Singapore Arts Festival 1999
Wednesday
9th June, 1999
Victoria Concert HallThe Smith Quartet (Britain)
Wayne SIEGEL Tracking
Arvo PÄRT Summa
Pavel SZYMANSKI Five Pieces for String Quartet
Simon EMMERSON Fields of Attraction
Michael NYMAN Quartet No.4 (movements 1, 3, 5, 11 and 12)Ian Humphries violin I · Charles Mutter violin II
Nic Pendlebury viola · Deidre Coopercello
David Sheppard sound engineerOVERALL NOISE RATING: 2 (handphones going off.)
The Noise Rating Index is a partially-objective measurement of pager and handphone blasts, 9pm and 10pm watch beeps, coughing-during-the-pianissimo-bits, intra-audience conversation and other mind-bogglingly inept noises emitted in the concert hall during actual performance of music. It is measured on a scale of 0 to 5, in increasing annoyance.
This review has been kindly sponsored by the National Arts Council, Singapore
by Derek Lim
Hmm, "Modern Music" in big capital M's. On my way home from this concert I found myself thinking, "When was the last time I attended a concert where all the pieces were by composers who were still alive?" This concert by the Smith Quartet, the well-known British 'modern music' quartet, and some say the answer to the Kronos Quartet was certainly a huge change from the usual classical music concerts that we review on our pages, and I didn't expect to enjoy it, but I did.
Left: The Smith Quartet in Singapore. Picture from Life! The Straits Times. Used with absolutely no permission.
Let me begin by saying that I was surprised that so many people had turned up. Judging from the audience response to some concerts of early 20th century music, Singapore audiences don't really want modern music. Or do they? A quick look on concert night showed that the audience was of a very different composition - the usual Caucasian middle-aged ladies and gentlemen, but also many young people (i.e. my age c.20) willing to part with their money and 2 hours of their time to listen to this quartet. I say that someone in the marketing department must be doing something right.
Alright, enough of my spiel and on to the programme. I can say with all honesty that I know nothing about the composers featured in tonight's program, and have perhaps only heard about them before, so tonight's performance was a real eye-opener. First was Wayne Siegel's (b. 1953) Tracking. Like so much modern music, this relied on using a "seed" and then repeating it. In this quartet the members put on headphones connected to the sound output from a computer. According to the programme notes (which sadly, most of the audience did not have - I was lucky enough to receive one), the computer controls both sound treatment of the 'live' musicians and a number of synthesized modules that play digitally altered string sounds as well as completely synthetic material.
Proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, and this piece, though extremely repetitive (it is based, as I hear, on three main ideas) never threatened to bore one with its monotony. In fact listening to this music is not unlike peering into a kaleidoscope, except that with the myriad colour and overwhelming sense of motion it brings it felt more like falling into one. The music keeps changing, subtly, and for more than once, when tired of having to look at the performers play the same notes over and over again, I closed my eyes, I had the feeling of being transported to somewhere far away. Exciting, marvelous stuff.
The next piece, Summa, by the more famous Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (right) did not catch my attention as did the immediacy of Tracking. Summa is apparently "a coded title for Credo" and the work is supposed to be on the text of the Credo, but in the incessantly repetitive, monotonous theme, who could tell? More investigation into his music is due for me, I think.
Szymanski's Five Pieces for String Quartet were much easier for me to appreciate. Composed in memoriam Jerzy Stajuda, who died in 1992, it is a strikingly original piece, combining avant-garde techniques with Impressionist techniques. In these, the Smith Quartet delivered a moving performance, especially in the mysterious and enchanting third piece with its ethereal employment of harmonics. They displayed a striking ability to send sparks flying off each other in other pieces.
After the interval came Simon Emmerson's Fields of Attraction, a piece which relies a lot on the sound engineer to produce the echo effect - not that original an effect, as those familiar with the Nachklangstudiern will know. Unfortunately I suspect that this worked to much better effect for the audience in the stalls, where the sound engineer was. The piece itself was not so effective for me as it didn't have that spark of invention that Tracking or the Five Pieces had, for instance. It just seemed to drag in places. In any case I hesitate to make any real judgement for the reasons I stated above.
The final piece the Smith Quartet played was not complete. They were only the first, third, fifth, eleventh and twelfth movements of Michael Nyman's Fourth String Quartet. The story of this piece is rather interesting. It was originally a virtuoso solo violin piece, Yamamoto Perpetuo, written for Yamamoto's summer fashion show in New York. Nyman took the piece and wrote the second violin, viola and cello parts around it while retaining the piece as the first violin part.
Michael Nyman's readily accessible idiom made for pretty easy listening. The first violin part is indeed impressive-looking, but amidst the totally different other quartet parts, not that much of the first violin part can be heard, which must prove a little unrewarding for the performer. The piece's melodies are supposed to be derived from Scottish tunes, and the free exuberant performance by the Quartet of this seemingly motoric music worked to beautiful effect, though to these ears, the music is evocative of busy city skylines rather than Scottish landscape. Enjoyable, though.
The audience received the Smith Quartet with enthusiastic applause and the Quartet obliged with "a bit of Gershwin", deliciously played and not lacking humour. Curiously this suddenly tonal music was a let-down after the whole evening of "modern" music. I would have liked to hear them play Bach for instance, given their beautifully ethereal, vibrato-less playing in the Szymanski. But anyway this proved to be a educational and intensely rewarding, experience.
Derek Lim went to get Ms Mutter's autograph after the concert on both nights, and wishes the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Shui Lan more nights of madness!
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498: 13.6.1999. ©Derek Lim
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