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A Piano, A Karg-Elert and a Harmonium |
It’s not often that I go to an organ recital in which
I come across music I have never heard before and which I would move heaven and
earth to hear again. Such a thing has
never, ever happened to me in Singapore before.
Here, the organ community lives and breathes North German Baroque and
French Symphonic Romantics to the exclusion of all else – and often in blissful
ignorance of the inappropriateness of such repertory to the organs at their
disposal.
I am a huge supporter of the Victoria Concert Hall
Organ Series simply because it is the only organ series in Singapore. But my loyalty has often been sorely tested
by some pretty inidfferent performances of some pretty uninspiring repertory. And I have to say that the VCH Klais is a
horrible instrument and one which is virtually impossible to play without a cohort
of assistants to pull in and push out stops, often with hefty accompanying clunks. That these assistants so often spend most of
the recital dancing around the organ console, squeezed frighteningly close to a
precipitous drop down to stage, is yet another reason I find recitals there so
off-putting; I wish that, just once in a while, we could have someone choosing
a programme which they can play unaided and yet which suits the limitations of
the Klais; but such a day has yet to come.
Nevertheless the monthly recitals are something I make
a point of attending, and will often persuade the Straits Times to run a
review; the idea being that it draws attention to an aspect of Singapore’s
musical life which often gets overlooked by the musical snobs who believe that
the only concerts worth going to feature famous pianists playing Liszt and
Chopin or superannuated conductors directing Mahler and Rachmaninov. I am not alone; the organ series consistently
attracts a very sizeable audience, and while some might cynically suggest that
the audience is there because the concerts are free or because they preface a public
tour of the concert hall, I offer full credit to Margaret Chen, who masterminds
the programme along with VCH’s own Michelle Yeo. They have identified a demand for relaxed,
lunchtime concerts and filled it by promoting organ music to the point where
there is a clear appetite for it; whether the music is good or bad or the playing
brilliant or indifferent.
This week’s
concert was, however, something out of the ordinary and, in that it introduced
two new works to me the existence of which I had no idea before the concert (I
have since found the music and ordered the CDs) it was a very special event
indeed. Luckily I was able to review
this one for the Straits Times, and my pre-publication review follows;
Concerts featuring an organ and piano duo are
extremely rare. The sheer physical and
sonic size of most concert hall organs means that, in a straight fight, the
organ invariably delivers a knock-out blow in the first round.
An unavoidable consequence of pairing off these two
instruments is a slight conflict in tuning, and with the organ perceptibly
sliding out of tune as the concert progressed, by the time we reached the
encore – Elgar’s Salut d’Amour – the relationship had soured somewhat.
Tuning issues were not an issue in the actual
programme, however, not because they did not exist but because the music itself
was so captivating. On top of that,
organist Koh Jia Hwei and pianist Lim Yan played it all with such compelling
artistry, that only the most astute ears might have picked up small
discrepancies in pitch.
A complete novelty was Sigfrid Karg-Elert’s
Silhouetten. This was specifically
written for harmonium and piano, so hardly ever gets a public airing.
Being a husband-and-wife team, Koh and Lim have an innate understanding of what each is doing, and the result was a wonderfully fluid performance. Ever sensitive to the issues of balance, Lim took on an almost orchestral persona as he weaved around Koh’s beautifully poised organ playing.
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Franck's Pianistic Arpeggios |
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Franck's original |
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