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The second chamber concert of the SSO is hosted by the 'Sing' Quartet,
playing 'light' music by Mozart, a (Singapore premiere?) quartet
to the program of the ballet 'The White-Haired Lady', and arguably
Schubert's most popular quartet 'Death and the Maiden'. As with
the last chamber review, I was skeptical about the quality of performance
for new inexperienced quartet groups, and unfortunately this performance
untimately prove my expectations correct; though the Mozart was
presented nicely and the 'The White-Haired Lady' quartet an interesting
experience.
The inclusion of Mozart's Divertimento in E-flat major in the program
is puzzling, being scored for trio instead of the quartet. Nonetheless,
as a light opening piece the music is excellent, the Divertimento
being an immensely popular genre to show off Mozart's charms. The
Sing trio showed promise in performance rapport, cooperation between
parts sounding effortless and unobtrusive. Coming up with spontaneity
to suit the spirit of the piece, one can really imagine the presence
of personal joy at playing the delightful music. In the Menuetto,
the violist Guan Qi had the bad luck to break a string, and after
a quick change of it the quartet repeated the movement, with even
more enthusiasm from the rest but initial reservation from the violist
which was shrugged off before the movement ended. Personally, Mozart
seldom catch my attention but here I am actually enjoying it, especially
the lively movements towards the end. The trio is evenly balanced
in playing their parts, all three players bearing a relaxed confidence
with the piece which allows the impression of spontaneity to come
across strongly.
 The
ensemble of Chinese musicians played next a piece that they are
rightly most comfortable with, a quartet with material based on
an opera of "The White-Haired Lady". The story, gathered
from the notes, relates the life of a courageous girl "with
fighting spirits" who ran away from "a cruel father"
and the "landlords' mindless oppression and exploitation"
and who eventually was "liberated" - certainly much classic
material for a melodrama. Ignoring the programme, it is still easy
to guess from the dramatic content of the music that it is a narrative
of sorts, in the exclamatory and rather exaggerated manner.
RIGHT: Zhu Jian-Er (left), with
Bright Sheng
The shrieking and slightly hair-raising entry to the piece took
me aback with a startling resemblance to Janecek's quartet 'Kreutzer
Sonata' opening. In a more extended fashion, the burst of the forte chorus
then give in to the narrative voice presenting the main melody,
quartet leader Chen Da Wei employing well judged and tastefully
executed slides for expressions. Other instruments provide the necessary
accompaniment to the first violin, coordinated pizzacato passages
for a rustic melody, more dramatic moments with the tremolo effect.
The climax was marked by late shostakovian-like drama with all four
players combined to play out the same part together, giving ample
force to the statement. A recapitulation of the initial theme on
the violin is offers the sweetest resolution to the work before
concluding, bearing rustic charm and conveying a feeling of movement
and gaiety - all in all a very tuneful work well played by the quartet.
Had the concert ended at this point, the Sing Quartet would be
hard to fault. It was the performance of
Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' that exposes their flaws and inexperience
in playing together. The lack of empathy as a collective ensemble
makes for uninteresting music at best, despite individual talents.
Hearing amatuerish quartets before, this is truly obvious - the
failing of seeing the work as a plan that needs to be moulded at
each point together by all four musicians. Each player plays their
own part and do what they feel is best, resulting in a mess of sounds
in different registers that have no chance in ever coming together
to sound like music.
Of course, professional musicians are much better than that. Technical
competence is assured here, the part on a concerted interpretive
outlook less definite though. The unimpressive opening of the quartet
is not as important as the ineffective way in which the dramatic
story of the quartet builds up and unfolds itself, the uncohesive
effort not helping the music to develop. There was also a moment
of waiting for hasty page turning during the important pause in
the first movement which destroys the tension of the atmosphere.
The second movement was to me the worst section of the evening,
revealing the poor quality of ensemble quartet playing and a lack
of imagination in performance. The soft opening left me cringing
when the instrumental voices were all horribly exposed and each
drifting in and out of the overall aural impression, in a second
throwing the higher voices to the forefront, in the next instant
lower voices surfacing instead. Badly affected by the poor start,
the following variations were similarly difficult to digest; the
first and second variation sounded very unnatural with the very
conscious punctuations of the first violin, while the other instruments
seemed unsure of their roles. Up to the climax the other variations
had a lacklustre quality and the quartet was too eager to pounce
on the resoluting major variation, making it lose its power as the
focus of the movement. The last 2 movements of the quartet is much
less demanding in terms of emotional content, and the Sing quartet
did managed to make much more out of them than the first half of
the work.
Again, the conflict between quantity and quality with regards to
the representation of chamber music is brought forward after this
concert. There is certainly a crowd enjoying, or willing to try
a taste of chamber music, but to satisfy the demand with the formation
of instant quartets seems to shortchange the audience. Looking for
purpose in the programme of the night, the Mozart is traditionally
the starter, the inclusion of the 'White-Haired Lady' quartet an
educational experience, and the heavy-weight Schubert piece being
the main draw for the crowd. It was a good mix of quartet music
in different modes of expressions, and would have been a delicious
treat of chamber music if only the presentation had been better.
ONG
YONG HUI trusts his page-turning abilities when tackling
unnecessary readings.
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