An Evening of Sacred Music

It was a most memorable and spiritual evening with the Chor des Bayerischen Runkfunks (Bavarian Radio Chorus) under the direction of Peter Dijkstra. It was the first day of their Asian Premiere in Singapore this evening. Their programme this evening consisted of a range of German and Austrian sacred choral works from the renaissance to the romantic era, a huge contrast to their next performance which will consist of secular works held tomorrow afternoon.

This performance by the Chor des Bayerischen Runkfunks was in fact the first performance which caught my attention in this year's Singapore Arts Festival when the programme for the festival was unveiled. I went down to the immediately to grab the best seat available during early March, a good 3 months before the concert day. I had heard good reviews of the Chor des Bayerischen Runkfunks and it was a pleasant surprise when I got to know that they were coming down to town. And this evening, they put up one of the most charming concerts amongst all the vocal concerts I've ever been to in my life.

Such a sublime performance which I've experienced this wonderful evening. Please pardon me for my words on this performance for they only serve to undermine the true spiritual, musical and emotional value of their live performance in a concert hall, but I can't help but pen my them down!

The first half of their this evening consisted of choral works in the renaissance and baroque era. Two renaissance compositions, by Heinrich Schütz and Orlando di Lasso, were included alongside Bach. Tonight was the first time I was presented with a genre of works by Bach that I wasn't very familiar with - his motets (BWV 226 and 228). The performance of the former, Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf (BWV 226) touched me in a deepest manner. On the composition, despite it being a motet, Bach apparently couldn't help infusing this traditional form with the chorale style which he was so proficient in. Probably one of the most melodious motets which I've listened to. This motet is special in the fact that it was scored with an orchestral accompaniment. It was sung unaccompanied this evening, without the orchestral parts. I couldn't compare, since I've never heard of any renditions other than the one this evening. Probably due to the lack of orchestral colours, the purity and beauty of the unaccompanied human voices managed to shine forth and fill the concert hall this evening. Peter Dijkstra, amazingly young and talented for a conductor of this renowned choir, managed to draw a myriad of most captivating sounds from the singers. The melismatic passages in the first movement were executed with a sparkling quality by the musicians. One could really sense the shimmering brilliance of the melisma above the rest of the voices in the concert hall.

The second half featured sacred works by Mozart, Josef Gabriel Rheinberger, Anton Bruckner and Mendelssohn. Ave verum corpus (KV 618) by Mozart was a most captivating start to a second half. It is a very short work by Mozart towards the end of his life. This evening, the Chor des Bayerischen Runkfunks presented an unpretentious yet sensitive rendition of this work. The nuances were realised with such artistry but never in anyway exaggerated. How could I help being charmed by such solemn yet elegant beauty?

Two movements from a work by Josef Gabriel Rheinberger were sung this evening. I have to admit my ignorance at the existence of such a prolific German composer despite being familiar with his contemporaries, Richard Wagner and Johannes Brahms. Drei geistlichen Gesängen (Op 69) of Rheinberger was presented tonight. I was immensely moved by their interpretation of the work. The purity of the voices infused a most special quality to the notes. Even during the extended pianissimo sections of the work, the purity of the each single vocal section was amazingly clear and possessed a fluid-like quality, like the unbroken flow of a peaceful river. I was drawn deep into that harmony at a certain point in that section, whereby I knew at that moment whereby the sounds doesn't have a beginning nor an end. Time simply didn't exist at that particular instant at all... The silky smooth expansion of the sound from a most tender pianissimo to a deep and powerful fortissimo within a single phrase of the work is still fresh in my mind.

At the end, the audiences tonight were presented with two oriental Chinese works as encores. They weren't familiar to me, but I could somehow make out words like water and mountains. At least I thought I heard those words and believed that they brought out that images well. I don't think it was them who didn't pronounced the Chinese words well, but more possibly because I myself am not proficient in that language. What a shame, when the language is supposed to be my mother tongue. After the end, the lady beside me commented that they sang the oriental pieces better than the Chinese. Oh well...

Despite the choir exhausting their encore pieces, the applause lasted even after the last musician has left the stage. All in all, it was a most rejuvenating evening of sacred music, an unaccompanied vocal performance of the highest artistic order. I certainly don't regret getting the most expensive seats for this performance...

*I apologise for the pathetic attempt to put my afterthoughts on such a sublime performance into words. The states that I were in during and after the live performance were indescribable. (probably the simplest but best way to put it)*

True Beauty

Recordings of Bach's Ich Habe Genug (BWV 82), found their way into my player more often than other works lately. It contains one of the most beautiful arias ever written in history - Schlummert ein. Such exquisite charm. Listening to it never fails to melt me from inside. The recording by Hans Hotter and Peter Kooy are my personal favourites. Simplicity. That's what it needs. Somehow, he just allowed the music to sing by itself without imposing his own vocal and musical authority on the melodic line.

Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen,
Fallet sanft und selig zu!

The entire aria is summed up in the descending line "Fallet sanft und selig zu". It's just the most natural to allow that line to fade gradually into silence. A small flame flickering and dying out. Just fading into oblivion...

Welt, ich bleibe nicht mehr hier,
Hab ich doch kein Teil an dir,
Das der Seele könnte taugen.

Bach wrote these lines in such a way such that by the time it reaches the end of the respective phrases, one would just be able to sing "taugen" with just a whisper. I've been wondering why some singers would attempt to conserve their breath for the last few words, resulting instead, in the suffocation of the melodic line. In any case, it's just amazing how well this aria was written and phrased. Such sublime beauty. Whenever I listen to this work, it does give me a sense that Bach really have intended the singers to yield themselves to the melodic line and succumb to her beauty.

Beauty. That's what it's about. The beautification of death...

Thoughts on Wagner

Just caught a glimpse of the genius of Wagner last week. Someone once compared the intelligence of Daniel Barenboim, when he expounded on Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, with that of current political leaders and found him to be much more superior than them. What do we say of Wagner then, who has written the opera, libretto and music all by himself? How can anyone come close to him in terms of depth and musical ideas in their operas? It's unfortunate that some people don't have the aptitude to see past the superficial themes which Wagner had used in his operas. With just a bit more, they could delve right into this rich and profound world of this master. How can one sit through his operas and remain the same person as he was before?

Musical ideas aside first for now, let's just touch on his libretto for Der Ring des Nibelungen. Charged with revolutionary political ideas, profound philosophical ideas, this epic had managed to get past the censors during Wagner's time. Such ideas subtly permeates the entire Ring cycle and other operas which were done after the influence of Schopenhauer. Nope, trying to give a summary of his ideas would result in me writing a book, of which books with such content are already flooding the market. I'll just talk about my personal brush with Wagner from the performance of just the first act of Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) by SSO last Saturday.

One can see the gradual transformation of this great master in his philosophical and musical ideas from Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold) to the Die Walküre (The Valkyrie). Music, once subservient to the rhetoric, now moves ahead of the words. As the story unfolds, the psychology and inner world of each character at every point of time, is reflected in the music, even and especially, at those moments when the characters are putting on a facade. The hidden, internal psychology of the characters are brought into the foreground only by the music, when the libretto doesn't reveal anything regarding it.

I guess the main reason why Wagner had insisted to write his own libretto was because of his need to hide those powerful yet subtle political undertones beneath the apparent light-hearted mythological storyline. Which other predecessor or contemporary had written their own libretto for their own opera? Richard Strauss and Michael Tippett had written their own libretto, the former having just done one and the latter for all his operas. Fairly successful, but how could their operas stand at the same level as those by Wagner? No one comes close to his capability to write their own libretto for their own operas.

One of the many parts which caught my attention was to the scene when Siegmund and Sieglinde expressed their love for each other. They sang of the arrival of spring (as in the libretto), but the music was distinctively done in the operatic style of Mozart. A superficial caricature and showcase of Wagner's skill in reproducing the operatic compositional style of another? It seems much deeper than that. What happened in the next act? As usual, Wagner killed Siegmund and erased him for the rest of the Ring cycle. That naivety and innocence of the Mozartian style was ridiculed and mocked! At the same time, it, too, exposes the philosophies of Wagner regarding love, the social classes (humans being controlled by gods as an allusion to the social classes during Wagner's society) etc. Just the tip of the iceberg of Wagner's ingenuity and intelligence.

Gesamtkunstwerk. It pretty sums it up everything. It suggests the totality of the artistic merging of subject and object. Wagner not only pulled it off, but had done so in a sublimal way. Despite it being an average, or even below average performance to some, of just the first act of Die Walküre, Wagner's genius is still evident in that evening of Wagnerian music.

As for the evening of Wagner music by SSO, though it consisted an ambitious and large-scale work, it wasn't well programmed. It was served with Siegfried Idyll as an unsuitable appetiser. The Siegfried Idyll is an introduction of the themes from the third act of Siegfried in a chamber music setting. Nothing in relation to the music which comes after the interval. The mere similarity in the transparent orchestration, distinctive of Wagner and shows Wagner's preference to get the musical events clearly to the audience instead of overwhelming them with a colourful blend of tonal and orchestral colours, was what one could draw from the programme. Other than this mere similarity, whereby any other work by Wagner would suffice, both weren't suited for a programme. If I were to choose a complementary piece to introduce just the first act, I would believe that an orchestral or even chamber arrangement of Ride of the Valkyries from the third act of the same opera would be appropriate. At least it would gel with the main programme as it's taken from the same opera, though much wilder after Wagner's influence by Schopenhauer.

As for how Siegfried Idyll had gone, it wasn't their musicans at their best. It's just strange when, after the concert, you get to know the musicians were unhappy and attributing the fault to a particular player. But well, I'm digressing. That'll be another story.

I guess for the main programme, they pulled it off well, given the fact that the work really wasn't easy. The conductor gave me an impression of being more jittery and rigid as compared to his usual flowery style (as a fellow musician friend of mine put it). On the whole, I was pleased with how the entire programme had gone.

This work was premiered in the mid 1800s. More than a century old work. Upon reading reviews and comments of this work, I lament the listening abilities of today's audiences. Over all these time, our senses seemed to have dulled instead of being able to comprehend the music of this great master. There's still this deplorable passivity in the modern day audience, leading to an unwillingness to understand the music, as well as art, and life itself.

I shall end this off with a statement by Theordor Adorno, despite it being made a couple of decades ago, still applies today.

Ambivalence is a relation toward something one has not mastered; one behaves ambivalently toward a thing with which one has not come to terms. In response to this, the first task at hand would be, quite simply, to experience the Wagnerian work fully -- something that to this day, despite all the external successes, has not been accomplished.

Took a walk in the woods just outside my place after night had fallen. The chilling wind blew, but sounded like a laugh of derision. The trees, with their crooked branches, forming a haunting silhouette with the starless sky as their backdrop, seemed to be whispering with one another, pointing their hands in mockery...

The Schubertian cry... I heard it in my head. The angst and the pain. I felt it. Ich habe genug! A heartwrenching scream!

A period of momentary silence. The wind stopped blowing and the leaves stopped moving. I had managed to come out of the woods after wandering in it mindlessly. How much time had passed? I didn't know. I guessed nothing mattered anymore.

How fitting. Just like the Schubertian introspective moments...

How apt. Floating around, floating around. Despite coming to the perfect cadence in bars 190 and 191, there isn't a sense of rest. Until the descending D minor arpeggio to the A minor chord. Seems to suggest a resignation to the harsh realities of life.

The imitation in the cello part seems to symbolise the slight aftershocks. And with a last breath, it rises up 3 octaves within two bars, sweeping everything away. Such poetry in the music. Reminds me of a poem by Emily Brontë...

It is too late to call thee now
I will not nurse that dream again
For every joy that lit my brow
Would bring its after-storm of pain

Besides the mist is half withdrawn,
The baren mountain-side lies bare
And sunshine and awaking morn
Paint no more golden visions there.

Yet ever in my grateful breast
Thy darling shade shall cherished be
For God alone doth known how blest
My early years have been in thee!

Just as the poem ending with a nostalgic exclamation of the beautiful past, the music is puntuated with the two last two chords with a nostalgic yet exaltant fortissimo.

A Month Vacation

My fellow readers, I'll be going to Europe for a vacation for the next month. Finally, a chance to escape from this cage...

Shall talk more about it when I come back... =)

A Spiritual Journey With Bach

Ich habe genug,
Ich habe den Heiland, das Hoffen der Frommen,
Auf meine begierigen Arme genommen;
Ich habe genug!

Ich hab ihn erblickt,
Mein Glaube hat Jesum ans Herze gedrückt;
Nun wünsch ich, noch heute mit Freuden
Von hinnen zu scheiden.

I have enough,
I have taken the Savior, the hope of the righteous,
Into my eager arms;
I have enough!

I have beheld Him,
My faith has pressed Jesus to my heart;
now I wish, even today with joy
To depart from here.

The above text is from the first aria from Bach's Cantata BWV 82 - Ich Habe Genug (I Have Enough). I didn't know what made me pick up a recording of this from my shelves last night and play it on my CD player. But I do know that just a mere first few bars into this piece, I felt an overwhelming sense of pathos to this most spiritual work. The first few bars alone gave an unmistakable idea that I was at a start of an intense spiritual journey. In certain sections of this aria, the music reaches a point of anguish and restraint, but not to the extent of losing that innately deep spiritual peace when having our hearts facing towards our Saviour.

How much I love the sound of the oboe d'amore played by Peggy Pearson and how captivating the unique tones of the voice, oboe d'amore, strings and the organ gives the entire work a most sombre quality. The static bass line used by Bach seems to restrain movement of the aria, seemingly to imply that death is eminent. Such a powerful and masterly manner Bach had used this device! I could go on and on about what I felt from just the first aria, but I guess I'll spare everyone of my excessive outpouring of emotions here.

I have to admit that so long after Serene had given this to me as a gift, I have been unable to see anything deep about this work until last night and thus chucked it aside for quite some time until
I felt an invisible urge to play the CD last night. A million thanks to Serene for this gift of a CD by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. I'm now one of the victims of her amazing artistry. Such a gift of being able to make her music come to life. A quote by Peter Sellars, who did the staging of the two cantatas in the CD featuring BWV 82 and BWV 199.

Her voice is filling the room and you don’t know where it’s coming from… She is going right to the heart of a suffering person, not to increase the suffering, but to heal it, to release it, to offer some kind of balm… which is what her voice ends up doing. It can be piercing and shocking in its intensity, and then this incredible balm of compassion and tenderness, of generosity that is poured out of her voice like a kind of liquid that is there to heal.

Peter Sellars

A little background of this work for some who might be interested, taken from the programme booklet.

The passage of this piece is taken from Luke 2:22-32 and it focuses on Simeon, to whom it has been revealed by the Holy Ghost that "that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ." The work is then the contents of Simeon's beatific prayer:-

Luk 2:29 Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:
Luk 2:30 For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Luk 2:31 Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
Luk 2:32 A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

Such sincere words fixed to such sublime music. Such beauty.

After Thoughts On A Rehearsal

After having the ensemble rehearsal, whereby we focussed on Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, in the afternoon today, I felt that there was much more about the music which could be milked from the work and I hadn't done the work justice earlier.

In comparison with several of his other piano sonatas, I do find this work pretty straightforward, in terms of its harmonic language and structure. Simplistic yet charmingly elegant nonetheless. It does give me a hint that Mozart had composed this work as a break while working on a bigger work.

Scanning through the musical notes in the entire work, it probably wouldn't be difficult to analyse through this entire work. But when it comes to playing it, I do find that it's quite musically taxing on guitarists, who are mostly playing solo music, to come together to work on a chamber work after not having much experience playing together. It's quite an achievement getting the rough shape of the first movement out, but there's still lots of work on the balance, whereby every musician in the ensemble has to be musically developed to know when to hold back to let the other voices sing and when their own voice ought to stand up and fly. I really hope that the layers would be more transparent and while playing coherently with the intention of bringing out the charming beauty of this work, each individual section of the ensemble will know when to take centre stage and allow their parts to fly with the support of other sections.

Being one of the most famous pieces of classical work around, I do feel quite a big pressure to shape up this work. It would be the most glaring to the audience when anyone of us makes a small mistake. Come to think of it, if this piece is played badly by us, the audience would probably think that guitar ensembles in general are overly ambitious to take on such a transcription. On the other hand, when a string ensemble messes this up, the audience would normally just dismiss the particular string ensemble involved as being incompetent. Truly hope that we can allow this charming work to take flight.

As regarding the process of interpretation in our ensemble, I do hope that everyone can see the entire beauty of the work. I'm sure disagreements in the interpretation of a particular work or passage would arise, but I hope to be able to put them up for discussion so that they will be ironed out with everyone being satisfied at the end of the day. Essentially, I hope that we can bring our audiences into an altered state when listening to our ensemble rendition of this charming serenade.

When it comes to chamber music, the group that comes into my mind is actually the Collegium Vocale Gent. I'll never forget the most intense experience I felt that night in the Esplanade Concert Hall when the small group of ensemble manage to touch the souls of their listeners with their masterful interpretations and pure sounds. I shan't blabber on about that again, but certainly hope that we can reach that level within the next few years.

I can't help but admit that I like this work more the Isaac Albeniz's Sevilla. Well, it isn't to justify why I didn't practise much on the latter recently, but I hope to be able to devote equal amount of dedication to the various ensemble works when I come back. Would be planning to work an hour or two daily on just ensemble pieces to ensure that my section would be musically mature and sensitive to our roles in all the various sections of the works as well.

**For those invisible readers who attended the rehearsal today, do give comments about this session so that everyone can know how to improve and focus on for the subsequent rehearsals after that. I'm not sure how receptive everyone is, but I certainly hope that it can kickstart the interpretation processes which is desperately needed by the music, not merely working on playing the notes individually every rehearsal.**

Back At Home

After a few twists and turns of a mixture of Schubert, Mozart, Rodrigo and a few other lesser known composers, I found myself picking up Bach again. Beneath the Bachian structure and order hides a wealth of the most colourful emotions. Such blissful indulgence.

Upon my music stand now is the Gavotte from Bach's Lute Suite BWV 1006a. Come to think of it now, isn't that what I've worked through half a year back?!? The process of re-working through this music on my new instrument has revealed to me another level of beauty into the piece. It does seem technically overwhelming when beholding such musical depth into this work, especially when I have such a dying desire to bring out the beauty.

The campanella passages on the guitar sounded so charming! (Campanella is a composition device which involves the execution of an arpeggic passage of similar notes on several courses, more commonly known as strings today, of the instrument, resulting in a most charming confusion of tone colours. It is pioneered by the early baroque composers for the baroque guitar. If I don't recall wrongly, it was first mentiond by Luis Garcia-Abrines in his instruction for Spanish guitar playing.) I realised how much I had been missing out on with my previous ill-intoned instrument. Can't wait to pick up the Prelude of this Suite, which I've been putting aside due to my past inability to play those campella passages in tune (which can be incredibly irritating). And now, the smell of freedom, when I'm no longer restricted by my instrument.... How blessed I am, I'm so thankful!!

Hopefully that's a piece I can prepare in time for the musical soiree this coming Saturday with some fellow musician friends.

Like a musical work which starts in the tonic key and ends in a tonic key, I've landed back at Bach again, feeling all refreshed and at home again...

A Little Anguish

Been working on the first movement of the Arpeggione Sonata these few days. I managed to get the entire first movement out under my fingertips, and I'm currently shaping it up and getting myself ready for playing together with the accompaniment.

While running through the piece a few times, I always felt a little strange playing the first climax in the exposition section after the 2nd theme has been introduced. I kept running through that portion over and over again. At snail speeds, at leisurely speeds, at breakneck speeds, syncopatedly, with some rhythmic alteration, softly, loudly. Fought with my new guitar and tried so hard to wrench an anguished cry for the climax but the guitar just refused to co-operate. She was unbelievably nonchalant. Finally, I gave up and decided to give us a little more time to try and get along before working at it again. (Ivan, it might be the machinehead...)

In the meantime, I went back to the original urtext edition published by G. Henle Verlag for Violoncello and Piano and got a little surprise.



It's pretty unfortunate that the upper range of the arpeggione is a little too high for the guitar. Guess how did John Williams transcibe it. He actually changed that high C to a G (to suit the style of the running scalic passage before that) and the high Eb to a F# an octave lower (to prepare for the scalic passage the bar after). As such, the climatic point was prematured - 1 crochet and 1 semiquaver beat earlier. How frustrating... I guess it can't be helped, with the tonal range I am given on my instrument. But I can't get over the fact that it's the climax that has been tempered with. There're still other sections whereby the arpeggione part and the piano part has been switched due to the limitations of my instrument.

Can't help feeling a little indignant... Just hope that my new guitar can mature to be a little more co-operative soon...

Sorry, Schubert, for desecrating such a masterpiece of yours...

And Now For The Chaconne

I've been putting it off for too long a time, for fear of desecrating this magnificent masterpiece. Every session of analysing through this work in the past year or so often ended up in a regret that I am not technically proficient yet and also because of the lack a convincing instrument to bring out the beauty of this spiritual masterpiece. Right now, the latter hurdle has been cleared. I'll be be attempting to pick this up in the near future...

I could hear the first 8 bars resound in my head, beckoning me to walk closer...

Irresistible, not because of the fact that it is a monumental work, but because of its wealth of emotional values and lessons I've gained by listening to it and analysing it (though such attempts often left me more perplexed than enlightened, even with something as simple as the re-occurance of the subject itself).

The work itself is a long, arduous journey. Listening to it has been such an insightful, life-changing experience. What about the process of learning, shaping and mastering it? And then how does it feel when I have the piece to come out of me?

Picking An Instrument

Checked out that beauty again in the shop at Esplanade today and I was more enamoured with the charming singing voice of her than ever. I knew that was the instrument that I wanted for myself, especially after trying out a range of instruments from S$3k to S$7k at another shop a few days back. Finally, I've found my guitar! Beneath her humble price tag of slightly below S$3k hides a most mesmerising sound. Of course, being with a badly-intoned instrument for the past 3 years, I was desperate to make sure I choose one which has a flawless intonation. As such, my requirements running through my head were as follows: flawless intonation, pure and refined voices from the lowest registers to the highest registers (I didn't believe I would come across such an instrument at this price range until I tried this instrument), versatility (a silky, velvety sound or a stunningly brilliant sound whenever the music calls for that sort of tone colour), a sound which seems to blossom over distance, a pure sound that allows the soft passages to project beautiful across a distance, responsive to the slightest changes in pressure and contact. Not to mention that the instrument has to be aesthetically pleasing as well. The beauty in the shop actually possess all of these rare qualities, at such a price.

Thanks to the immense generosity of Ivan, my fellow ensemble musician, and the kindness of the ladies tending the shop, I was able to get the beauty back home by paying for it with installments. Finally, a dream instrument to call my own! Shall work doubly hard on my technical and musical aspects to be a worthy owner of this instrument.

On The Arpeggione Again

I just received a note by Dr. Osamu Okumura, the president of the Arpeggione Society in Japan. What a pleasant coincidence that I'm actually working now on Schubert's most beautiful Arpeggione Sonata.

It's amazing how the only currently existing piece of music written for this instrument has piqued the curiosity of so many people around the world, to the extent of re-constructing this obsolete instrument. If I have a chance, I would certainly love to try out this instrument and learn to play this masterpiece this historical instrument. I had written an entry on this instrument when I was first seduced by the immense beauty of this work. Thankfully, the range of the arpeggione that is used in this work falls just barely within the range of the guitar that I am able to try my hands on such a gem and incorporate it into my repertoire.

No groundbreaking compositional techniques or strange harmonies used, but just simply charming. It isn't like Bach whereby I'm continually discovering new things about the works, but somehow, I can never get bored listening or playing this work, probably due to its seamless blend of a wide spectrum of emotions in such most poetic manner...

I'm still in the midst of studying this work. Analysing the entire harmonic structure and texture of this work. A not-so-easy task with the arpeggione being an obsolete instrument. But by studying his works which he had composed in the same period of his life, it does help me understand his style in this Arpeggione Sonata a lot more thoroughly.

Revelation

I do believe that for most people, at some point of time or another, a random piece of music would start playing in their minds, probably as a subconscious reflection of what they're currently feeling.

I never could quite truly understand the value of the first movement of Bach's Sonata No. 1 in G minor for solo violin, BWV 1001, until tonight as I was walking home. Incidentally, this movement started playing on my mind just as I was on the way back earlier. Of all the music which would most possibly start playing randomly on my mind, this piece would probably rank as one of the least probable ones.

If you had asked me what I thought about this Adagio movement before today, I could never be able to comment more than the fact that it was deeper than what I was able to appreciate of it. A powerful and expressive improvisational touch with an unpredictable yet deeply emotional melodic line. I had naively believed that this movement would have been better composed with a more formal structure in order to retain its emotional value while preparing for the magical Fugue that comes. (Big talk from someone who doesn't have any gift of composition) Just twenty minutes ago, I was made to realise that this movement could never have been better.

In this movement, the unpredictability of the melody really is the eventual creation of one who laments the vulnerability of life to uncontrolled external circumstances. Such rich harmonies, conceived ahead of his time, further intensify the feeling of helplessness. Those numerous trills that scatter themselves all over the movement gives one the feeling of an unnatural suspension in mid-air. Not the sort of certain trills which resemble the sounds of nature, of birds singing. And not to mention that some of their resolutions aren't completely smooth and doesn't make one feel at home. And seemingly, after a most spiritual journey, one finds himself back on the same spot as he has started. Spending our lifetime walking in circles?

Somehow, I have a sudden craving to hear some Erik Satie. An atmosphere of a certain sadness and indifference... ending up in a completely foreign place at the end...

Oldest Existing Music?

Check this out.

For most of them who stubbornly believe the harmony was non-existent until nearly 2000 years ago... Wouldn't the most spiritual harmony of nature itself inspire humans to make music with harmony right from the first day of creation? And a 7-note scale existing even then...

A Closer Look

*Note written after the completion of this entry*

An initial apology for the lazy and disorganised attempt at the review of the student concert...

Thankfully, the student concert went really well today. It was probably due my participation in the International Guitar Festival a month ago that made me appreciate the sheer amount of sleepless nights, missed meals and co-ordination to organise a concert. I really wanted to help out as much as I could to relieve the stress off Auntie Mei, even at the expense of straining myself a little before my item.

It was a pretty nerve-wrecking start, when fellow performers forgot their music or played a couple of wrong notes which sound like Schoenberg. Such instances sure encouraged the invasion of a dark thought that such instances would happen during my item as well, though I sure didn't voice it out loud like a few pretty amusing fellow performers in my same row. (On a minor note to avoid misconceptions, those ladies gave marvellous performances later on in the concert.)

Thanks to Guan Lin's most moving rendition of the largo and moderato cantabile sections of Chopin's famous Fantaisie-Impromptu, Op. 66, Nikki's ability to draw out the rich and colourful sonorities of the piano through Sibelius's Romanze in Db maj, Serene's charming performance of Schubert's famous Ständchen. the hauntingly evocative harmonies of Arensky's Impromptu played by Ursula and Omela's distinctively Spanish though slightly unstable rendition (probably due to nerves) of Albéniz's delightful Castilla from his Suite Espanola, that I could indulge in to calm my nerves down a little before my performance.

As I walked up on stage, I was slightly more concerned about the coming interval instead of my performance as I needed the toilet. As I started off the Tango, in the Allegro Moderato section, I was struggling to keep the rhythmic tempo of the tango for the dancers in the nightclub, in the midst of the various technical demands which has to be executed seamlessly while keeping the pulse of the tango going. It was the Lento section whereby I was momentarily transported as a time traveller and ghost spectator to the nightclub scene in Buenos Aires in the 1930s. And I had a crash transition from ending of that section to the recapitulation as my impotent fingers decided not to form that chord shape which has a magical effect of bringing the listener back to the dance floor. Well, as for the last section, I was half indulging in the stylistic delivery of the tango (thankfully no longer struggling), and half thinking about the toilet. How glamorous...

Well, for the later half of the concert, the two items which got me mesmerised were Aminah's most alluring French Horn performance and Guan Lin's sincere interpretation of The Romance of the Butterfly Lovers for piano. I was almost knocking myself on my head when I realised that I didn't have the chance to have Guan Lin as my accompanist for my exam because I had postponed it for a season.

All in all, it was a truly lovely afternoon of music, though marred by a not so appreciative audience and numerous mistakes probably caused by nerves. I could concentrate better on stage now, but I realised that I'm losing my tolerance for an audience who can't keep still and quiet in the most crucial and surreal moments of the music. We ought to have compulsory tranquilizers for such people...