Open Rehearsal & Concert Friday & Saturday 12-13 March 1999 Victoria Concert Hall |
GALA CONCERT
Yo-Yo Ma in Concert |
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Claude DEBUSSY Ibria from Images, op.21 Bright SHENG (b.1955) Two Poems for Violoncello and Orchestra Edward ELGAR Cello Concerto in E minor, Op.85
Yo-Yo MA cello |
OVERALL NOISE RATING:
1 (The usual coughs and beeps, but generally, a very attentive audience.)
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 in part by the Singapore Symphonia Co. Ltd.
by Derek Lim
Playing in a Chinese orchestra for ten years has lead me to strange avenues
of Chinese music, and one of them is the opera. Bright Sheng's Two Poems for Cello and Orchestra make abundant use of the operatic style, but mostly in the second movement. First of all is the most clever use of the "cell"
motive (once told what it meant, I understood immediately - it's a operatic
quote "Ya Weir" or "duck's tail" - go figure [It's the way it moves when a duck waddles, isn't it? - Leon]) which I at first thought
rather irritating. Thinking again, it's rather like the way Shostakovich
repeats a motif ad nauseum. Whatever it was, it now seems remarkably
effective.
Although the orchestra had many patches of ensemble problems - not surprising in such a premiere. However the overall presentation of the Two Poems was pretty effective. In the first movement, the orchestra and soloist provided much detail in terms of orchestral colour; in the second the infectious character of the music plus
the cellistic fireworks all added up to quite a storm, but though dazzling, failed to excite my imagination as much as the first.
During the rehearsal the overall mould of the first and second movements seemed to be Jacqueline du Pr's recording with Barbirolli, but the Friday performance itself revealed touches which were very un-Jackie-esque, andvery Yo-Yo Ma. For example the opening bars alone with those majestic chords were taken in a manner which I can only compare with a "period" baroque style of handling chords - two-by-two. His handling of the opening "recitativ" was more pronounced and exagerrated than during the rehearsal, a feature which imbued the whole of the actual performance. Yo-Yo Ma uses his bow as a fencer uses his sword, and this was a characteristic which informed his entire performance - an attitude which was more of defiance rather than resignation, even though I am still reluctant to treat the concerto as one of unbridled optimism. Mr Ma's individual touches are impressive - for example his interesting detach bowing in places, as well as his liberal application of rubato without losing sight of the line of the piece. He plays the third movement without much exaggeration, though, a rather consistent feature over the three performances.
To be very critical, I found he had a more (again) defiant view of the second movement rather than the one of humour which I had always associated it with, always looking aristocratically away from the finger-board while doing his spiccato (here not as well-done as du Pr, but who has done it so well so far?). His fourth movement was the most consistently interpreted of all the movements, and it had a thrust, and its fair share of Ma-isms - interesting detach playing here again in places, with a generally unflailing flying spiccato, faltering only a little in the last performance.
Yehudi Menuhin, the last musician with a link to Elgar himself passed away on Friday. Having known this the night before I can only imagine the thoughts running through the Yo-Yo Ma's mind. The light atmosphere of jubilation which received his Elgar the first night was replaced with one of utter solemnity as the great cellist spoke to the audience, "Ladies and gentlemen, yesterday one of the great musicians of our time, Yehudi Menuhin, passed away. I would like to play as an encore, the Sarabande from the Sixth Suite."
He followed this with a gut-wrenching performance of the piece, played lento. I thought I would pass out. When he had finished playing the last note, the audience erupted into a spontaneous avalanche of applause, with many shouting "Bravo!". And I thought to myself, "I shall remember this night."
Bright Sheng mentioned the imitation of the jinghu, or Beijing opera fiddle, in the second
movement by both the solo cello and the orchestra is of significant interest. The jinghu is a
high-pitched instrument with a very sharp-edged tone, which generally
doubles up the solo voice line, but elaborates on it.
The cello can, with some effort, be used to imitate the jinghu.(Generally portamento twice as usual, slide in a more exaggerated manner, then play with the very edge of the bow, with very quick bow strokes). Yo-Yo Ma didn't seem to make full use of the cello's ability to emulate the jinghu - ideally, this would have required much greater, very exaggerated use of portamento to sound authentic. (The jinghu has a soundbox generally just 4 inches in diameter and maybe 7 inches in length, and thus the [ugly] constricted sound is easy to produce! The beautiful sound of the cello is quite another matter).
Back to the first movement. Here, aside from the use of pentatonic
scales common in Chinese music, and of course the Chinese percussion
instruments, the two harps were also made to sound like the
guzheng, the popular 21-string zither (right). The harpists were probably asked to play near the bottom of their strings to achieve the harder tone of the guzheng. These came across very well.
The poem from which the music got its inspiration is attributed to the 8th century poet, Chang Ji. Bright Sheng must have imagined the poem's protagonist (the sleepless guy) to be a poet too, as he used the cello to sound like the guqin, a deep scholarly seven-stringed zither. For this Yo-Yo Ma had to pizzicato in the higher positions of the lower strings, and then slide from note to note, typical guqin gestures. Also used were harmonics characteristic of the Chinese instrument. The guqin, is by the way, used to play more melancholy, solemn music as befits its timbre. In its golden age, it was played nearly exclusively by scholars.
Friday morning's rehearsal proved wonderful, fully rewarding my last-minute decision not to go to work for the day. Shui Lan accompanied Yo-Yo Ma very confidently, and sympathetically, in very English-sounding textures. The rehearsal took place like two long breaths - the first two movements were poised, yet dramatic, where the SSO and Yo-Yo Ma played like angels and demons, alternately soothing, then heating up, with magical pianissimi building up to blazing fortissimi. Yo-Yo Ma's version of the Elgar, while exhibiting the intensity of the performances of the greatest luminaries, was entirely his own. My fellow-reviewer Leon said that he thought it was a reading which does not overindulge in Romanticism (see above); let me qualify that. This was Romantic, through and through, in the way that is not cloying, however. One thing that struck me most of all was that this was living music-making, and very vital. In the third movement I was moved to hot tears with Yo-Yo Ma's sensitive phrasing. The last movement was dramatic, with his overt interaction with the orchestra working its magic.
Speaking of the performances altogether, and in retrospect, I found the rehearsal the most natural and unaffected. The Friday performance suffered from a consistent exaggeration in terms of tempi and dynamics which didn't seem so fantastic having seen perfection the same morning. The Saturday performance was interpretationally up to the standard of the rehearsal, but due to his heavy schedule and tiredness, suffered from spots of not-as-secure intonation.
Derek Lim removes imperviousness from the qualities of most concert halls...
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