OVERALL NOISE RATING: 4 (one handphone at the start of My Voice, lots of coughing, people entering the auditorium in the middle of the performances - in other words, typical dilettante crowd.)

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 is a performance which I've been looking forward to since Dr Sharpley mentioned it to me earlier this year. Premieres by active composers form an essential part of the cultural fabric of any city, and coming right after the series of Greeting Cards (commissioned by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in the previous two seasons), it is doubly welcome to find a fresh new voice striking out on his own.

From the hollow, disembodied resonance of a solo piano echoing around the darkened auditorium in Prologue to the audience participation in the wordless melody of Reverence, Music for the Soul was a fascinating journey (to borrow a favourite metaphor of Sharpley's) that was always thought-provoking.

John Sharpley (left) himself had the lion's share of the performance throughout the evening, alternately playing solo and partnering other instruments. It was a remarkable performance on all counts, with finely controlled fingerwork, well-etched phrasing, and an aqueous transparency of pianistic tone-colour. There were rare occasions of technical insecurity - the odd slip of finger, for example, or lapses in articulation - but these were largely overshadowed by the whole.

Prologue, which started the evening's programme, was a charming miniature played in near-total mood-setting darkness, with the modern character of the music itself very much dominant, yet accessible. Sharpley tells us in his notes that this is the first of a opus of similar pieces, and no doubt the remainder of this series, upon completion, should not fail to disappoint either.

The solo Concert Etudes which separated the accompanied works in both halves of the programme were brilliantly written and performed. Utilizing different techniques of piano-playing, these works alternated dramatic passages with meditative interludes, tonally ambiguous at times, forming a collection of objets d'art which are truly kaleidoscopic in nature. There was an interesting resonance in the strings (of the piano) which lasted several heartbeats after the final notes of the Chords and Octaves Etude, and also a pity that For the Right Hand was marred by a great deal of audience coughing.

The highlight of the evening for me, however, was the song-cycle Common Thread, comprising six songs set to various Scriptural and mystical texts. There was a potpourri of musical styles (more so here than in the other works on the programme) from jazz-like rhythms to pungent atonalities to elements of lyric and bel canto melodies, amply showcasing Sharpley's musical invention.

Oda Virokx delivered her words with great poetry and feeling for the music, her husky timbre well-suited to the broad acoustics of the hall. Her narration in Water was surprisingly clear, as was her rendition of Money. The inclusion of the musical text in the programme book did spoil the surprise of the punchline, although it was difficult to see how this could have been avoided. (Printing the punchline on the following page, maybe ?)

The interval was preceded and followed by the two more orthodox works on offer: the Music for Piano, Violin and Cello before and Viola Sonata after. Technically and psychologically, they were more complex ("eclectic" might be a better word here) and perhaps therefore less accessible.

The strings, for example, were called upon to perform all manners of bowing effects, especially so in the first movement of the piano-violin-cello trio. The audience was visibily restless by the contemplative account of the second movement, but the upbeat final movement, with a repetitive motif, managed to dispel the lethargy of the preceding section and draw the work to a satisfactory conclusion. Souptel (on violin) had a tendency to dominate at times, although being unfamiliar with the music, it was hard to tell whether this was deliberate.

I could relate much better to the four-movement viola sonata. Griesling chose to play facing stage-left, an astute decision which directed the f-holes of her instrument at the audience (odd as it looked on stage with violist and pianist both facing the same direction.)

With a sympathetic ostinato accompaniement from Sharpley, Griesling played with superb intonation (especially in the sustained legato notes of the third movement ...Into One) and character. The scherzo movement Which Way ? contained some tricky interchanges, which both soloists pulled off excellently. For the sustained quietus of ...Into One, there was again restless noises from the floor - at some points, it even seemed like ambient audience noises was part of the music-making (such is, I suppose, the nature of modern music). The fourth movement Rhapsody conjured forth neoclassical shades of Ravel and Fauré - a shallower depth of avant-garde compared to the other movements.

Reverence for chamber strings and mezzo-soprano, plus audience participation, was introduced with a short lecture in which Sharpley introduced the basic hymn-like motif and had the audience singing (or humming) along. There were some pungent moments (Prokofiev and Britten were two names which came to mind) but to be fair, the work was really not as eclectic as Sharpley's notes suggested.

The strings provided their usual able contribution, but the mezzo-soprano part did suffer from some questionable phrasing: in some places where one expected a legato soaring melody, there were instead broken snatches interspersed with heavy breaths. On one hand it had the effect of intensifying the emotional effect of the music, but on the other hand, the stop-and-go delivery did get obtrusive towards the end.

I suppose it would be unfair to mention the portion where the audience joins in with the melody as merely a compositional gimmick - for Sharpley is an artist who writes and performs with his heart very much on his sleeves. It is to his credit that the usually phlegmatic audience - as local audiences always are - responded to the music with enthusiasm, albeit hesitantly at first.

More significantly, though, someone mentioned to Sharpley after the concert that these works performed ought to be recorded for posterity, a sentiment with which I fully agree. Chamber music performances, most of them by amateur groups, it has to be said, are rare enough in this country, and modern music can be unfathomably deep. To be able to write modern chamber music which strikes a chord with its audience is, indeed, a superlative testimony for any composer.

Benjamin Chee has been known, from time to time, to let off puns without warning.

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7xx: 21.8.2000 ©Benjamin Chee

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