VCHpresents Chamber: Vivacious Vivaldi

VIVACIOUS VIVALDI

30 APR 2021, 7.30PM 1 MAY 2021, 7.30PM VICTORIA CONCERT HALL

PROGRAMME VIVALDI Trio Sonata No. 9 in A major, RV 75 I. II. III. IV.

7 mins

Preludio. Allegro Adagio Allemande. Allegro Corrrente. Presto

Chan Yoong-Han, violin Zhang Si Jing, violin Guo Hao, cello Shane Thio, harpsichord/chamber organ 10 mins

VIVALDI Trio Sonata No. 12 in D minor, RV 63 “La Follia” I. Adagio. Andante. Allegro II. Adagio. Vivace. Allegro. Larghetto. Allegro III. Adagio. Allegro Chan Yoong-Han, violin Zhang Si Jing, violin Guo Hao, cello Shane Thio, harpsichord/chamber organ

VIVALDI Concerto in G major, RV 151 “Alla Rustica” I. Presto II. Adagio III. Allegro Musicians of the SSO

5 mins

VIVALDI Concerto in A minor, RV 522 (No. 8 from L’estro armonico, Op. 3)

12 mins

I. Allegro II. Larghetto e spiritoso III. Allegro Samuel Tan, violin Cindy Lee, violin Musicians of the SSO

VIVALDI Concerto in G minor, RV 578 (No. 2 from L’estro armonico, Op. 3) I. II. III. IV.

10 mins

Adagio e spiccato Allegro Larghetto Allegro

Chan Yoong-Han, violin Ye Lin, violin Guo Hao, cello Musicians of the SSO

VIVALDI Concerto in B minor, RV 580 (No. 10 from L’estro armonico, Op. 3) I. Allegro II. Largo - Larghetto III. Allegro Jin Li, violin Chen Da Wei, violin Nikolai Koval, violin Zhao Tian, violin Musicians of the SSO

12 mins

MUSICIANS OF THE SSO FIRST VIOLIN Chan Yoong-Han Cao Can Chen Da Wei SECOND VIOLIN Ye Lin Margit Saur Nikolai Koval VIOLA Zhang Manchin Julia Park CELLO Guo Hao Wang Yan DOUBLE BASS Yang Zheng Yi HARPSICHORD/ CHAMBER ORGAN Shane Thio

CHAN YOONG-HAN violin

SAMUEL TAN violin

Chan Yoong-Han is currently the Fixed Chair First Violinist in the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

A graduate of Rice University and the University of Massachussetts in Amherst, his teachers include Chan Yong Shing, Beryl Kimber, Sergiu Luca, Charles Treger, David Cerone, Kurt Sassmannshaus and Dorothy DeLay.

Samuel Tan started playing the violin at the age of three, and made his solo orchestral debut at the age of ten.

He is a top prizewinner in multiple competitions including the Goh Soon Tioe Outstanding Performer Award at the National Violin and Piano Competition (Singapore) at the age of eight and First Prize and Overall Grand Laureate at the Andrea Postacchini Competition in Italy when he was nine.

Yoong-Han has performed solo in concertos by Dvořák, Lalo, Berg, John Williams, Mozart, Martinů, Lutosławski, Wieniawski and Sibelius. As a chamber musician he has collaborated with Christian Blackshaw, Cho-Liang Lin, William Bennett, Claude Delangle, Dennis Lee, Chiao-Ying Chang, T’ang Quartet, Borodin Quartet, Choir of King’s College (Cambridge), Singapore Dance Theatre, Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble.

Yoong-Han is the recipient of the 2000 Shell-NAC Arts Scholarship and the 2004 NAC Young Artist Award.

He is also a member of the Board of re:SOUND Collective. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts and Amherst College, and has been teaching in the School of the Arts, Singapore since 2008.

Chan Yoong-Han performs on a David Tecchler, Fecit Roma An. D. 1700 donated by Mr Goh Yew Lin.

He performed in Montreal as part of the Young Artist Showcase at the Concours musical international de Montréal with the Montreal Chamber Orchestra, under the baton of Cho Liang Lin. He currently studies with Singapore’s internationally acclaimed violinist, Min Lee, and has participated in masterclasses including those of Prof Boris Kuschnir, Prof Ivan Strauss and Simon James.

CINDY LEE violin A native of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, violinist Cindy Lee started her piano lessons when she was four and had her first public performance at seven.

She started violin studies at eight under a special artistic programme founded by local government.

While she was a student in Taiwan, Cindy has performed Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21 as a soloist with her school orchestra, as well as the Barber Violin Concerto with the Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra.

A graduate of the National Taiwan Normal University and the Eastman School of Music, her principal teachers included Yung-Shin Fang, Zen-Sheng Chen, Shu-Te Lee, ChiaHong Liao, Oleh Krysa and David Brickman.

As an orchestra musician, Cindy has performed as part of the Asian Youth Orchestra, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Spoleto Festival (Italy), Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.

Cindy Lee has been a member of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra since 2004.

ANTONIO VIVALDI (1678 - 1741) Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (1678—1741) was born in Venice, when the Venetian Republic began her decline as a political power in Europe—she would be dissolved

by Napoleon some 50 years after Vivaldi’s death—but Venice’s cultural influence and glory remained undiminished in his lifetime. Given his first violin lessons by his father, a barber-turnedprofessional-violinist, he entered the seminary at the age of fifteen.

He was ordained priest in 1703 at the age of 25 and gained the nickname il Prete Rosso – “The Red Priest” – on account of his hair.

Due to his weak constitution and asthma, he was granted a dispensation from celebrating mass not long after his ordination, in 1704. He appears to have remained a devoted Catholic all his life, and he was noted to have constantly prayed the rosary. In 1703, he was appointed violin teacher at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà (“Devout Hospital of Mercy”), an institution that was equal parts orphanage, convent, and music school. Founded as a convent in the 13th century to take in orphans and abandoned children (some of these were inconvenient illegitimate children of the nobility), by the 17th century it, along with the three other charitable ospedali in Venice had gained a reputation for excellent all-female musical ensembles that attracted tourists and patrons from all over Europe.

These ensembles were originally

founded to provide music for chapel services in the ospedali, like a “praise band”, with formal musical education being somewhat ad hoc, but as standards rose and they became major sources of income for the institutions, professional teachers and composers were hired in what quickly became a musical arms race between the ospedali.

The girls of the Pietà had a reputation for extremely high musical standards, and Vivaldi was contracted not only to teach the violin, but to write two concerti a month and rehearse with the girls. If the girls of the Pietà were the guinea pigs

who premiered most of Vivaldi’s instrumental output, given the fearsome virtuosity required in many of them, they must have been very talented players indeed.

Vivaldi also had a “side-gig” as a composer of some 50 surviving operas, some of which were produced all over Europe, and he spent three years as maestro di cappella in Mantua. On a visit to Trieste in 1728, he met Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, who gave him a knighthood, a gold medal, and an invitation to Vienna. A 1730 visit to Vienna was a great success, inspiring him to move to Vienna permanently, as his music, once deemed too modern, had begun to be considered old-fashioned in Venice. In 1740, he moved to Vienna in the hope of an imperial appointment and producing operas but Charles VI died shortly after, leaving Vivaldi with no patron or steady source of income. Stranded in Vienna, the impoverished Vivaldi with weak lungs died of pulmonary gangrene less than a year after Charles VI. A prolific composer cranking out more than 400 concerti, 75 sacred vocal works, 46 operas, 39 secular cantatas, 87 sonatas, and 56 sinfonias for strings, Vivaldi is a favourite filler for radio broadcasts, and his use of repeats have led to the joke that he wrote the same concerto 500 times. Nevertheless, it is really only in live performance that the skill and artifice of his music can be appreciated fully. What on paper or on recordings seems like mindless literal repetition, reveals itself in performance as a dynamic variation, a conversation between instruments.

A play script may have a wife ask “going to work?” and the husband replying “going to work”, but only bad actors would deliver those two phrases in an identical way. Similarly, musical repeats are a chance for the players of different parts to vary shade and tone in their dialogue, sometimes fiery and passionate, sometimes lyrically and sensually.

PROGRAMME NOTES Trio Sonata No. 9 in A major, RV 75 Trio Sonata No. 12 in D minor, RV 63 “La Follia” Our programme begins with two works from his 1705 collection of 12 sonatas for two violins and basso continuo, Opus 1. RV 75 is a standard trio sonata, part of his Opus 1, the first published work of Vivaldi’s, and likely first played by the girls of the Pietà. The first two movements, an Allegro preludio and an Adagio feel like warm-ups for the Allegro allemanda, which is the first substantial movement. The finale is a Presto corrente where the violins chase each other.

In RV 63 “La Follia”, we begin to see more of the dramatic contrasts that are Vivaldi’s signature style.

Built on the unchanging 16-bar chord progression of the popular La Folia theme, the sonata is not in the usual four movements, but rather takes the form of an initial theme followed by 19 variations. Vivaldi shows us his inventiveness by varying the textures, note values, speeds, and moods through the variations.

Concerto for Strings in G major, RV 151 “Alla rustica” RV 151 “Alla rustica” is a concerto for string orchestra without soloists, but with two oboes in the final movement. Written around the same time as the Four Seasons, the title “in the rustic style” was given by

Vivaldi himself. The first movement Presto is a bouncy melody that never stops moving until the end, a race in which the whole orchestra must keep up, but stopping unexpectedly on a minor chord. The following brief Adagio seems to be a pause for everyone to catch their breath, and a solo violin encourages the other strings not to stop, for ahead is the Allegro, in which the busy celli dash about as the violins keep emphasising the sharpened fourth (C sharp), making reference to folk music in the Lydian scale as seen in the popular ‘Polish style’ music of his contemporaries.

Concerto in A Minor, RV 522 (No. 8 from L’estro armonico, Op. 3) Concerto in G Minor, RV 578 (No. 2 from L’estro armonico, Op. 3) Concerto in B Minor, RV 580 (No. 10 from L’estro armonico, Op. 3) In 1711, Vivaldi published his L’Estro Armonico (“The Harmonic Inspiration”) Opus 3, a collection of 12 concerti for stringed instruments in various combinations. Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot described the set as “perhaps the most influential collection of instrumental music to appear during the whole of the eighteenth century”.

RV 522 is classic Vivaldi in its drama and suspense. The entire concerto is marked by alternation between

vigorous rhythmic movement and uneasy harmonic stasis. The opening Allegro is a dizzy race in which the two violin soli and the strings build tension through delicate duets and fiery soli punctuated by pregnant stalls. The middle Larghetto e spirituoso begins with a unison ritornello which becomes a ground bass accompaniment beneath a plaintive and wistful duet by the soloists. Imitative passages lead to a rush of agitated duos, lyrical solos, and a furious concluding duet in the final Allegro. This concerto fascinated J. S. Bach enough that he transcribed it for organ.

Vivaldi writes again for two solo violins in RV 578, beginning with an Adagio e spiccato which seems like an elder sibling of Winter from the Four Seasons (not to appear until fourteen years later), setting a scene of building tension and foreboding. All this is released in the controlled flame of the Allegro, with its menacing rising line in the orchestra that introduces the brilliant lines of the soli. The Larghetto, a long sighing melancholy movement punctuated by harmonies from the orchestra, does nothing to relieve the tension. The final Allegro lets off all the remaining steam with a dancelike giga, with the cello joining in the fun.

RV 580 for four violins, cello, and strings, was another concerto Bach liked – he transcribed it into a concerto for four harpsichords, adding counterpoint and tweaking the harmony. For both composers, the work seems to have been something of a study-experiment in instrumental texture. Vivaldi’s version features two separate viola parts,

most unusual for his time, and some solos for the first cellist. The sinister dark key is offset by the energy and clarity that keeps the soloists on parallel courses that somehow still manage to collide – this is Vivaldi at his best.

The opening Allegro sees the string orchestra providing a steady base while the violin soli run from passage to passage intruding on each other in a marvel of counterpoint. The Largo has Vivaldi showing us how many ways he can spread a chord, producing a sort of 18th century minimalism in which the shimmering harmonies bring us to unexpected destinations.

The concerto ends with typical Vivaldi showiness in the Allegro: the first violin is invited to play an octave higher near the bridge, and Vivaldi himself was known to do this to dazzle the audience. Amidst all this, soloists interrupt each other and finish each other’s phrases in the image of excited Venetian ladies passing on juicy gossip from one drawing room to another.

Programme notes by Edward C. Yong

SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Founded in 1979, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is Singapore’s flagship orchestra, touching lives through classical music and providing the heartbeat of the cultural scene in the cosmopolitan citystate. Our Chief Conductor is Hans Graf.

While the SSO performs frequently at the Esplanade Concert Hall, for a more intimate experience, we return to the place of our beginnings, the Victoria Concert Hall (VCH) – the home of the SSO. The VCH is host to our popular Children’s, Family and biannual free Lunchtime Concerts as well as our VCHpresents chamber series.

HANS GRAF Chief Conductor

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