeji's Theme from the film In The Mood For Love is sentimental and soothing movie music with a popular twist. Superstar Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer and his string band give slick and polished performances in the demonstration class, but that is the very least one would expect for the premium-priced outlay involved.

MAHLER Symphony No.7

Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra

GUSTAVO DUDAMEL

Deutsche Grammophon 479 1700 / *****

Slowly but surely, Venezuelan superstar conductor Gustavo Dudamel is putting out his own cycle of Mahler symphonies on the German yellow label, shared by the orchestras he directs, the Simon Bolivar Symphony of Venezuela and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mahler's Seventh Symphony (1905) is his third Mahler recording and in certain ways the best so far. Unlike the Ninth Symphony where a Klemperer-like expansive view is taken, his vision of the Seventh is relatively short-winded, clocking in at just under 79 minutes.

Often considered the most problematic of Mahler's ten symphonies, Dudamel is not bogged down by its details, which include two long movements book-ending two movements titled Nachtmusik I and II and a mysterious scherzo in between. The opening movement is well-judged, and one feels the tension only after it has been released, the detumescence being as breathtaking as it is hypnotic. The moods in the three central movements are varied enough to sustain interest while the rumbling finale does not ramble but gets to the point soon enough. Think that Dudamel is nothing but all flash and machismo? This sumptuous live recording, which captures all the finer nuances, shows he is a thinking and feeling maestro as well.

PROKOFIEV Works for Piano

ABDEL RAHMAN EL BACHA, Piano

Mirare 165 / *****

This is an excellent introduction to the early piano works of Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), composed between 1912 and 1917, before his self-imposed exile to the West during the Bolshevik Revolution. All the elements that defined his musical style are in evidence. These include the relentless motor-like, industrial juggernaut that is his fearsome Toccata Op.11, to be distinguished from the searing dissonances and grotesqueries that is the Sarcasms Op.17. The Ten Pieces Op.12 have titles which suggest a neo-baroque suite of dances, but each is coloured with Prokofiev's trademark wit as viewed through a kaleidoscope. The rippling Prelude (No.7), also written for harp, is easy enough for talented children, and the Scherzo (No.10) a perpetual motion of jinking humour.

The two greatest works here are his Second Sonata Op.14, which combines all these traits in four short movements, and the twenty gems that make up the Visions Fugitives Op.22. Like Chopin's preludes, these diminutive aphorisms are a microcosm of Prokofiev's drolleries, rarefied musical thoughts and unique sound world. Lebanese pianist Abdel Rahman El Bacha is a consummate virtuoso who finely balances technical virtuosity with an innate sense of proportion and poetry. If you thought Prokofiev is not your cup of tea, think again.

WINTERREISE

Matthias Goerne, Baritone with

Markus Hinterhauser, Piano

Singapore

International

Festival of Arts 2015

SOTA Concert Hall

Friday (4 September 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 September 2015 with the title "Wealth of emotion, depth of expression".

Franz Schubert's song cycle Winterreise (Winter's Journey) is one of the greatest settings of words to music, an utterance from the deepest recesses of the human soul. Composed in 1827, the Austrian composer was to die tragically a year later at the age of 31, unfulfilled in life's aspirations and love. Encompassing 24 songs in a span of some 80 minutes, its title seemed almost autobiographical, reflecting a metaphorical trudge into despair and hopelessness, over and above the bleak physical landscape it describes.

The backdrop to Schubert's song cycle
represented some paper-filled wasteland.

Any undertaking of its musical language and wide-ranging emotions is not to be taken lightly. The Singapore International Festival of Arts is to be lauded for engaging leading German baritone Matthias Goerne with Austrian pianist Markus Hinterhäuser in two performances of a relative rarity here. Excepting readings by local singers Adrian Poon and Eng Meng Chia in recent years, one has reach back to 1988 for the landmark set by the late Hermann Prey at Victoria Concert Hall.

Goerne with his rich, gravelly yet flexible baritone voice is ideally suited for its travails. The opening song Gute Nacht (Good Night) was the protagonist's acceptance of rejection, and the beginning of his road to oblivion. Along the way, there are reminders of his failed loves, with images steeped in symbolism of decay and death. It is a harrowing path he takes, made all the more human by Goerne's wealth of emotion, and depth of expression.

Even in the seemingly lighter songs, the transient joy he experiences prove to be false dawns. His wearied soul finds no rest, harried by village dogs and even graveyards have no place for him. His lot is to wander for eternity, no better expressed in the final song, Die Leiermann (The Organ Grinder) with the piano's desolate drone a foretelling of his bitter fate.

Close your eyes or cast your glance towards the performers, and one would have been sated by the music's extraordinary drawing power many times over. But this Arts Festival production had the added dimension of the moving image. Short films in black-and-white animation by South African artist and multi-media director William Kentridge, projected on a backdrop representing a paper-filled wasteland, accompanied the songs

His films told another story, which paralleled the original conception in darkness and further symbolism: isolation, sexual frustration and mortality being recurrent themes, with the parched veldt a surrogate for an alpine wilderness. Now one's senses were being stretched, between following the animations, the projected English transliterations and most importantly, the performers. This production deserves multiple viewings, but bearing in mind that with the most imaginative minds in music, less is more.

Matthias Goerne and Markus Hinterhäuser
with SIFA Artistic Director Ong Keng Sen.

STRUMMING HEARTSTRINGS

Singapore

Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (5 September 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 September 2015 with the title "From joy of horror to awakening".

On an evening that saw Matthias Goerne singing Schubert's Winterreise and Stephen Hough playing Beethoven piano concertos, the Singapore Chinese Orchestra had a full-house in a blockbuster concert of its own. It shared the stage with three soloists, including pre-eminent Scottish percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie.

The concert conducted by SCO Music Director Yeh Tsung began with three works by Chinese composer Liu Chang Yuan. In the opening Carnival Dance (2013), Liu celebrated the universality of folk music through diverse sources of inspiration. The dizi and sheng melodies, in their pentatonic glory, shared something common with dances from the British Isles. The huqins then conjured a tune of Central Asian influence, while the slower central section flirted with the tango. The orchestra performed with its usual infectious enthusiasm.

Receiving its World Premiere was Bright Moon Over The Ocean (2015), a concerto for guanzi commissioned by the SCO. An essay in nostalgia, the rhapsodic work portrayed the emotions of Chinese emigrants leaving their homeland for new pastures in Nanyang. Soloist Han Lei performed brilliantly with three instruments, traversing lament-like themes to animated dances of a more exotic kind. Somewhere he took a diversion into jazz rhythms, as if stumbling into Harlem, before returning to the more chromatic hustle-bustle of Shenton Way.

Arguably the best work of three was Dream Interpretation (2011), an erhu concerto with excellent soloist Yu Hong Mei. In ten linked sections, the erhuemoted with a panoply of moods and expressive devices. The dream began mysteriously, working its way through joy, happiness and longing to the dissonance of fear and horror, before closing with a sublime awakening. More Straussian than Freudian, the creative metamorphosis of themes makes this work one that will bear multiple hearings.

The concert's second half was devoted to Canadian-Chinese composer Vincent Ho's The Shaman (2011), the percussion concerto that starred Glennie. Sporting waist-long silver locks, she looked the part of its eponymous title as she gracefully glided through her battery of percussion. Its three connected movements was a veritable playground for the barefoot virtuosa, with unpitched percussion (drums, cymbals, bowls and slung metallic strips) beating out complex rhythms, while vying for attention with the more intimate pitched instruments.

It was the quiet and contemplative 2^ndmovement Fantasia-Nostalgia which saw the marimba and vibraphone come to the fore with much melodic interest. Rapport with the orchestra was closely-knit, and she formed a tight yet sensitive alliance with orchestral timpanist Duan Fei and pianist Clarence Lee. Exuding sheer exuberance, she easily won over an audience supposedly shy of contemporary music. Their vociferous support earned a well-deserved encore, Ho's Nostalgia, adapted from the concerto's slow movement. Bravissima!

SECRETS OF THE MAGIC AVIARY

LAURA PEH, Harp Recital

Play Den, The Arts House

QUEEN OF HARPS

CATRIN FINCH, Harp Recital

University Cultural Centre Theatre

Sunday (6 September 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 September 2015

It was an uncanny happenstance that a promising young Singaporean harpist and one of the world's most renowned harpists held their recitals on the same day of the year. Thankfully, several hours separated the events and one was just able to attend the first in completion and then make it on time to enjoy the second.

Laura Peh recently graduated from London's Royal College of Music, and her recital was to involve several other young Singaporean artists. Dancers Hoi Siu Yan and Khoo Hong Kei shared the stage in Marcel Tournier's Dance Of Russian Peasants, part of his Images Suite No.4. Their slender forms and graceful movements in Renee Daphne Leong's choreography mirrored that of Peh's gentle and cultivated playing.

Violinist Wilford Goh joined Peh in Saint-Saens'Fantaisie Op.124 and Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror), the last a haunting minimalist number which was accompanied by a short film by Lee Min-Wei that was a quiet celebration of all things Singaporean in the nation's golden jubilee year. Scenes of daily life provided a familiar and loving backdrop to the sensitive music-making. For the balance of her programme, Peh also performed short character pieces by Tchaikovsky and Tan Dun.

If Peh is at the opening chapter of her musical career, Welsh harpist Catrin Finch has already written several volumes. Her recital was the climax of the HarpFest V organised by indefatigable local harp-entrepreneur Katryna Tan. Finch has enough virtuosity, personality and wit to sustain an entire concert on her very own.

The first half was a mini-tour of the European nations, beginning with English harp-composer Elias Parish Alvars' scintillating Introduction, Cadenza and Rondo. French elegance in Faure's Chetelaine In Her Tower was contrasted with the German austerity of Hindemith's Sonata. Prokofiev's wry little Prelude led to a spectacular transcription of Bedrich Smetana's symphonic poem Die Moldau, a showpiece which brought out Finch's mastery of orchestral textures on a single instrument.

Her second half was Welsh, tinged with a Latin accent. William Mathias'Santa Fe Suite was atmospheric in its first two movements, Landscape and Nocturne, before breaking out in the frenetic Sun Dance. John Thomas, royal harpist to Queen Victoria, was represented by a heartfelt folksong while Finch, herself once royal harpist to Prince Charles, lit up her original composition Aurora with sequences of shimmering glissandi.

Piazzolla's infectious Libertango was vociferously received by a trigger-happy audience which could not wait to applaud every variation of Felix Godefroid's Carnival Of Venice, which got increasingly showy as the work progressed. For her two encores, Finch wheeled in an amplified harp on which she performed another Welsh folksong and her own Clear Skies, with an ear-teasing resonance.

It would be safe to say that the audiences to both recitals, pardon the poor pun, left harp-ily ever after.

LISZT / SCRIABIN/ MEDTNER

POOM PROMMACHART, Piano

Champs Hill 104 / ****1/2

From the “Land of Smiles” comes this ultra-serious recital programme by young pianist Poom Prommachart. He studied in Singapore's Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and London's Royal College of Music, and has won 1^st prizes at international competitions in his native Thailand, Serbia and England. The meat comes in two major works celebrating the theme and variations form. Liszt's Variations on Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen is a formal edifice built upon an austere motif from the Bach cantata of the same title, and closes in a blaze of major key fireworks.

The other is Nikolai Medtner's Second Improvisation Op.47, a massive half-hour'a meditation on The Song Of The Water-Nymph with 15 variations which run the full gamut of a pianist's technical armamentarium. There are not many recordings of it, and Poom's very well thought out and paced account ranks high along with the best of them, including Earl Wild and Hamish Milne's famous readings. The fill-ups are Scriabin's Ninth Sonata (known as the Black Mass), with its murky necromancy balanced by the Rachmaninov's brilliant transcription of Fritz Kreisler's Liebesfreud. This is an impressive debut CD and excellent calling card for a rising musician with a lot to say.

SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Concertos

ANDREI KOROBEINIKOV, Piano

Lahti Symphony / OKKO KAMU

Mirare 155 / ****1/2

The two piano concertos of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) are without doubt the lightest of his six concertos, and are also among his most popular works. The First Concerto in C minor (Op.35) is unusually scored with solo trumpet and strings, a double comedy act with both solo instruments cocking a snook at the classical conventions of Beethoven and Haydn while channelling popular cabaret and dancehall music. Its rip-roaring finale could easily be the soundtrack of a 1920s silent movie starring the Keystone Cops. It is best heard played with a poker-face and tongue firmly in cheek.

The Second Concerto in F major (Op.102) was composed for his teenaged son Maxim, and for once Shostakovich's stock-in-trade sarcasm and irony is held at bay until the finale's spoof on Hanon's laborious finger exercises. Both enjoyable concertos get sparkling performances by young Russian pianist Andrei Korobeinikov and SSO Principal Guest Conductor Okko Kamu's Finnish orchestra. In between the concertos is a kaleidoscopic reading of Shostakovich's 24 Preludes(Op.34), which opens with a brief salute to Bach before going its own iconoclastic path, alternating droll and uproarious numbers, which only he knows how. Here Korobeinikov is his own master, and this wonderfully nuanced reading ranks among the best in the catalogue.

MUSIC OF DARK AND LIGHT

FROM THREE CONTINENTS

Fischer Duo

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory

Wednesday (9 September 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 September 2015 with the title "Shining light on 20th-century works".

The American husband-and-wife duo of cellist Norman Fischer and pianist Jeanne Fischer have been performing together for the last 43 years, so one would expect a certain closeness and familiarity within the ensemble. And so it proved in their recital which consisted mostly of 20^th century works and a mighty Beethoven sonata as counterweight.

Norman addressed the audience in a deep and dusky baritone voice, explaining how each work related to their lives, and that was echoed in the tone of his 1972 Sergio Peresson cello. Opening with American composer Pierre Jalbert's Dual Velocity, the cello presented a theme based on notes spelt by the name of the duo. This was no atonal work, but an approachable one using dissonances to spice up its message.

Jeanne's spikily rhythmic piano part fitted hand-in-glove as the piece shifted gears between tempos, from lively to very fast, all through to its scintillating end. On the opposite end of the spectrum was George Rochberg's Ricordanza (Remembrance), a slow movement that was the celebrated atonalist's tribute to the Romantic tradition. Schumannesque lyricism and the autumnal musings of Brahms were laid on with a trowel, which was probably a bit too much of a good thing.

In between was a rarity in Zoltan Kodaly's Cello And Piano Sonata Op.4, in two movements. The first was a showcase of Norman's full-throated tone, issuing like a cantor during prayertime, and in the lower registers. This doleful lament in the Hungarian tradition was followed a cheerful folk dance, where the interplay between both instruments had its comedic moments, drawing tittering laughter from segments of the audience.

Beethoven's Cello Sonata in A major Op.69 was longest and best known work in the recital. Norman opening plaint again set the tone, to which the duo responded with requisite vigour. The first movement was not taken too fast, rightly so when others tend to speed up. The tempo indication was Allegro ma non tanto after all. This allowed the development section to sound that little bit more dramatic.

The scherzo was fitful rather than playful, and for a work that has no slow movements, the contrasts between the three movements seemed just right. The only breather lasted a minute or so, a slow song-like introduction to a joyous finale which blew all the dark clouds away.

Still in virtuoso mode, the duo concluded their programme with Argentine tango-meister Astor Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango, composed for the late Mstislav Rostropovich. From bordello to concert hall, this series of heady dance rhythms was taken at a sprightly pace on the outset. The ante was upped every few pages until full throttle was achieved at its climatic close.

Responding to the applause, the encore was decidedly tamer: Gershwin's Promenade, an insouciant stroll which goes by its other title, Walking The Dog.

LEONCAVALLO'S PAGLIACCI &

PUCCINI'S GIANNI SCHICCHI

Singapore

Lyric Opera

Esplanade Theatre

Friday (11 September 2015)

This review was published by The Straits Times on 14 September 2015

There is a popular title in operatic parlance known as Cav-Pag, which refers to the double bill of verismo operas, the tandem of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggiero Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci. Singapore Lyric Opera's latest recent double bill dropped the Cav component, opting instead for Puccini's single-act comic opera Gianni Schicchi, part of his trilogy known as Il Trittico.

This switch made for a lighter and less depressing evening, where not every lead character gets killed. Director Tom Hawkes cleverly linked the two operas with the common setting of a disused Italian theatre in the post-Second World War period for Pagliacci and then moving backwards in time for Schicchi.

It was a quite seamless transition which worked well because of an excellent cast which had some members singing in both operas. Central to these was Korean tenor Lee Jae Wook, a SLO regular, who gave a gripping portrayal of the homicidally jealous clown Canio in Pagliacci, and then helming the smaller role of young suitor Rinuccio in Schicchi.

Opposite him was Japanese soprano Sachiko Ito who was a sympathetic and free-spirited Nedda (Canio's actress wife), who gets offed by the opera's end, and then reappearing as the conniving Nella in Schicchi. The tightly cast Pagliacci also featured Singaporean baritones William Lim and Martin Ng, who acquitted themselves well as the vengeful hunchback Tonio and Nedda's ill-fated lover Silvio.

Schicchi was dominated by British baritone Adrian Clarke (above) in the title role, a worldly-wise rogue who cons a fussy Florentine family of its inheritance with a classic bait-and-switch. A combination of wit and smarminess made him likeable, gaining the audience to his side with every twist and turn in his scheming.

The SLO Chorus and Children's Chorus were well-trained for the crowd scenes of Pagliacci, adding much colour to the production. The SLO Orchestra conducted by Joshua Kangming Tan supported the music well. It was a revelation to hear both opera's “hit single” arias, often heard in isolation at opera galas, within their original contexts.

Canio's highly anguished Vesti La Giubba, sung as the lead clown dons his make-up and attire, was arresting in Lee's scene-stealing account. Similarly, Lauretta's O Mio Babbino Caro(O My Beloved Father) in Schicchi, sung as a daughter pleads for her father's intervention in the matters of love was beautifully delivered by young New Zealander soprano Marlena Devoe (below).

The set design by Christopher Chua with draped columns and pillars was simple and effective, as were Moe Kassim's costumes even though the GI uniforms in Pagliacci's looked like those of boy scouts. Despite SLO's constrained budget limitations, which allows the company only one major production a year, it offered very good value for its efforts.

That has been a given through the years. However judging from the smallish audience spread through three evenings, notwithstanding General Election weekend, is this a bad omen for the future of opera performance in Singapore?

All photographs by courtesy of Singapore Lyric Opera.

NORTHERN LIGHTS

Choral Works by OLA GJEILO

Phoenix Chorale / Charles Bruffy

Chandos 5100 / *****

It's official: the future of choral music points strongly to a return to polyphonic tonality. Atonal choral music has become passé, and unlikely to appear regularly in the programmes of the world's choirs, which are mostly amateur groups who love a good sing. The Norwegian Ola Gjeilo (born 1978) belongs to the generation of choral composers (think also Eric Whitacre and Gabriel Jackson) who embrace tonality in all its glory and are unabashed about flaunting it. Elements to be found in popular, film and gospel music appear in his compositions. These bear English titles but are based on Latin liturgical texts and have strong roots with early church music.

Listen to the opening bars of The Ground (Pleni Sunt Caeli), and one is reminded of an Abba song and then a climax of a feel good movie later on. Gjeilo makes cameos as pianist, as do the Harrington String Quartet in the kinetically charged Dark Night Of The Soul, the longest work at 13 minutes. The tenor saxophone of Ted Belledin lend an air of insouciance in Evening Prayer, which is pure easy listening. For his most representative works, listen to Northern Lights, Ubi Caritas and Unicornis Captivatur. There are five premiere recordings, and the Arizona-based professional choir is beautifully recorded. A spiritually charged and highly enjoyable listen awaits.

CARRERAS. DOMINGO. PAVAROTTI

IN CONCERT

25^thAnniversary Edition

Decca 478 8601 (CD & DVD) / *****

Twenty-five years after the fact, Decca has seen it fit to further milk the cash cow that was the first Three Tenors Concert. That was held on 7 July 1990 at the Caracalla Baths in Rome, in conjunction with the soccer World Cup. That was an once-in-a-lifetime event, with sequels in Los Angeles (1994) and Paris (1998) which failed to match in terms of sense of occasion and pure novelty. Just to give one the idea of its impact: Opera became instantly accessible, while Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and Nessun Dorma became household names overnight. A downside was it gave birth to that bastard child, the pseudo-art that is known as “pop opera”.

After all, who could resist the appeal of arias like Puccini's Recondita Armoniaor E Lucevan Le Stelle (both from Tosca) or popular songs like O Sole Mio, Torna A Surriento or Granada. Then there are those cheesy medleys orchestrated by Lalo Schifrin where the tenors engage in some one-upmanship, all in good fun. This Silver Anniversary Edition comprises the original best-selling CD and DVD of the entire concert with the Orchestras of Maggio Musicale of Florence and Teatro dell'Opera of Rome conducted by Zubin Mehta) and a behind-the-scenes documentary The Impossible Dream. Watch the DVD at home, pop the CD into the car stereo and then sing along. Here is a timely reminder about the powerful draw of musical spectaculars.

SINGAPORE SOUNDS GALA CONCERT

Singapore Sounds

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory

Sunday (20 September 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 September 2015 with the title "Fresh take on the Singaporean sound".

As Singapore celebrates its 50^thyear of nationhood, one is constantly posed with the question, “What is the Singaporean identity?” Along the same lines, one also asks, “What is Singaporean music?” Singapore Sounds, a new orchestra founded by young conductor Adrian Chiang (left) dedicated to performing Singaporean music, gave its debut and provided some of the answers to that poser.

Examples in history from Russian, Czech, Hungarian, English and American music all point to the vernacular, folk music and popular sources as the basis of national music traditions. So Singaporean music must at one point derive from the grassroots; folksongs in native languages, popular music and nationalistic jingles (yes, those NDP songs) all form the rich fabric from which real Singaporean music evolves.

This landmark 150-minute-long Gala Concert conducted by Chiang provided many examples of these in various guises. Arrangements of songs were the most recognisable ones, with the composers doing their best to dress them up in discernible forms for concert performance.

Young composer Phoon Yu's version of the familiar Tamil song Munneru Valiba was a colourful set of variations, the melody first heard on sitar accompanied by piano and harp. Dick Lee's evergreen Home was worked by Phoon into a concertante work for violin, with SSO Co-Leader Lynnette Seah negotiating through multiple cadenzas in the Romantic style, playing on a specially crafted SG50 bow by Paul Goh.

Syafiqah 'Adha's Singapura Medley made use of popular Malay dance forms including the asli, inang, joget, canggung and zapin for its four songs, beginning with Di Tanjong Katong with the melody first heard on the accordion, played by the composer herself. This exuberant showing was only matched by Zaidi Sabtu-Ramli's arrangement of Shabir Tabare Alam's Singai Naadu (Lion Country), a rousing tune originally in Tamil, now almost totally transformed.

Other than a rather forgettable Count On Me Singapore, Lee Jinjun's arrangements took on a life of their own. His Chan Mali Chan Variations with Kang Chun Meng on euphonium was a virtuoso showstopper with many original ideas, while Fantasia On Rasa Sayang became a neo-baroque invention, include a chaconne, fugue and brass chorale dressed in dissonant harmonies.

This concert also recognised the contributions of foreign-born composers now living in Singapore. Briton Eric Watson's Constellations received its World Premiere, a meditation on the five stars and crescent moon of the national flag, represented by six traditional instruments (erhu, ruan, sitar, tabla, gambus and rebana) performing solos as if in a concerto grosso. His highly accessible tonal style, while not quoting local tunes, was redolent of film music.

More modernistic was Belgium-born Robert Casteels's Travelogue, conducted by the composer and now adapted for a larger orchestra with traditional instruments. A satire on Singapore in the year 2065, the protagonist, acted and sung by the irrepressible tenor Leslie Tay, was a Singaporean exile returning from Mars to find a homeland he does not really recognise. The use of colloquialisms, localities present and past and Singlish made this work undeniably Singaporean.

The concert concluded with Phang Kok Jun's lively Xinyao Medley, with Liang Wern Fook's Mandarin ballads from the 1980s best typified by Xi Shui Chang Liu (Friendship Forever). The encore Cheng Li De Yue Guang (Moonlight In The City), by Chen Jia Ming, sent the audience home humming its tune. Chinese, Malay or Indian, classical, folk or popular, these are our songs which nobody can take away from us.

VIRTUOSITY:

MUSIC IS LIKE A MIRROR

EuroArts 2061288 (DVD) / ****

The 14^th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held in Fort Worth (Texas) in 2013, was the first edition of American's most prestigious competition to take place after the death of its muse, the American pianist Van Cliburn (1934-2013). He had become an international superstar and national hero after winning the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in 1958.

The competition’s documentary movie, directed by Christopher Wilkinson, follows its predecessors by having a linear narrative, beginning with 30 competing pianists arriving from all over the world, the piano selection process and performance footages, all the way to the prize presentation ceremony. Where it departs from the others is its focus on pianists as individuals with high hopes and ambitions, who stake their reputations and lives for their art, as well as the role of music critics.

Even the “losers” get a look-in, particularly the elimination of baby-faced American Steven Lin (an audience favourite who was perhaps deemed to lack gravitas, left) and the angst-ridden Italian Alessandro Deljavan (who probably displayed too much angst for comfort).

In the bonus section, there are performances by the eventual prizewinners Vadym Kholodenko (in Liszt's Wilde Jagd), Beatrice Rana (Ravel's Scarbo) and Sean Chen (Scriabin's Sonata No.5). Somehow through the proceedings, one gets the subliminal message that this competition, with typically American glitz, glamour and big money, was becoming a triumph of youthful proficiency and marketability over plain and good old (and sometimes boring) artistry.

SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No.9

Violin Concerto No.1

LEONIDAS KAVAKOS, Violin

Mariinsky Orchestra / VALERY GERGIEV

Mariinsky 0524 / *****

Here are two works of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) that could have landed him in trouble, even risking time in a gulag. In the eyes and ears of Soviet cultural watchdogs under the Stalinist regime, their musical message would have been marked as subversive. His Ninth Symphony Op.70 was composed in 1945 near the end of the Great Patriotic War, and instead of a grand life-affirming Ninth in the joyous manner of Beethoven that was expected, the result was a short and unusually wry account of faux-rejoicing. There are three fast movements of enforced gaiety separated by two dark slow movements. The 4^th and 5^thmovements are linked by a mocking bassoon solo, an instrument he frequently associated with bumbling bureaucracy.

The First Violin Concerto (originally Op.77, later revised to Op.99) was completed in 1948, but its premiere was witheld until 1955, after the death of Stalin. A pessimistic tone and the incorporation of Jewish klezmer elements were deemed inappropriate during a climate of artistic censorship and anti-Semitism. It has now become one of the most performed 20^th century concertos, and Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos gives a searing performance that does not stint on its communicative power and shock value. The Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev are close to ideal interpreters, acutely aware of the music's trenchant qualities and having Shostakovich's ironic idiom in their blood.

Bryce Morrison's famous quote on the Husum Festival
is everywhere, including the Festival bistro.

The concert has ended but the night is still young. Summer nights in Husum are mild and never chilly, but an evening of piano music really whets your appetite for something to fill your stomach. Hartmann's Landküche (Hartmann's Country Kitchen) is the watering hole and bistro where the audience and performers repair to after the music has stopped.

Located just five minutes' stroll from the Schloss, it is invariably filled when the pianist, accompanied by festival director Peter Froundjian and his wife Annette, arrives. There is a hearty round of applause and toasts are offered all round. The busy but efficient waitresses take orders for drinks, and then comes the Maestro of the kitchen himself, Klaus Thiem, who looks every bit an artist himself. He takes the orders himself for soups and entrees, and within mere minutes, these are served to astonished and hungry guests.

Over drinks and food, alcoholic or teetotal, friendships are made and unions are formed. Rarely is piano music ever discussed, and there is no piano in sight. This is the warmth shared by pianophiles, and even strangers from the Far East are welcomed into the fold. The spirit of Husum does not just exist in the music and repertoire, but also the music-lovers who make their pilgrimage every year.

Three generations of the Jones:
Martin with his son and grandson.

An Afri-Cola and beer, and that's what
a real hamburger looks like (just 2 hours from Hamburg!)

Chef Klaus Thiem makes his rounds while
the Froundjians and Jonathan Plowright place their orders.

Ludwig Madlener confirms the items on Cyprien Katsaris'
recital programme, which is then pasted onto the
festival notice board on the next day.
Cyprien Katsaris is a raconteur extraordinaire too.

Danacord's Jesper Buhl and Cyprien Katsaris
discuss about the recording to come.
The next generation of Froundjians: Sophie & Nicolai.

Reflections on Schloss vor Husum.

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC

AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM

CYPRIEN KATSARIS Piano Recital

Friday (28 August 2015)

Big shock and wonderful surprise of the week: the Chinese pianist Wang Xiayin had cancelled on doctor's orders at the eleventh hour. To replace her was the French-Cypriot pianist Cyprien Katsaris! Some might even consider this an upgrade! No programme was planned, but one would always rely on Katsaris to provide some impromptu prizes, which he would announce on the spur of the moment.

He opened with his own improvisations on popular 19^th and early 20^th century melodies, citing that improvisation had already become a lost art among classical pianists. In his 15-minute montage, he brilliantly linked themes from Saint-Saens's Samson et Dalila, Verdi's La Traviata, Wagner's Tannhauser, a waltz of his own device, Tarrega's Memories of the Alhambra (his repeated note technique imitating the guitar uncannily well), Tchaikovsky's Pathetique, Khachaturian's Spartacus, Rachmaninov's 3^rd and 2^ndPiano Concertos and Liszt's Les Preludes. This was better than any of those Three Tenor medleys!

Late Liszt followed, the little-knownTrauervorspiel & Trauermarsch and Katsaris's own version of the obsessive Csardas Obstinee, festooned with his own cadenzas and more repeated-note mayhem. Katsaris then did a Liszt by transcribing an aria from Liszt's early opera Don Sanche, in the manner of the great master himself. The piece de resistance was surely Katsaris's own arrangement combining both solo and orchestral parts of Liszt's Second Piano Concerto, a blinder of a showpiece which has all the tricks and treats of the ultimate virtuoso. Is Katsaris a reincarnation of the great Hungarian? His generous and oversized spirit suggests the affirmative.

A strange reversal of programming saw the second half open with Haydn's little Sonata in C major, a breezily conceived reading marred by a jarring metallic sound whenever he hit the low C note. Apparently, a small object had fallen into the piano while shifting score stand and lamp, rendering the Haydn an unscripted edition by Henry Cowell or John Cage!

Schubert's second of Three PianoPieces (D.946) showed Katsaris an absolute master of cantabile, while Henry Purcell's Suite in D major was a model of restraint and good taste. There was even time for a quiz, winners of which got a Katsaris CD recording as a prize. A prelude of Louis Vierne and a short song by Friedrich Nietzsche were correctly identified by two young Germans. He closed the programme with Louis Brassin's transcription of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries (Walkürenritt), of course with the usual Katsaris modifications.

His sole encore was a nocturne that was so famous that it is hardly ever played in recital, Chopin's ubiquitous Nocturnein E flat major Op.9 No.2. A true rarity indeed, to be heard with Katsaris discrete ornamentation and unfailing beauty of tone.

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC

AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM

JONATHAN PLOWRIGHT Piano Recital

Thursday (27 August 2015)

British pianist Jonathan Plowright is a regular at Husum, where his breadth and depth of his enormous repertoire gets a sympathetic hearing. There were none of his Polish favourites on show this evening, which began with hyphenated Bach. Busoni and Siloti were not on the slate but instead, the likes of Granville Bantock, Herbert Howells, Constant Lambert, Eugene Goosens and Lord Berners.

These were transcriptions of chorale preludes and short movements from the collection for Harriet Cohen (famed lady pianist who was the mistress of Arnold Bax), and in these were a wealth of surprising harmonies that ticked the ear, all performed with refinement and obvious love by Plowright.

What followed were hardly rarities, Brahms's Four Ballades Op.10, repertoire Plowright is working on in his ongoing Brahms cycle for BIS recordings. He produced a warm and burnished sound for the familiar favourites, comfortably overcoming the tricky bits of the Second Ballade and conjuring a dreamy, hypnotic mood for the Fourth Ballade in B minor. In this quiet number, one could hear a counterpoint provided by the nesting migratory birds and ducks from the Schloss vor Husum moat, a famous and not unwelcome fixture of evening recitals here.

The only work in the second half will not be heard anywhere else outside of Husum, the piano transcription in 9 movements of Constant Lambert's ballet Horoscope. From the composer of The Rio Grande, this is a wonderfully crafted work comparable to Glazunov's ballet The Seasons and Gustav Holst's The Planets, just to name orchestral works with multiple movements. Lambert's is slightly more elusive, opening with a prelude (Palindrome) composed solely of a series of chords exploring different tonalities.

The ensuing dances combined fast and slow numbers, with Leo being the obvious star among the stars. There is an element of the rough and ready in the writing, but the slow movements fared best in Plowright's hands, some music I will definitely want to hear again.

Encore time: Harold Craxton's neo-Baroque Sarabande and Rigaudon was tinged with interesting harmonies, and no one would have expected American band-leader Jack Fina's rumbling Bumble Boogieto follow. It was back to the sublime with Federico Mompou's Secreto (Secret) with more achingly beautiful harmonies.

Give that man a beer!
Jonathan Plowright is toasted by
Peter Froundjian (left) and Ludwig Madlener (right).

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC

AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM

MARTIN JONES Piano Recital

Wednesday (26 August 2015)

It would appear that the British pianist Martin Jones and the festival of Piano Rarities at Schloss vor Husum were made for each other, but it comes as a surprise that this is his debut. His programming was classic Jones (if one is familiar with his many CD recordings on the Nimbus label) meets classic Husum (if one is familiar with the selections that appear annually on the Danacord label).

Jones spoke before each piece, with typically British humour, and warmed up the audience immediately. First off was Carl Czerny's Grand Caprice, he with his multitudes of notes but a surprisingly congenial work that was a transitional link between the styles of Beethoven (gruff and pathetique) and Mendelssohn (songs without words) but cast in the form of Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy (4 linked movements with a fugue near the end).

Its foil was a Sonatina by the Viennese Hans Gal, highly tonal but spiced with the mild dissonances of the early to mid-20^thcentury. In between were 13 piquant pieces from Federico Mompou's Ballet, filled with his typically luscious harmonies and equally delicious pauses.

Despite his prolific recorded output, Jones has never enjoyed the reputation of super-virtuosos with catholic tastes like Hamelin, Hough or Hamish Milne. He is not as exacting in getting in all the notes with microsecond precision, but somehow he gets there in a way that is totally engaging, and no way was he less than committed in this recital.

He has an improvisatory air in pieces which need that kind of expression, and that came across winningly in the dances by Argentine Carlos Guastavino and Spaniard Joaquin Nin's Message a Debussy, the latter commanding an orchestral texture and the Spanish lilt that possess the Frenchman's music. To close was Percy Grainger's suite In A Nutshell, four varied movements that captured the Australian's folksy style yet extraordinary ear for harmonies. The Pastorale was filled with colour while the Gumsuckers Marchbrought the recital to a rousing end.

The encores: Mischa Levitzki's The Enchanted Nymph was a perfect bis for the evening, a languorous legato that transformed into an infectious waltz before returning to its watery realm, now with a gilded edge. Jones wasn't done yet. Moszkowski's Etincelles(a Horowitz specialty) was followed by Earl Wild's transcription of Fascinatin's Rhythm, and to conclude, Arcadi Volodos's manic way with Mozart's Turkish Rondo. A wild standing ovation, apparently a relative rarity at Husum too, was the just and totally deserved response.

Martin Jones meets his audience for
post-concert supper at Hartmann's Landküche.

THE WORLD'S MOST UNIQUE PIANO FESTIVAL

There are many piano festivals that exist in the world's busy calendar of music events, but they are not equal. Some boast of a month-long duration, others of the sheer number of pianists invited, the “brand name” of artists et cetera, but only one prides itself on the wealth of repertoire on show. Rarities of Piano Music at Schloss vor Husumis a connoisseur's festival, one that highlights neglected and fringe works of the repertoire, forgotten and unknown composers, centering on the cult of obscurity and rarity.

The market square at Husum
with the St Mary's Church (Marienkirche)

Held within an August summer's week in the relatively remote North German seaside town of Husum in Schleswig-Holstein, it is a curate's egg. Its isolation makes a trip there seem like a pilgrimage. For years, I had feasted on the annual highlights CD recording on the Danish Danacord label, enjoying whatever offerings pianists like Marc-André Hamelin, Robert Berman, Frederic Meinders and Piers Lane might tickle its audiences with. The choices of music would always be surprising, fascinating beyond imagination, but I never imagined actually venturing into the unknown to North Friesland.

That was until an e-mail arrived in May, sent by fellow pianophile the Japanese musicologist and Professor of Aesthetics Satoru Takaku, who has been a Husum regular since in early noughties. “Come, I'll arrange tickets for you, book your hotel, and even meet you at Hamburg airport!” was his enticement, and I was caught hook, line and sinker. A round trip that could include the BBC Proms in London, the 18^th Leeds International Piano Competition and Husum in late August was a possibility, and soon I was dreaming.

Schloss vor Husum is a 16^thcentury castle built by the Counts of Gottorf on the outskirts just north of the marketplace of Husum. Its oxide red bricks and single watch-tower built in the Danish (or is it Dutch?) style dominate the landscape and it even has a own moat of its own. Although its concerts begin at half-past-seven in the evening, daylight still filters into the Ritter Saal (Hall of Knights) which seats close to 200 in a small and intimate space. Ancient portraits and an elaborately decorated fireplace (this castle has some extraordinary fireplaces and mantelpieces!) vie for attention, as do the nesting birds and sqawking ducks which provide a not unwelcome counterpoint to the piano music. Soon the ear settles for the feast of piano sound, and that captivates like no other.

Rarities of Piano Music at Schloss vor Husum is the brainchild of Berlin-born pianist and pedagogue Peter Froundjian, a soft-spoken mustachioed gentleman in his 60s of Armenian extraction. In 1985 he received an appointment to head the music school that is resident in the castle, and he saw the possibilities of such a festival at such a venue. He was interested in non-mainstream piano repertoire, and could not understand how a narrow repertoire could have pre-occupied musical and concert life for ages. He wanted to do something for the unjustly forgotten composers, such that they could be appreciated by the public like the great masters. There is much good music to heard, except that these are rarely programmed in recitals.

He felt that this approach would not work within the confines of one or two recitals, which would garner little attention if any. Instead a festival package spanning a week with eight recitals by different pianists of different tastes might do the trick. Husum is not near a big city (the closest, Hamburg, is 2 hours away by train), so visitors plan to stay the entire week. Return visitors and word-of-mouth ensure that all tickets to concerts are sold-out when the day arrives. Late-comers are to satisfy themselves by sitting in an adjacent room with a video feed (and another magnificent fireplace) for a small fee.

The intimate Ritter Saal of Schloss vor Husum
sits around 200 for each recital.

The first festival took place in 1987 with attention from the press, periodicals and media, and it was well received. Pianists including Michael Ponti (a Vox Records legend, a champion of unknown Romantic repertoire), Daniel Berman, Rainer Klaas, Eckhart Sellheim, a piano duo and Froundjian himself performed. The year 1989 was a pivotal one, which saw the participation of Marc-Andre Hamelin and Ronald Smith (in Alkan's Concerto and Symphony for solo piano respectively), Hamish Milne (Reubke's Sonata in B minor), Jean-Marc Luisada, Idil Biret and Ponti again. That edition sealed Husum's unique position in the pianistic world, with the focus on repertoire as the guiding light.

What have been some of the more arcane curiosities that Husum has mid-wifed? Froundjian lists off the palm of his hand: Cecile Licad performing Florent Schmitt, Marie-Catherine Girod playing a sonata by Pierre de Breville in the past, and young Russian Yuri Favorin unearthing Alkan, Myaskovsky, Prokofiev and Szymanowski in this year's line-up. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Virtuosity is a given, but obscurity a definitive.

Is there a formula by which Froundjian picks his artists and programmes? There is no fixed formula. Any pianist can apply to perform just as he can approach a given pianist. There are proposals for repertoire choices and counter-proposals, based on what has been performed in past years, and what has not. It is all a very interesting experiment.

The latest Danacord CD recording
of Rarities from the 2014 festival.

Thanks to the annual highlights CD, a labour of love co-produced by Danacord label's owner Jesper Buhl, the “legend of Husum” has spread far and wide, albeit within the relatively small cosmos of universal pianophiles. Asian visitors are still a relative rarity, but my friend Satoru has done much to proselytise Husum's gospel. Through his introduction, London-based Japanese pianist Hiroaki Takenouchi has performed twice in Husum in recent years, introducing works by Boris Pasternak (the author of Doctor Zhivago), Hubert Parry and others to receptive ears.

The year 2016 marks the 30^thedition of Rarities and who is to perform at this special anniversary? Froundjian does not reveal the names of pianists yet, but he assures it will be a combination of long-time friends favourites of the Festival and a late of new names making their debuts. Given the vast pool of concert pianists who are widening the performing repertoire every day, the possibilities are endless. As long as there are terra incognita for intrepid pianists to discover, and an ever-curious audience to savour these offerings, the cult and spirit of Husum is sure to endure.

CELEBRATING SG50

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra

Conservatory Concert Hall

Friday (25 September 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 September 2015

Within the coming week, the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra will undertake its first overseas tour, performing concerts in Macau and Hong Kong. Its touring programme is a hugely demanding one, and knowing what the young musicians led by Principal Conductor Jason Lai have accomplished in the past, its pre-tour concert in front of a Singaporean audience generated much interest and expectation.

The orchestra opened with the World Premiere of Ho Chee Kong's Empyrean Lights. Its title refers to the aurorae or spectral phenomena that take place in the polar regions, commonly known as the Northern or Southern Lights. It is a 17-minute long étude for orchestra which taxes the strings enormously, with woodwinds and brass also given exacting solo parts.

Beginning quietly with a D minor drone not unlike the outset of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, solo instruments emerge from and return into a mysterious haze, gradually morphing into a dynamic force that is both serene yet majestic. There are running string passages which bring to mind Sibelius, but the defining voices were the three trumpets that capped the work's final chapter. Only one stayed the course, its notes configuring enigmatically the name or initials of Singapore's founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, before gently expiring into the ether.

This has to be the most subtle and eloquent tribute to the nation's guiding light yet, and the orchestra responded to its rugged challenges with admirable aplomb. With time, some of its rough edges will be smoothened out, just as one begins to realise the impact of this moving music.

Completing the first half was Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto, given an articulate and elegant reading by Li Churen, a Conservatory alumnus now pursuing her Master's Degree at Yale. This is a more nuanced reading than the one she gave with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at the President's Young Performers Concert three years ago. Having grown and matured in the interim, her version of the slow movement oozed lyricism while the finale crackled with unbridled joy.

Nationalist Finnish composer Jean Sibelius'Second Symphony was the concert's longest work. This received a taut performance which dallied little yet gave a pervading sense of breadth and warmth in its 40-plus-minutes duration. The strings played a large part in conveying this impression, and if the beginning sounded a tad diffuse, it soon grew in stature. The stark opening to the 2^nd movement, chilling in its intensity similarly blossomed to a fiery fruition under conductor Lai's baton.

The Prestissimo3^rd movement, with rapid string runs referenced earlier in Ho's work, gave the programme an overall feel of cohesion and symmetry. Arctic illuminations and Nordic utterances went hand in hand here. The finale's heroic sweep with blazing brass was the rallying point for Finnish independance from Russian domination, not unlike a certain Hakka lawyer's lifelong and steadfast stand for the “little red dot”.

A less well-sustained climax would have fallen flat, but Lai's charges never flagged for a second till its valedictory final chords. In the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra and all associated with it, Singaporeans have good reason to feel proud.

Composer & Conductor:
Ho Chee Kong with Jason Lai.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, August 2015)

PIANO++ / Robert Casteels et al / Review

UNFORGETTABLE TUNES II / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, August 2015)

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, September 2015)

WINTERREISE / Matthias Goerne & Markus Hinterhäuser / Review

STRUMMING HEARTSTRINGS / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

LAURA PEH & CATRIN FINCH / Harp Recitals / Review

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, September 2015)

MUSIC OF DARK AND LIGHT FROM THREE CONTINENTS / Fischer Duo / Review

LEONCAVALLO'S I PAGLIACCI & PUCCINI'S GIANNI SCHICCHI / Singapore Lyric Opera / Review

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, September 2015)

SINGAPORE SOUNDS / Review

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, September 2015)

EVENINGS AT HARTMANN'S / Rarities of Piano Music at Schloss vor Husum

CYPRIEN KATSARIS Piano Recital / Rarities of Piano Music at Schloss vor Husum

JONATHAN PLOWRIGHT Piano Recital / Rarities of Piano Music at Schloss vor Husum 2015

MARTIN JONES Piano Recital / Rarities of Piano Music at Schloss vor Husum

THE WORLD'S MOST UNIQUE PIANO FESTIVAL: RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM

CELEBRATING SG50 / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra / Review