pianomania

STEPHEN HOUGH.
EGYPTIAN PIANO CONCERTO
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Friday (13 September 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times with the title""Pianist Stephen Hough delivers a French feast".

Under the baton of Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Litton, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra performed an all-French programme opening with Hector Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture. Not written as a prelude to any opera or play, this was an out-and-out orchestral showpiece quoting themes from the opera Benvenuto Cellini that highlighted both ensemble and solo prowess.

After a slickly delivered introduction, the lot fell to Elaine Yeo’s cor anglais, which sang a plaintive melody with true pathos. Italian sunshine and drama filled the work’s animated pages, and it was with general pinpoint articulation and brilliant brass that began the evening on a high note.

The concert’s selling point was celebrated British pianist Stephen Hough’s return in one of his favourite party pieces, Camille Saint-Saëns’ Fifth Piano Concerto also nicknamed the “Egyptian Concerto”. Incidentally, he made his Singapore debut with this same work way back in 1986. Except for the central movement which quotes a Nubian song, there was little African to be had.

From the outset, it was French gaiety that reigned. But far from being the froth and fluff, Hough’s fingers of scintillation were tempered with steel. The filigree so key to Saint-Saëns’ keyboard writing was never submerged by the orchestra’s exertions, and it was clear this was no traipse in the Tuileries.

The slow movement’s exoticism was delightfully overdone, the piano crafting piquant tinkling bell sounds. With the help of percussion, the wafting aromas went beyond Cairo to reach even Batavia. The toccata-like maneuvers of the finale, supposedly mimicking spinning turbines of a steamship, were a tour de force of velocity. With soloist and orchestra charging headlong at full speed, there could only be one result: roars of approval from a clearly enthused audience.

As an encore, Hough made the splendid gesture of sharing centrestage with SSO Co-Concertmaster Lynnette Seah, the orchestra’s longest serving player who retires later this year, in Elgar’s Salut d’Amour. Her tone was sumptuous, and the accompaniment classy and refined, after which Hough added Debussy’s Clair de lune, which was simply a treat.

The orchestra completed the evening with Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D minor. Franck was a key French establishment figure despite being born in Belgium and having a Germanic musical outlook. The opening to his symphony would have reminded one of Wagner and Liszt (his tone poem Les Preludes in particular), and the orchestra responded with a reading of taut objectivity.

Strings were sounding resolute yet capable of suppleness in the outer movements, while string pizzicatos, harp and cor anglais (Elaine Yeo again) set the right mood for the soothing slow movement. The finale was an ecstatically driven ride, with conductor Litton making frequent small leaps on the podium. The symphony’s triumphant close belonged to the brass, hitting the glory notes with fearless aplomb. So how do an English pianist, American conductor and Singaporean orchestra fare in French music? Very well indeed.

DING YI CHINESE CHAMBER
MUSIC FESTIVAL 2019
3peoplemusic / Tang Family Music Ensemble
Ding Yi Music Company
Esplanade Recital Studio
Saturday & Sunday
(14 & 15 September 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 September 2019 with the title "A great variety of Chinese chamber music".

Trust Ding Yi Music Company to preach the gospel of Chinese instrumental music by organising its own international chamber music festival. Now in its fourth edition, the Ding Yi Chamber Music Festival 2019 ran over three days, featuring ensembles from Canada, Taiwan and China.

The second and third evenings showcased two very different groups, confirming that traditional Chinese chamber music is more heterogeneous than one imagined. 3Peoplemusic, a Taiwanese trio of Jen Chung (dizi), Kuo Min-chin (guzheng) and Pan I-tung (zhongruan), performed original compositions and arrangements that had a popular and upbeat feel.

Dizi and xiao carried carried the melodic interest, with guzheng and zhongruan providing accompaniment and counter-melodies. The strummed ruan oftrn simulated a guitar’s rhythmic and percussive thrust. In Luxury and Dissipation, a sense of improvisation presided over a ground bass that relived happy revelry on Chinese new year’s eve.

Popular melodies like Molihua and Jackdaws Playing In The Water were woven into the fabric of Chung’s Slowly Rowing On Jasmine Waves and Kuo’s Three Ducks Communing. The most modern piece was Pan’s Ink Immersion, where each instrument posed as actors in a play with soliloquys of their own.

Three members of Ding Yi Music Company and conductor Quek Ling Kiong joined the threesome in Chua Jon Lin’s Flowers, a brief work stringing together motifs from 15 flower-inspired songs into a garland. 3peoplemusic’s encore was Taiwanese hit Tian Hei Hei (Dark Sky), styled in its own inimitable way.

The festival was rounded up by Shanghai’s Tang Family Music Ensemble. With a performing tradition spanning eight generations, its seven members included four siblings in their seventies and eighties. Jiangnan shizhu (silk and bamboo music), involving bowed and plucked strings (silk) and blown dizi and sheng (bamboo), was their speciality.

There is much satisfaction to be had in heterophony, with different instruments playing in unison but coloured by distinct timbres. In the traditional Fan Wan Gong and Auspicious Cloud, melodic lines stood out with clarity and vividness. In two pieces based on the classic Old Six Beats, an upping in tempo also meant more elaborate ornamentations.

Elder spokesperson of the Tang clan, Tang Liang Xing brought out a surfeit of emotions on his pipa in Thinking Of An Old Friend and Drunk. In concertante works, sheng soloist Weng Zhen Fa waxed lyrical in Yan Haideng’s Tunes Of Shanxi Opera, while dizi soloist Zhan Yong Ming was joined by his student Ng Hsien Han in the double concerto Winds Of Affinity by Wang Chenwei. These were accompanied by Ding Yi’s ensemble conducted by Quek Ling Kiong.

Two of Jiangnan’s most famous melodies, Xing Jie (Walking The Street) and Huan Le Ge (Song Of Joy) closed the colourful evening. The ensemble was joined by guests from the visiting groups and winners of the National Chinese Music Competition. Needless to add, the response was nothing short of overwhelming.

PRESIDENT’S YOUNG PERFORMERS CONCERT
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Victoria Concert Hall
Friday (27 September 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 September 2019 with the title "Young guitarist on top of his game".

The Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s President’s Young Performers Concerts have been an annual showcase of local talent in concerto performances since the 1990s. The series has spanned tenures of four presidents since Ong Teng Cheong, featuring the likes of pianists Shane Thio, Lim Yan and Abigail Sin, violinists Lee Huei Min and Chan Yoong Han, and even a saxophonist, Samuel Phua. Kevin Loh is the first guitarist to appear on this platform, although he has previously performed with the orchestra.

His concerto was no big surprise: Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, surely the most performed and recorded guitar concerto of all time. While not presenting new insights, he gave a confident and big-hearted account of this familiar favourite. But how many people actually know its fast outer movements?

There was the intimate feeling of chamber music as Loh worked well with the orchestra, which relied mostly on strings and woodwinds in its narrative. Whether strumming out chords or negotiating tricky passage work, Loh was on top of his game. In the famous Adagio, he first accompanied Elaine Yeo’s sensuous cor anglais solo and then ventured out on his own. His sonorous mastery of the guitar’s lower registers was also a delight, sounding like some baritone majo (or Spanish gentleman) in love.

The finale that followed erupted with festive colour, helped by the brass, especially the trumpets. Prolonged applause meant an encore, with Paraguayan guitarist-composer Agustin Barrios Mangore’s Waltz in G major (Op.8 No.4) being Loh’s perfect icing on the cake.

To balance the familiarity of Rodrigo, the concert led by SSO Associate Conductor Joshua Tan included two less familiar works. Opening the evening was Mendelssohn’s Die Schöne Melusine Overture, programme music on the legend of a two-tailed mermaid falling in love. Intricate woodwind passages and weepy strings painted a watery realm for an ill-fated romance to blossom, and eventually expire beneath the waves.

Max Reger’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart, receiving its Singapore premiere, concluded the concert. The German composer, front-liner of the “back-to-Bach movement”, was responsible for some impossibly turgid pot-boilers, but this was thankfully not one of those. Based on the 1^st movement theme from Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A major (K.331, the one with the Turkish Rondo), the variations were well-crafted but difficult to pull off.

One might regard this as an expanded version of Brahms’ Haydn Variations, as there were more than a few similarities. The theme itself was plainly stated, with excellent woodwinds to thank again, but the variations got increasingly florid while maintaining a basic outline.

Kudos go to both conductor and orchestra for keeping the variations tautly strung, without allowing instrumental ornaments and details to complicate matters. There were even stretches of Straussian opulence and beauty, all coming before the massive fugal finale and the theme’s glorious re-entry. This could have been one big contrapuntal bore, but it simply was not to be.

Concert photographs by the kind courtesy of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

PINNACLES OF ROMANTICISM
Take 5 Piano Quintet
Esplanade Recital Studio
Sunday (29 September 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 October 2019 with the title "Take 5's take on Romanticism may be this year's top chamber concert".

Take 5, Singapore’s premier piano quintet, has now completed fifteen concerts in its exploration of the piano quintet (piano with string quartet) repertoire. After exhausting the popular and familiar favourites, the group has turned to the arcane territories of Philipp Scharwenka and Sergei Taneyev.

Both composers operated at the tail end of musical Romanticism, with their piano quintets arriving in 1910-11, just a couple of years before Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring was unleashed to the unsuspecting world. Both were academics who stoutly clung to past traditions, tenaciously defending their ground as modernism took over and irrevocably transformed the musical landscape.

The Pole Philipp Scharwenka (1847-1917) was the elder brother of pianist-composer Xaver Scharwenka, best remembered for his Polish Dances and piano concertos. His half-hour long Quintet in B minor, while maintaining a front of Teutonic objectivity and density, smouldered with Slavic passion and darkness. This was apparent in the unison voices of its opening, oozing pathos in the minor key before becoming slightly more optimistic in its second subject.

The lovely slow movement could be described a “Romance” with pianist Lim Yan’s calming opening answered by Chan Wei Shing’s cello plaint. With the other string players joining in, this love letter soon took off, fraught with tenderness and angst in equal measure. After a slow introduction, the finale became an exciting romp, with no let up in tension and energy.

The Russian Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915) was one of Tchaikovsky’s most famous students. His Quintet in G minor – in four movements and lasting some 45 minutes – could at least be called ambitious. Pianist Lim, also playing a curatorial role within the quintet, gave a short preamble to this sprawling work. Furnishing short examples and providing contexts, he struck a good balance between being theoretical and intellectual.

Taneyev was no dyed-in-the-wool nationalist, but the Russianess of his music still soaked through. The first movement’s opening theme, mournful and lugubrious, was worn heart-on-sleeve but tinged with Wagnerian harmonic ambiguities. A contrasting second theme, essentially a modified inversion of the first, radiated more light. The tense interplay between these two, for best part of the movement’s 20 minutes, was a catharsis of sorts.

As a change of tack, the scintillating Scherzo spun off sparks and tinsels ever so effortlessly, while the slow movement’s passacaglia was a plodding procession over a bass rhythm established by the cello. Despite the longueurs, the quintet showed little sign of toil or weariness.

The finale was skittish and filled with fantasy, and themes from the opening movement returned at a fast and furious pace. There was a moment of respite when Foo Say Ming’s violin soared to stratospheric heights, before a glorious reprise of the work’s most memorable melody. With violinist Lim Shue Churn and violist Chan Yoong-Han completing this “mighty handful”, Take 5’s take might just be this year’s top chamber concert.

THE NIGHT GARDEN
JO ANNE SUKUMARAN, Bassoon
KSENIIA VOKHMIANINA, Piano et al
Hello Stage 010 / ****1/2

With this album, Jo Anne Sukumaran became the first Singaporean bassoonist to record a solo recital on compact disc. An alumnus of the Singapore Youth Orchestra, she completed her studies in Switzerland before pursuing a free-lance career as solo, chamber and orchestral bassoonist. Her programme is predominantly French but eclectic in its variety. She opens with Philippe Hersant’s Niggun, an unaccompanied Hasidic Hebrew song that showcases the bassoon’s wide tonal and emotional range.

This work also has spiritual and aesthetic connections with two of Spaniard Manuel de Falla’s Popular Spanish Songs – Asturiana and Nana – which are soothing and tender in expression, and the titular The Night Garden by Sukumaran and tabla player Sanjay Kansa Banik. The latter is a short improvisation accompanied by tanpura based on two ragas that explore mysteries of the night and Sukumaran’s own Indian heritage.

In between are Camille Saint-Saens’s Bassoon Sonata (Op.168), a late work exploiting the bassoon’s avuncular and playful character. Charles Koechlin’s Three Pieces (Op.34), Alexandre Tansman’s Sonatina and Norwegian bassonist Robert Ronnes’ Reflexion are virtuosic yet soulful additions, sensitively accompanied by pianist Kseniia Vokhmianina. This is a probing and enjoyable album, highlights of which are relived by Jo Anne and her friends in recital at Esplanade Recital Studio at 7.30 pm on Sunday 20 October 2019. Tickets are available at Peatix.

HEIRLOOMS
The Teng Ensemble
Esplanade Concert Hall
Friday (11 October 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 October 2019 with the title "Chinese immigrant music given a fresh take".

What do immigrants from China do when they transplant themselves thousands of miles from their homeland to settle in Southeast Asia? They bring along their musical cultures, mostly through oral tradition, create their own instruments, and pass these down to succeeding generations. All in the hope that younger ones will be receptive. That is how musical heritage survives, or risks being forgotten altogether.

Over four years, The Teng Ensemble has interviewed and recorded musical practitioners whose forebears arrived by sea from China’s southern provinces, namely Fujian (Hokkien), Chaozhou (Teochew) and Guangdong (Canton). Heirlooms is the 70-minute concert of music derived from these traditions, produced by Bang Wenfu and Joel Nah, accompanied by a documentary film directed by Koo Chia Meng.

Imagine the metamorphosis of music, through displacements in time and space, with the imbibing of modern popular culture, and one gets an idea of the music heard. Eight short works by New York-based Malaysia-born composer Chow JunYi were presented, each with roots in pre-existing music but transformed into something fresh out from the 21^st century.

The original creators will not recognise these slicked-up efforts, but hopefully some of the creator spirit remains. It was only appropriate that Teng Ensemble founder Samuel Wong gave a short preamble before opening the first piece, Tracing, with his pipa solo. Lovebirds Singing In Harmony by Zhuo Sheng Xiang and late Cultural Medallion recipient Tang Mah Seng was the basis for this flight of fantasy. One interviewee on film quipped that Nanyin music initially felt like Chinese funeral dirges, but this updated take and Xin Zao Beh, a re-imagination of Nanyin classic Eight Horses, would completely change the script.

With house-lights dimmed to near darkness, and stage-lights taking over to illuminate soloists, the romp began. Allying Wong were eight players, equally spiffy in their designer suite, plying traditional Chinese (erhu, sheng, pipa, ruan and guzheng) and modern instruments (gehu or cello, keyboard, electric guitar and electronics).

Localised versions of certain instruments were also employed, including Cantonese gaohu and qinqin, Teochew zheng and pipa, with the intent that some authenticity was being preserved. The music was amplified and with projected visuals and strobe-lights, everything took on a psychedelic edge.

Lovers of Cantonese music will recognise Chen Peixun’s Autumn Moon Over The Calm Lake and Yan Laolie’s Han Tian Lei (Thunder In Drought) in the mash-up titled Hang Gai. There was also a nod to film music with the melody from Once Upon A Time In China incorporated into Contemporary. Here, a recording of drums and temple gongs from the Lao Sai Tao Yuan Teochew Opera Troupe was included into the mix.

There was also a tribute to the late Yeo How Jiang, a master of Waijiang (scholar music) and Teochew music, who was recorded and immortalised in Memoir. With the final work Far From Home, using four Teochew melodies, Teng Ensemble showed that the past is still relevant, if anything to inform the future.

DEBUSSY Nocturnes / Printemps etc.
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
LAN SHUI
BIS 2232 / *****

This is the final instalment of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s three-disc survey of orchestral music by Claude Debussy (1862-1918), under the direction of former Music Director Shui Lan. Having recorded major works La Mer and Three Images for Orchestra, this disc concludes with the Three Nocturnes (1897-99), which helped establish the Frenchman as a frontline composer.

Impressionist in thought and colour, Nuages (Clouds) and Fêtes (Festivals) are musical tableaux distinguished by contrasting moods which are vividly evocative. The ennui of grey skies and frenetic pace of human activity are soon effaced by the haunting finale, Sirenes (Sirens), which features wordless women’s voices from the Philharmonic Chamber Choir of Europe

There are also two concertante works, beginning with Rapsodie (1901-11), showcasing the variegated shadings of superb French saxophonist Claude Delangle, reminding one of the sinuous opening to the famous Prelude to The Afternoon Of The Fawn. The beautiful Two Dances (1904, Danse sacré et Danse profane) are graced by SSO principal harpist Gulnara Mashurova, who brilliantly brings out their alternatingly formal and sensuous faces, backed by just strings.

This interesting album is completed by various lesser-known odds and ends, the Scottish March On A Popular Theme (1890), Berceuse Heroique (1914), which quotes La Brabançonne, the Belgian national anthem, and the early Printemps (1887, orchestrated by Henri Busser), a reminder of the French Belle Epoque. SSO is served with spectacular sound, and the ecologically friendly packaging (with no plastic) does its part to save the planet.

CHOPIN – BEFORE AND BEYOND
Albert Tiu, Piano
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall
Thursday 31 October 2019

This review was published in The Straits Times on 4 November 2019 with the title "Chopin celebrated".

Recitals of Frederic Chopin’s piano music are usually predictable; a pair of Nocturnes, a clutch of Études and Préludes, a Ballade or Scherzo to impress, capped by the indestructible Second or Third Sonatas. Not so for Singapore-based Filipino pianist Albert Tiu, who presented an adventurous and varied programme of mostly short pieces built around the cult of the Polish pianist-composer.

There were 21 works by 12 composers, grouped in five suites, showcasing a wide breadth and depth of influence, not to mention Tiu’s understated virtuosity and unfailing musicality. Who was Chopin, and who were his forebears? One clue lay in the opening number, the Fugue in F minor (from The Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1) by Johann Sebastian Bach, possessed with a chromaticism way ahead of his time.

The first suite, cast entirely in the morose key of F minor, also included the first of Chopin’s Trois Nouvelles Études and a most sinuous of Études (Op.25 No.2) which revealed a mastery of the right hand. Grieg’s little-known Hommage à Chopin and Liszt’s tortuously tricky La Leggierezza completed the set with no little aplomb.

The lyricism of bel canto was the next influence, with three Nocturnes in E flat major. The first was by Irishman John Field, inventor of the “night piece”, its simplicity then surpassed by Chopin’s familiar warhorse (Op.9 No.2), now dressed up in filigree by Chopin student Mikuli and Tiu himself. More extended was Frenchman Gabriel Fauré’s Fourth Nocturne (Op.36), an essay of sumptuous beauty that furthered the genre.

The third suite comprised five waltzes, all in F minor again. Chopin was the lynchpin, his lilting exercise followed by Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Debussy and Leopold Godowsky. The last was a later Polish pianist-composer paying tribute to the master, by craftily fashioning an earlier-heard Étude into a grand polyphonic waltz.

More was to come in the second half, with a trio of Venetian gondolier songs. Ironically, Mendelssohn’s piece (from his Songs Without Words) had the darkest shade of the three. This and Liszt’s Gondoliera (from Years of Pilgrimage) bookended Chopin’s late Barcarolle, arguably his greatest outpouring of love, which Tiu milked to the full.

The final suite was formed by mazurkas, the humble Polish peasant dance in three-quarter time. C sharp minor was the key, with Chopin’s Op.30 No.4 (a favourite of Ukrainian-born virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz’s) leading the way. Tchaikovsky’s hommage (Un Poco Di Chopin or A Little Chopin), Scriabin’s rhythmic gem (Op.3 No.6) and Pole Karol Szymanowski’s saucy morsel (Op.50 No.3) displayed more facets to this form, before another Chopin-Godowsky conflation ended the concert.

This final time, a Chopin Étude in E minor (Op.25 No.5) had been transformed into a grandstanding Mazurka. That the appreciative audience comprised many piano teachers, music critics (past and present), singers, rock musicians and general music-lovers spoke volumes. They all love Chopin and Albert Tiu.

After all, its Halloween!

ALEXANDER MALOFEEV Piano Recital
Victoria Concert Hall
Saturday (2 November 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 4 November 2019 with the title "Pianist shows brilliance at Singapore debut".

Eighteen-year-old Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev is already a celebrity. Thanks to Youtube and social media, the former child prodigy who won the Tchaikovsky International Youth Piano Competition at the age of 13 has now a universal following. His Singapore debut recital was thus greeted with a large audience in Victoria Concert Hall, which he reciprocated with a programme of unabashed virtuosity.

Some might quibble about the absence of works by Mozart, Schubert or Chopin, which favour discretion and musicianship over outlandish display, but this lanky young man has a seemingly effortless facility and enviable technique to burn. He displayed little emotion on his face and was economical in motion. Yet he is no off-the-assembly-line automaton with steel-tipped fingers.

In Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata (Op.57), he allied brawn with brain in a performance of requisite brilliance. Even if the opening movement had a poker face about it, the slow movement’s variations were unfurled with no little patience and good judgement. Fetters were let loose for the finale, and there was little time to catch one’s breath for Malofeev’s thunderous and whirlwind response.

Arguably even more impressive was the reading of Rachmaninov’s Second Sonata (Op.36), heard in its shorter 1931 edition. Common fodder for piano competitions, the work found a sympathetic ear in Malofeev who resonated its myriad bell sounds with much trenchancy. He even tried teasing out hidden inner voices in the lyrical central movement, but it was the mastery of massed notes in high speeds that eventually stood out.

The recital’s second half was all Russian, and that suited him to the tee. Tchaikovsky’s Dumka mixed Slavic doom and melancholy with the boisterousness of a country dance. That was merely a warm up to Balakirev’s fearsome Islamey, an Oriental fantasy where more speed records were broken. The clarity and accuracy of his delivery was nothing short of astounding.

To calm things down, the Andante Maestoso from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker in Mikhail Pletnev’s exacting transcription was the lyrical icing on a well-baked cake. And make no mistake about it, this was not an easy piece to overcome.

Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata, the middle instalment of his “War Trilogy”, completed the evening’s programme. Again, this was no faceless shock and awe performance, but a well-nuanced one which balanced jagged dissonances with unusually lyrical asides. Being able to differentiate when to apply extreme percussiveness and when to sing made this a highly satisfying outing. Even the precipitous final movement opened quietly but gradually worked itself to a frenzied chord-laden conclusion.

There were two encores. Tchaikovsky’s Autumn Song (October) from The Seasons was touching for its sheer simplicity and song-like lines. In contrast, the rapid machine-gun fire of Prokofiev’s Toccata did exactly what it was supposed to do, that is triggering an spontaneous standing ovation.

Alexander Malofeev is greeted by

Russian ambassador to Singapore

H.E. Mr Andrey Tatarinov.

SHLOMO MINTZ Chamber Recital
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall
Wednesday (13 November 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 November 2019 with the title "Unusual musical choices lead to patchy performance".

Russia-born Israeli violinist Shlomo Mintz is the Ong Teng Cheong Professor in Music for Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in the 2019/20 academic year. Also Distinguished Artist-in-Residence in last year’s Singapore International Violin Competition when he performed all six Eugene Ysaye unaccompanied Sonatas, his showcase this year was a chamber recital with faculty members of the Conservatory.

Unusually, the recital opened with Mintz on the viola, in two works which were not conceived for the instrument. The first was Schubert’s popular Arpeggione Sonata in A minor, originally written for the arpeggione, an obsolete six-stringed bowed instrument with frets. Nowadays, it is always heard played on the cello.

Neither as deep nor mellow as the cello, the viola would struggle in comparison. Nevertheless Mintz maintained a firm and throaty singing tone throughout its Biedermeier gentility. However the tempos adopted by him and accompanying pianist Ge Xiaozhe in the opening movement were so broad that there seemed little differentiation in dynamics continuing into the actual slow movement.

Leisurely to some, and draggy to others, life seemed to be sucked out of the music. Moving from the early Romantic to the late Romantic, Brahms’ Viola Sonata in E flat major (Op.120 No.2, originally for the clarinet), there gained some semblance of vitality, not least in the central Allegro Appassionato movement. With fire in the belly, much credit went to Ge’s rock-steady partnership which did not stint on keyboard vigour.

Lighter music occupied the recital’s second half, now with Mintz playing the violin. Darius Milhaud’s surrealist ballet Le boeuf sur le toit, crafted as a cinema-fantasy for violin and piano, was a weird choice. The music was inspired by Brazilian dance rhythms, ragtime, cabaret and popular music hall idioms. Also throw in the Frenchman’s experiments with polytonality, meaning the instruments often played in different keys.

This sounded like some disaster, with excruciating off-pitch and approximate playing which became increasingly embarrassing by the minute. Perhaps all that was deliberate, given that the work’s absurdist title, named after an actual 1920s Parisian nightclub, means “ox on the roof”.

Thankfully there was Astor Piazzolla’s tango suite The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires to save the day. Here Mintz was partnered with members from the Conservatory, namely Qian Zhou and He Shucong (violins), Zhang Manchin (viola), Ng Pei-Sian (cello) and Guennadi Mouzyka (double bass). They performed a string sextet arrangement by Fabian Bertero, which is shorter and less florid than the more often heard Leonid Desyatnikov version.

Here was a collective letting down of hair, with the infectiously rhythmic music being the tonic for the evening’s mixed fare. Mintz also seemed more in his element, wallowing in the high spirits and bittersweet asides. Opening with celebratory Summer and closing with vibrant Spring, the performance was loudly and rapturously received, with fugal Winter being encored to even more cheers.

LOVE, POULENC
9^th Singapore Lieder Festival
Victoria Concert Hall Music Studio
Last Friday & Saturday (15 & 16 November 2019)
Chang Tou Liang

2019 marked the ninth edition of the Singapore Lieder Festival, organised by the Sing Song Club founded by tenor Adrian Poon and pianist Shane Thio. Over the years, the group performed over a thousand art songs, encompassing great German lieder cycles, English folksongs, French chansons and premieres of songs by Singaporean composers.

This year’s offering was a distillation of the 2013 festival, which showcased the complete melodies of French composer Francis Poulenc (1899 to 1963). In two short but intense recitals last weekend, three singers and the indefatigable accompanist Thio reprised some of the key song cycles. Given Poulenc’s penchant for melancholy, humour, irony and luscious tunes, that seemed irresistible.

The first evening opened with soprano Teng Xiang Ting in Poems of Louis Aragon, two widely contrasting songs dripping with socialist notions. Beautiful lyrical lines distinguished C (I Have Crossed The Bridges Of Cé) while her finely articulated French surmounted the tricky Fetes Galantes. While making her name as an operatic diva, Teng showed she was equally adroit as an art song interpreter.

Busier of two singers, she also sang Fiancailles pour rire (Light-hearted Betrothal) and La Courte Paille (The Short Straw), comprising some 12 songs. If there were a composer able to cram multiple layers of emotions and nuances into diminutive musical bon mots, that would be Poulenc. Make no mistake about the seemingly simple words and settings, as hidden meanings and entendres abound.

Tenor Adrian Poon sang in both evenings. The five songs in Banalites (Banalities), Poulenc’s most familiar cycle, received vivid characterisations. Smoky decadence in Hotel, the tipsy waltz-song in Voyage a Paris and moving plaints of Sanglots (Sobs), highlighting mercurial shifts of moods, were easily taken in his stride.

A minor controversy involved a male voice singing La Dame de Monte-Carlo - Poulenc’s longest song - about an ageing madame’s desperate plight, casting her last hopeless die in the gambling table of life. No worries. Considering Poon’s cross-dressing act in New Opera Singapore’s recent production of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this was par for the course.

On the second evening, Poon tackled Tel Jours Telle Nuit (As The Day So The Night) and Calligrammes, 16 songs in all. These were darker and more aphoristic, with the piano part more pointillist and fraught. The former was a kaleidoscopic metaphorical journey from day to night, encompassing all shades in between, while the latter was inspired by war and personal loss.

The third singer, baritone Daniel Fong, covered the songs on animals and artists. Le bestiaire (The Book Of Beasts) included curiosities like a camel, Tibetan goat, grasshopper and crayfish, all under a minute long. More substantial was Le travail du peintre (The Work of the Painter) where Poulenc’s artist friends were portrayed in vignettes – Picasso, Chagall, Braque, Gris, Klee, Miro and the little-known Jacques Villon. The last provided a most noble of endings, a touch that was simply Poulenc.

DUO SENSES: HARP & PIANO

LAURA PEH Harp Recital

AZARIAH TAN Piano Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Friday & Saturday

(29 & 30 November 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 December 2019 with the title "Home-grown talents shine in harp and piano recitals".

Kris Foundation has been presenting young Singaporean musical talents in recitals over the last decade, and this year’s two soloists were distinctive in different ways. In 2013, Laura Peh was established as the first Singaporean to perform a solo harp recital, while Azariah Tan became Singapore’s first hearing-impaired concert pianist.

Peh’s recital was a showcase of mostly French virtuoso pieces representing the “Golden Age of the Harp”. Opening with the etude-like Au matin (In The Morning) by Marcel Tournier, its sunlit pages radiated a warm glow and ethereal aura. Her art was the pursuit of gentle scintillation, with the 1^st movement from same composer’s Sonatine sounding just as persuasive, a heady reminder of the Belle Epoque.

Harp-fanciers will also recognise the names of Gabriel Pierne, Felix Godefroid and Elias Parish-Alvars, the latter two being hailed as the Paganini and Liszt of the harp. Despite being finger-twisters, their pieces also evoked the lyricism of bel canto and Chopin. Scarlatti’s Sonata in B minor and Debussy’s Clair de lune (from Suite Bergamasque) were originally conceived for the harpsichord and piano respectively, but these translated well on the harp too.

Artist & Composer:

Laura Peh with Lim Kang Ning

Also significant was the world premiere of young Singaporean composer Lim Kang Ning’s Cornish Tides, evocative and impressionist picture postcards of the wind-swept Cornwall landscape. The first movement was redolent of Debussy, with whole-tones sprinkled liberally, while the second was a whimsical scherzo which playfully involved rhythmic tapping of the harp’s wooden frame.

Pianist Azariah Tan’s programme comprised just two works, Beethoven’s Sonata No.30 in E major (Op.109) coupled with Johann Sebastian Bach’s mighty Goldberg Variations. This tandem worked a treat because of related thematic material, which Tan eloquently explained and demonstrated pre-performance.

Both works were regarded as spiritual journeys, with their requisite ups and downs. Opening quietly and closing in serenity, there was to be much activity and angst encompassed in between. The late Beethoven sonata received a supremely musical reading, culminating in the final movement’s set of variations on a hymn-like theme.

The descending bass notes to an aria was the subject of Bach’s fantastic variations, which comprised 30 in total but laid out as ten groups of three. As Tan explained, every three variations included a dance, a technically demanding study and a canon. His performance was highly assured and clear-headed as his preamble, and shorn of idiosyncracy or stylistic quirks.

As he chose to omit all repeats, the work clocked in just under 45 minutes, in effect a breeze. When the closing Aria breathed its last, a journey of transformation was complete. For most, that would have been total satisfaction in itself, but Tan shared two lovely encores. A Chopin Prélude (Op.28 No.17) and an unpublished song by late Canadian pianist Vernon Duncombe were the extra treats.

Artist & Benefactor:

Azariah Tan with Kris Tan,

Founder of Kris Foundation.

CHRISTMAS CONCERT 2019

Ensemble de la Belle Musique

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (1 December 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 4 December 2019

Which group devoted to new music in Singapore consistently sells out for its concerts? That would be Ensemble de la Belle Musique (EBM), a chamber outfit devoted to discovering and performing new compositions that are tonal and tuneful.

Serialism and atonality are passé, and it takes talent to write a good melody. That was the take-home message of EBM’s third Christmas concert in three years. This evening, the 19-member ensemble conducted by Leonard Tan showcased ten world premieres of works built around the festive theme.

Opening the concert was This Way, Santa! by young Hong Kong composer William So. Like many of the other works, the seasonal feeling of happy anticipation was created by smartly using vibraphone chimes with woodwind and brass chorales. With the piano also playing a prominent part, a warm and fuzzy sensation of wellness was soon established.

Similarly, Snow Song by Dexter Yeo (Australia) also had the feel of wondrous film music, blending strings and winds harmoniously. Scored for wind quintet, Snowflake Waltz by Dmitry Stepanov (Russia) playfully depicted swirls of falling snow in his homeland, known for its short winter daylight hours.

Still on the subject of precipitation, Snowfall by Lynn Blake John (USA) was a most friendly impression of a blizzard thought possible. While brass heralded inclement weather ahead, strings created a frisson of chill that did not last too long. In contrast, Through Pines & Snow by Dave Dexter (UK) exhibited darker shades, coloured with a sobriety and melancholy that did not seem out of place.

Despite its rather formal title, Concerto for Viola and String Quintet by Darren Wirth (USA) was more like a scherzo movement from a larger work. Violist Jonathan Lee mastered its tricky solo part with the aplomb and energy that reflected the music’s joy and excitement. Also highly animated was Christmas Mischief With The Nisse by Kari Cruver Medina (USA), with the bassoon leading an impish dance of a Scandinavian elf that resembles a mini Santa Claus.

What about the three Singaporean composers represented in this concert? Low Shao Suan’s Sonatina Festivo was a three-movement work for flute and piano, with Andy Koh helming the virtuoso solo part that include lively dances and a slow movement reminiscent of Harry Potter movie music. A Christmas Lullaby by Yvonne Teo was an enchanting look at Christmas night after the celebrations have ended and champagne bottles emptied. Only a choir was missing in this wistful fantasy.

The work this pair of ears most liked to hear again was by the youngest composer of the ten, Lim Han Quan. His Christmas Prayer for just strings unfolded like some adagio movement from a Mahler or Bruckner symphony. Simply put, his was a sound world that was ethereal and otherworldly, imbued with a spiritual heft to move mountains.

NATIONAL PIANO &
VIOLIN COMPETITION 2019:
ARTIST FINALS
Victoria Concert Hall
Saturday & Sunday (7 & 8 December 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 December 2019 with the title "Six musicians, six concertos in the finals".

The biennial National Piano & Violin Competition (NPVC) is Singapore’s highest platform for finding talent in the two most popular Western classical instruments played here. The competition has been run by the Singapore Symphony Group since 2017, and continues to deliver high standards in its four age categories.

The Finals of the Artist Category (young professionals and tertiary-level students) culminated in performances of six concertos with the NPVC Orchestra. This ensemble was essentially a pared-down Singapore Symphony Orchestra led by British conductor Peter Stark, Principal Guest Conductor of the Singapore National Youth Orchestra.

Saturday evening belonged to the piano, opening with Zheng Mingen (China, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory) in Chopin’s First Piano Concerto. Hers were a totally confident showing, filled with virtuosic flair in outer movements and arch-lyricism in the slow central Romanze which served as a nocturne-like interlude. There was much to admire this eloquent and passionate performance that wore its 40-minute duration well.

Tew Jing Jong (Malaysia, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts) gave a crisply articulated account of Beethoven’s diminutive Second Piano Concerto, one which fully understood classical proportions yet strained to break free of its constraints. Emblematic of music’s transition into the Romantic era, his reading exuded and balanced silky elegance and muscular grit to just the right degree.

Seth Tan Xun Yu (Singapore, YST Conservatory) was up to the big-boned challenges of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto. He projected sound and song well, but suffered a memory lapse in the slow movement, becoming a bundle of nerves after that. Despite rallying valiantly for the mercurial finale, there was a touch of hit and miss overall. Tew was deservedly awarded the 1st prize by the international jury, while Zheng and Tan placed 2nd and 3rd respectively.

The Violin Artist Final took place on Sunday afternoon, when there were two very different performances of Tchaikovsky’s warhorse Violin Concerto, reflecting the soloists’ very different personalities. Lau Joey (Singapore, YST Conservatory) took a more visceral approach, with an impetus on the Russian’s music to dance and make merry. Her tone was also rich and voluminous. Animated and free-spirited, this also entailed a real sense of risk-taking.

By comparison, Yuchen Zhang (China, YST Conservatory) who followed reflected more on the music’s cerebral qualities. His playing could be exciting at times, but it was discipline and decorum that that seemed paramount. If Lau is the more arresting soloist heard live, Zhang would be a safer bet in a recording studio.

No 1st prize was awarded in this category. Zhang won 2^nd place, while Lau shared 3rd with Tan Mun Hon, who performed Wieniawski’s Second Violin Concerto with much spirit and lyricism. That Tan is only 14, attending Tanjong Katong Secondary School and having lessons privately, is remarkable in itself. Big futures await all six young musicians, and this competition is merely a tool to identify and hopefully nurture them well.

SSO Artistic Director Hans Sorensen with members of

the international jury (from L):

Tianwa Yang, Kam Ning, Foo Mei Yi, Uta Weyand,

Alexey Lebedev & Sasha Rozhdestvensky.

All the prizewinners together.

RIVER OF LIFE
Ding Yi Music Company
Esplanade Recital Studio
Sunday (15 December 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 December 2019 with the title "Story of Singapore River awash with nice touches".

It is laudable that Ding Yi Music Company is engaging audiences not just by performing music well, but also connecting with local culture and history, putting these in context with well-curated concerts. River Of Life, a story of Singapore River set to music, was another good example of its worthy projects.

Running just over 60 minutes, this was a programmatic chamber symphony in four chapters inspired by late journalist Han Shan Yuan’s Endless Stories of Singapore River. The script was crafted by his brother Han Lao Da while his daughter Han Yong May served as script consultant. The music by Law Ai Lun, composer-in-residence of Singapore Chinese Orchestra, accompanied stills, moving pictures and calligraphy by Choo Thiam Siew.

Conducted by Quek Ling Kiong, the concert began with an informal preamble when instruments representing the music’s main motifs were introduced. The men in the 18-member ensemble were attired like coolies, and raised wings - where dizi and suona players were seated - were painted with eyes to resemble prows of river-boats, all nice touches.

The music was contemporary in feel, like scores accompanying documentary movies, but there were obvious ethnic and cultural influences too. In the first chapter, Our Forefathers, gamelan-like chimes represented the Indo-Malayan phase of Singapore’s history, and when the British arrived, the music played was Scotland The Brave. Was this some kind of mistake?

No, that was a knowing acknowledgement of Scotsman William Farquhar’s role in developing Singapore into a busy trading post as its first resident and commandant. His face was flashed on the screen soon after Raffles’. Historically-aware nuances like this made the production all the more interesting.

The second chapter A Prosperous River saw Singapore as a hive of activity, the river being its pulsing artery and life-blood. The third and longest chapter The River Symphony was overtly Chinese in feel, with Yvonne Tay’s guzheng central to the narrative. Equally vital was a roadside storyteller, played by narrator Yang Shibin by the glow of an oil-lamp, relating the story of Wu Song slaying the tiger. This was not done in Mandarin but Cantonese, and true to form, the story was left unfinished, to be continued in another session.

Alert listeners would also note that when news of the fall of Beijing to Mao Zedong’s forces was read, China was referred to as the homeland. Those were the days before Singapore’s nationhood. This movement then closed with a Glenn Gouldian fugue of voices, now in different Chinese dialects.

Singapore River has also seen its dark days, but these were glossed over by its clean-up and inevitable gentrification as a premiere tourist attraction. All through this, various motifs hitherto heard in bits and bytes coalesced to become the familiar tune Singapura in the finale, titled A River of Hope. That the song was not quoted in full was a relief. With a bathetic end averted, a standing ovation was a just result.

Everybody wants to take

selfies with politicians these days.

At the end of each year, The Straits Times invites reviewers to nominate their "Best and Worst" concerts of the year. For 2019, the list was shared by three reviewers. Here was my pick for the "Best Classical Concert", which was published in the 22 December 2019 edition of ST in print.

HOMECOMING III
Singapore Chinese Orchestra
Singapore Conference Hall
27 April 2019

The best new work of the year is Ho Chee Kong’s There And Back, a double concerto for violin, cello and Chinese orchestra, premiered by Siow Lee-Chin, Qin Li-Wei and the Singapore Chinese Orchestra under Yeh Tsung’s direction.

The 20-minute single movement work had a atmospheric and cinematic feel, breathtaking with both solo instruments battling the elements in a rugged and exhilarating dance of the steppes. With stage-lights dimmed, Siow and Qin in a final intimate duet of rapt stillness provided the work’s most poignant moments. Here is a rare and perfect marriage of Western and Chinese music, done right for once.

NEW YEAR’S EVE
COUNTDOWN CONCERT 2020
The Philharmonic Orchestra
Victoria Concert Hall
Tuesday (31 December 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 January 2020 with the title "New Year's Eve concert offers reflection and hope".

The last concert of every year now belongs to The Philharmonic Orchestra, its New Year’s Eve Countdown Concert being a Singaporean fixture and institution in its own right. Now in its ninth edition, the baton usually held by veteran conductor Lim Yau has been literally passed down to the next generation of maestros. On the podium this concert was Lin Juan and Edward Tan.

The evening opened with the familiar strains of Bernstein’s Candide Overture, led by Lin. The comedic elements of the operetta, based on Voltaire’s satirical novella, were unleashed with the fizz of uncorked champagne, and no little glitter or gaiety. Tan conducted the rest of the first half, beginning with Verdi’s Nabucco Overture.

Brass was on excellent form with its chorales and before long, the well-known melody Va, Pensiero (as in the Chorus of Hebrew Slaves) was heard on the woodwinds. The rousing end was balanced by Vaughan Williams’ First Norfolk Rhapsody. The serene and pastoral nature of this music was very apt for the yuletide season, cut from the same musical fabric as the English composer’s much better-known The Lark Ascending.

Instead of the violin, the more throaty viola was heard, lovingly voiced by Janice Tsai. There was also a busy fugue on a modal theme, but the lovely work ended with solace and calm. Skocna, a fast dance from Smetana’s opera The Bartered Bride closed the first half with a lively spring in one’s step.

One notable absentee of the concert was its usual master of ceremonies William Ledbetter. In his place was the younger and less self-restrained presence of Jasmine Blundell, whose entreaties and exhortations to the sedate audience (which had not imbibed enough champagne apparently) were over the top, to say the least.

The shorter second half, conducted by Lin, began with Dance of the Hours, the jolly ballet from Ponchielli’s otherwise grim opera La Gioconda. If its melodies ring several bells, that is because this same music accompanies prancing ostriches and hippopotami in the Disney animated classic Fantasia.

As before, it was time again to reflect on personalities in music and the arts who passed in 2019. Sibelius’ hauntingly beautiful Valse Triste was the soundtrack as a succession of images flashed on screen, among them actor Aloysius Pang, conductors Andre Previn, Mariss Jansons and Stephen Cleobury, and octogenarian pianist Elaine Wu Yili. It was poignant to remember that Wu had collapsed while attending a concert in this very same venue in April.

The sound of fireworks from Marina Bay could be heard with increasing volume through Victoria Concert Hall’s rather porous walls, but there was one last piece to go – Saint-Saëns’ Bacchanale from Samson et Dalila. Its faux-Oriental feints and Middle Eastern dervishes were masterly negotiated, and the concert closed with a cascade of balloons and poppers. The hope of a better year in 2020 arrived just minutes later.

WAGNER’S DIE WALKÜRE
Soloists with Orchestra of the Music Makers
Esplanade Concert Hall
Sunday (5 January 2020)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 January 2019

Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung has finally arrived in Singapore. The brains behind this ambitious undertaking were however neither Singapore Lyric Opera nor Singapore Symphony Orchestra, but the 12-year-old volunteer outfit, Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) and its music director Chan Tze Law. Given OMM’s track record of performing Mahler symphonies and mounting semi-staged productions of Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel and Bernstein’s Mass, the Ring Cycle seemed inevitable, a matter of when and not if.

Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) is the second opera of the four-part cycle, and arguably its most familiar instalment. Comprising three acts sung in German and running close to six hours (inclusive of two long intermissions), this might seem a test of endurance for performers and audience alike, but its minutes passed eventfully and seemingly effortlessly.

There were two long intermissions of

30 and 90 minutes between the acts,

and the audience was called to return when

OMM brass played the Valkyrie theme.

Put this down to Wagner’s genius in building up dramatic edifices and his spectacular music, but this semi-staged effort directed by Edith Podesta and conducted by Chan had many plusses to its advantage. Employing a full symphony orchestra (with the luxury of four harps) rather than a mere pit band meant that the rich and opulent orchestration was heard in its full glory.

All the singers were in costume, with their facial expressions projected on a large screen, so they had to be great actors as well. Onscreen English transliterations also helped with following the plot and all its intrigues. The set design was simple but excellent, with a long dinner table placed centrestage for Act I, and two flights of stairs behind the orchestra leading skyward to Valhalla.

The main cast of six singers has a wealth of experience in Wagner, with the tender chemistry between star-crossed and incestuous lovers Siegmund (tenor Bryan Register) and Sieglinde (soprano Lee Bisset) being immediately palpable. Just as apparent were their antagonism to Hunding (bass-baritone Daniel Sumegi), Sieglinde’s menacing and seething husband. The First Act’s love duet was literally a runaway success.

Similarly, one could easily sense the prickles between the celestials Wotan (baritone Warwick Fyfe) and Fricka (mezzo-soprano Caitlin Hulcup). How conflicted the hen-pecked Wotan became, caught between love for his earthly offspring and heavenly responsibilities, made him the most human character of this melodrama. His nearly fraying voice in Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Music at the opera’s end attested to a genuine world-weariness.

Brünnhilde (5th from right)

and her sisters.

The eponymous Valkyrie was Brünnhilde (soprano Alwyn Mellor), a stunning presence who elicited much sympathy for her self-assurance and independent mindedness. Her eight sisters, including Singaporean singers Janani Sridhar and Jade Tan Shi Yu, shone in Act 3’s famous Ride of the Valkyries, possibly the cycle’s most iconic and recognisable sequence. There were no flying horses but costumes resembling jedi knights with fascist leather jackboots did the trick.

Given Walküre’s good box office showing and the tumultuous applause that greeted it, more Wagner operas are expected. OMM has already announced Das Rheingold, the first Ring cycle opera, for August 2021. One can hardly wait.

Here is a piano recital not to be missed.

Russian pianist Yevgeny Sudbin makes a welcome return to Singapore for a one-night-only piano recital at Victoria Concert Hall on 16 January 2020. This recital is presented by Altenburg Arts, the brains behind Yuja Wang and Martha Argerich's debuts in Singapore.

Place: Victoria Concert Hall

When: 7.30 pm, Thursday 16 January 2020

Tickets available at SISTIC

https://www.sistic.com.sg/events/sudbin0120

Programme:

SCARLATTI 4 Sonatas

TCHAIKOVSKY-SUDBIN

Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture

TCHAIKOVSKYTwo Nocturnes

SCRIABINNocturne for the left hand, Op.9 No.2

RAVELGaspard de la nuit

RHAPSODIES OF SPRING 2020
Singapore Chinese Orchestra
Singapore Conference Hall
Saturday (11 January 2020)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 January 2020 with the title "Seasonal favourites and comedy act for Chinese New Year".

The Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s annual Chinese New Year concerts are as much about engendering nostalgic feelings as festive fervour. This year’s offering conducted by Yeh Tsung was a 2-hour-long variety show which appealed to certain age demographics, but had good music on top of seasonal favourites.

Li Huanzhi’s familiar Spring Festival Overture was de rigeuer, and did much to rouse spirits as a rowdy opener. More modern in feel was Cheng Dazhao’s The Rodent’s Wedding, greeting the next animal character of the Chinese zodiac. Terse chords and fanfares issued from the winds, while drumrolls heralded subterranean rumblings of scurrying strings.

The rats evoked in this symphonic poem were not of the benign country variety but rather rugged and gritty denizens that thrived in the urban jungle. Unpitched percussion displayed a rhythmic vigour that was consistent for this hard-hitting and dramatic piece.

Eve of the Wedding Day was a single-act comedy scripted by Tung Ka Wai with music by Phang Kok Jun. Employing the thespian talents of nine disc jockeys from Mediacorp Chinese language radio station Capital 98.5 FM, the amusing story centred on Chinese wedding traditions as experienced by three generations of a local family, each with its own ingrained values and prejudices.

The music included a cheery prelude, a procession by winds and percussion, and several interludes. These separated the present and flashbacks to 1967 and 1991, when times were different but traditions remained steadfast and strictly adhered to. There were many funny moments, the best being a trade of hidden barbs and jibes between to be mother-in-laws conducted with landline telephones. At risk was the unfathomable position of losing face to the other side. How very Chinese, however tongue-in-cheek.

After the interval was the concert’s longest segment, Symphonic Medley “Teresa Teng” by SCO Composer-in-Residence Law Wai Lun. Running for some 35 minutes, this comprised an overture, three movements and a finale filled with songs popularised by the late-lamented Taiwanese songstress in the 70s and 80s. Shanghai-born singer Yuan Jin, getai star and hailed as “young Teresa Teng of Singapore”, did the honours.

The overture included the melody Ye Lai Xiang (Midnight Fragrance), while each ensuing movement comprised two songs and capturing varied moods. Most familiar was the 3^rd movement entitled True Sentiments, which saw Tian Mi Mi (the Chinese version of Indonesian folksong Dayung Sampan) and Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo De Xin (The Moon Represents My Heart) relived.

While Yuan did a good job in Law’s idiomatic arrangements, the likes of Teresa Teng’s innocence, sweetness and inimitable style will never be seen again.

The concert closed with Sim Boon Yew’s Spring Festival Medley, sung by Yuan and all the Capital 95.8FM stars. The lyrics to In The Spring, Red Couplets and Da Di Hui Chun (Spring Returns To The World) were quite a mouthful so it became a merry clap-along for the audience.

STEPHEN HOUGH. EGYPTIAN PIANO CONCERTO / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

DING YI CHINESE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL / Ding Yi Music Company et al / Review

PRESIDENT'S YOUNG PERFORMERS CONCERT / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

PINNACLES OF ROMANTICISM / Take 5 Piano Quintet / Review

CD Review (The Straits Times, October 2019)

HEIRLOOMS / The Teng Ensemble / Review

CD Review (The Straits Times, October 2019)

CHOPIN - BEYOND & BEYOND / Albert Tiu Piano Recital / Review

ALEXANDER MALOFEEV Piano Recital / Review

SHLOMO MINTZ Chamber Recital / Review

LOVE, POULENC / 9th Singapore Lieder Festival / Review

DUO SENSES: HARP & PIANO / Laura Peh & Azariah Tan / Review

CHRISTMAS CONCERT / Ensemble de la Belle Musique / Review

NATIONAL PIANO & VIOLIN COMPETITION 2019 / Artist Finals / Review

RIVER OF LIFE / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

The Straits Times Best Concert of 2019

NEW YEAR'S EVE COUNTDOWN CONCERT 2020 / The Philharmonic Orchestra / Review

WAGNER'S DIE WALKÜRE / Orchestra of the Music Makers / Review

A PIANO RECITAL NOT TO BE MISSED: YEVGENY SUDBIN at Victoria Concert Hall, Thursday 16 January 2020

RHAPSODIES OF SPRING 2020 / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review