FRANCK – THREE CHORALS 21 Aug 2022, 4pm Victoria Concert Hall Sponsored by
PhoonPROGRAMMEYu organ TAN YUTING Vater unser im Himmelreich 4 mins JINJUN LEE Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam 3 mins CÉSAR FRANCK Trois chorals pour orgue, Choral in E major, FWV 38 15 mins Trois chorals pour orgue, Choral in B minor, FWV 39 14 mins Trois chorals pour orgue, Choral in A minor, FWV 40 13 mins CONCERT DURATION: approximately 1 hour (with no intermission)
Starr Doctoral Fellow at the Juilliard School, pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in organ performance under the tutelage of Paul Jacobs. For his dissertation on Handel and Porpora’s settings of Siroe, re di Persia in connection to Jacobitism, Phoon Yu was awarded the Richard F. French Doctoral Prize. Previously, he did his Bachelors of Music in music composition at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, participating during his undergraduate studies in the partnership between the Conservatory and the Peabody Institute as a member of their Joint Degree Programme. He then did his Masters of Music in organ performance at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, being awarded the Bruce R. Eicher prize at the conclusion of his studies. His teachers included Professor Donald Sutherland and Dr. Evelyn Lim (organ) and Associate Professor Ho Chee Kong and Dr. Oscar Bettison (composition).
PHOON YU organ
Organist and composer Phoon Yu is active both in Singapore and in the United States. In Singapore, he has performed as a soloist multiple times in the Victoria Concert Hall since 2015, as well as at St. Andrew’s Cathedral and the Esplanade –Theatres by the Bay. Previous solo recital appearances in the US include those at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, St. David’s Episcopal Church in Baltimore, and Hitchcock Presbyterian Church in Scarsdale, NY. His début album, SEVEN – Organ Music of Singapore, featuring the solo works of up-andcoming Singaporean composers, was released by Centaur Records in April 2022. In addition, Phoon Yu’s performance career as an organist is supplemented by his composing and arranging ability. His Three Organ Anthems were released by Muziksea, a Southeast Asian publisher specialising in choral music, in 2020. Phoon Yu was previously a C. V.
PROGRAMME
NOTES
In approaching the birth bicentennial of the Franco-Belgian organistcomposer César Franck (1822-1890) from an organist’s point of view, it is worth noting another organistcomposer in whose shadow Franck lived in — Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). The injection of Bach’s music into the 19th century French music scene caused a titanic shift in the thinking of French organists, exposing them to new styles of composition and making vigorous demands of their playing skills, especially with regards to their pedal technique. Chorales — ecclesiastical hymns so often connected with Bach’s oeuvre — were amongst the many genres that the French processed and ultimately adapted into their musicmaking, even up to the 20th century. In the Protestant music tradition inherited by Bach, chorales were often used as the basis for service improvisations and sacred keyboard compositions. These works generally functioned — and still do today in many churches — as complements to the service music and preaching. In a more contemporary and Singaporean vein, two examples of compositions in this genre can be found in Vater unser im Himmelreich by Tan Yuting (b. 1993) and Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam by Lee Jinjun (b. 1990). Composed in 2018 as companion pieces to Bach’s settings of the respective chorales in the third part of his Clavier-Übung, both composers used the melody as a musical resource in writing their respective pieces. In Tan’s setting of Vater unser im Himmelreich — the hymn itself being a poeticised paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer — phrases of the chorale melody serve as recognisable landmarks in a musical landscape featuring cross-rhythms, arpeggiation, and sinuous melodic lines. Thoroughly meditative, its ending (a series of ascending appoggiaturas) represents the soaring of the one’s contemplation towards God. Lee takes a different tack in his setting of Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, the hymn being based on Christ’s baptism at the eponymous river. The chorale is intoned ceaselessly in long notes over a bed of heavily chromatic and polyphonic lines, sometimes sinking below the dissonant morass but never completely disappearing from sight. Loud chords and a three-note phrase at the end proclaim God’s approbation as recorded in the Bible — “This is [His] Son, in whom [He is] wellUnlikepleased”.Bach, Franck devised original themes for each of his Trois Chorals Into these final works (he died shortly after their completion in September 1890) he poured in stylistic influences that had dominated much of his career: the application, development, and variation of germinal motifs in creating entire compositions (an idea derived from Franz Liszt); an intense chromaticism and vast scale of form derived from Liszt’s son-in-law Richard Wagner; the idiosyncratic use of Bach-popularised genres such as the fugue, chorale, and passacaglia; and
a demanding and virtuosic keyboard technique honed from years, first as a child-prodigy pianist and then as an organist at the Basilique SainteClotilde. Relatively austere, the true chorale in each work appears only after a lengthy introduction, with their appearances marked by registration changes and a pseudo-polyphonic texture reminiscent of Bach’s chorale Thesettings.first Choral begins with a lilting melody in E major, which is transposed and extended until its titular tune comes in. After a more ornamented and technically complex section reiterating the themes presented in the introduction, a short interlude provides a dramatic reset as well as melodic inspiration for the next section’s theme. Flowing passagework, chromatic harmonies, and sporadic appearances by the initial themes and the chorale dominate this harmonically transformational section, before the music accelerates towards its glorious finale. There, the chorale tune is presented in large triumphant chords and the piece closes with a motif recalling the first theme. The second Choral begins in a more tenebrous fashion instead: the initial theme pulses in the depths of the pedalboard before rising to an equally gloomy surface in the hands. The chorale doesn’t detract from the atmosphere either; melancholic and brooding, only a third theme, short and more wistful, provides a small amount of respite from the doldrums. Similar to the first Choral, a fantasia-like interlude provides a dramatic reset, which is then followed by a fugue (with its subject fashioned from the initial theme), two reappearances of the chorale, and a series of sequences which climax in a restatement of the first sombre theme. The wistful theme then concludes the whole affair serenely.
Unlike the previous two Chorals, the third Choral begins in a dramatic fashion: loud arpeggic passages and dramatically dissonant chords dominate the listener’s attention until the insertion of the chorale into the section, which is markedly less aggressive than the preceding or following music. A melodious middle section (with some hints of the chorale theme) provides some contrast with the opening passagework, but Franck then proceeds to build towards a climatic final section, where copious amounts of finger-work whirl around a terrifying chordal reiteration of the chorale tune. Programme notes by Phoon Yu
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