"Chronicle of a Death Foretold" (1981) by Gabriel García Márquez

How much damage can mass apathy cause? Written in retrospective journalist style (23 years after the event), GGM recasts in "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" a real-life crime story where a man was murdered in the name of family honour by two brothers for taking away the virginity of their sister, who was rejected by her groom after the wedding for her lack of pre-marital chastity. The perpetrators acted upon unproven single-source accusations and blind rage and they announced their act publicly in broad daylight. The entire community did nothing to stop the crime, but why? Unlike traditional detective stories, this novella is not so much about finding clues and solving puzzles, but some collective soul-searching on the bystanders' parts on how their apathy and interlocked excuses allowed the crime to happen and left them in remorse for the next 23 years. The autopsy episode and the murder scene are materials straight out of Itchy and Scratchy. It might be terrible of me to laugh out loud, but GGM's magical realism was taken to an extreme absurdist and sarcastic level that it is impossible to determine whether the overall tone of the work is a tragic or a dark humourous one. The reader is left with plenty of information and testimonies to decide for oneself why the entire community did nothing - was it because the victim is an Arab? Because he is rich? Pure stupidity? Some hearsay? "Someone else would sort it out"? Nobody took the announcement of murder seriously? If you are after a Márquez digest, this novella is just as wondrous and tightly constructed as his epic works. It is a page-turner, as entertaining and thought-provoking as one wants it to be. There is a dose of straight up romance towards the end too. Perfect reading for a leisure weekend. P.S. a certain Sara Noriega is mentioned here in passing, is it the same one in "Love in the Time of Cholera", the novel to come in 1985?

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (1984) by Milan Kundera

Are there any books that most of your friends sing endless praises on, and you pick it up, read it cover to cover without prejudice or expectations, then think it is a massive waste of time? Since one can easily find lots of positive comments elsewhere, at the risk of offending my friends, I shall offer an alternative perspective here. Nobody picks up a fiction and expects to learn existential philosophy academically. This is not a textbook, but when a work starts with an upfront discourse on Nietzsche, the myth of Sisyphus and the notion of "Being", the reader is led to take this foreword as the basis against which the subsequent trajectory is set. The brevity of the discussion comes across as superficial and inevitably invites disagreement. That is not a problem in itself as the thoughtful reader should be capable of distilling substance regardless of position, but as the book progresses it turns into a convoluted, contrived and over-stretched allegory of very little substance. "Lightness" and "weight" are questionable and unreliable metaphorical quantities to measure life with anyway, and linking lightness and weight in the metaphysical sense to the physical sense in sexuality is an unacceptably juvenile and wild extrapolation. The text is particularly pompous and obnoxious when the author redefines perspectives on the readers' behalf in a series of "Words Misunderstood" and reevaluates the story of rampant adultery by lecturing, with very shallow philosophical underpinnings, the readers in Part Six. The entire reading experience is an unbearable weight of an authoritative tone imposing unbalanced opinions on the reader, which is ironic given the political context of the work. The saving grace is Part Seven where the notion of "Being" is reexamined by considering the life and euthanasia of a dog, which sheds more light on the discussion than the rest of the book (does a dog even concern itself with lightness and weight? By Cartesian philosophy, does it even qualify as a "Being"?) There must be a reason why this book generated cult following, but neither my philosophy, preference nor personality align with any part of this book.

"Orlando" (1928) by Virginia Woolf

What can one say about a book like "Orlando"? It is a masterpiece, no less, a through and through satirical work, to the point where the sarcasm becomes an exhausting overkill. Modern feminists would find it justifiable to warrant this level of ridicule to reflect the severity of historical sexual double standards. It is as much Virginia Woolf's private love letter to her real-life lesbian lover Vita Sackville-West as a public work of fiction - Orlando is the idealised version of VSW. This mock biography chronicles the life of an extraordinary human being who lives for 300 years to mingle with different English aristocrats and literary figures and who, without explanation and elaboration in a Kafka-esque manner in the middle of the novel, transforms into a woman and lives on under different social expectations. Orlando lives through the ups and downs of an aristocratic household. It is satirical on (at least) three levels: 1) it appropriates the literary styles of the times to accentuate the pretentiousness of such figures; 2) through the eyes of a transgender individual, it portrays sexual inequalities throughout the ages and; 3) taking inspirations from the history of downfall of the Sackville-West family, criticising British aristocratic life and practices. As a non-British non-literary polemicist, the majority of the content hardly concerns me, let alone the private matters of the people involved, and the abundance of in-jokes make it a very difficult read even with the help of the explanatory notes. That is not to say "Orlando" is not worth reading. Quite the contrary, I am very glad to have gone through this fascinating exploration of "new" writing form and also to have a detailed look at one feminist's powerful arguments against centuries of frustrating injustice. If anything, one also gets to read about old London. It is unlikely to be a title one would "like" in the conventional sense, but there is much to admire and appreciate intellectually.

"No One Writes to the Colonel" (1961) by Gabriel García Márquez

At 69 pages of 10-point font, "No One Writes to the Colonel" is one of the rarer outputs by Gabriel García Márquez that the casual reader can stomach in one sitting - just. If you read this short story retrospectively after finishing "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera", you will find a lot of common themes here, such as solitude, waiting over a long stretch of time, stubbornness, living under a totalitarian regime, living with dignity, and hope that borders on blind faith. In a sense, this is a less skeletal version of "Waiting for Godot". The fictional Colombian city of Macondo, its train, the banana industry, the Thousand Days' War and Colonel Aureliano Buendía are also mentioned in the work. Given its brevity, recurring themes and comparative simplicity in language, one is beguiled to consider it a prototype of sorts, but that kind of pigeonholing would be massively unfair to what is otherwise a great standalone work. It is remarkable how touching and, frankly, haunting the prose is when Márquez does not go overboard with magical realism and sarcasm. In fact, it is written almost entirely in realism. The story follows the lives of a retired colonel and his heavily asthmatic wife. The colonel religiously checks the post in anticipation for his military pension that has not arrived for fifteen years due to hierarchical corruption. The impoverished couple sells all their possessions for survival except for a clock, a picture and the rooster that they inherited from their son who was killed in political repression. The ordinary rooster, of unknown origin, condition and fate, practically drives the lives of that described society - it gives people (some) hope, (some) identity, (some) courage and, with luck, (some) money. The abrupt ending inevitably incites debates among optimists, pessimists and realists to decide whether blind faith and devotion are valuable assets under life-threatening circumstances. It is an unkind joke on the author's part, but what isn't black humour in this harsh world?

"Love in the Time of Cholera" (1985) by Gabriel García Márquez

What is love? According to the ancient Greeks, there are four types of love: agápe, éros, philía, and storgē. Love is uncontrollable. Love is endemic. Love is pandemic. Love evolves over time, noticeably over 51 years, 9 months and 4 days. To think "Love in the Time of Cholera" as a purely romantic novel is a singular perspective. Sure, it is heartwarming to read about two septuagenarians rekindling old flames after all those years. It is indisputable that this novel is 368 pages of cataclysmic passion, made especially potent in the translation of Edith Grossman, replete with vehement vocabularies. Reading between the lines reveals a critical survey on all levels of love and relationships - between God and men (in terms of faith, institutional behaviours and the sacrament of marriage), between parents and children (two pairs of contrasted parental relationships), abstinence, promiscuity. blind love, hopeless love, deliberated love, selfish love, self love (in the spiritual sense of self discovery and physical sense of masturbation), paedophilia, you name it. Love causes madness, invites murder, incites suicide. It is a bit like reading "Lolita", there is no moral to the story and, indeed, love itself. All talks of "happily thereafter", "New Fidelity" and "together at last" come at the price of stepping over the bodies of others, sometimes literally. Beauty to one is ugliness to the other, love is selfish after all. This novel is the perfect amalgamation of intellectualism and emotionalism. Every sentence is nuanced and breathtaking, full of humour and wit. It is so dense (in every sense of the word) that I had to digest it in two sittings over the course of a year, and I made the terrible mistake of reading Pablo Neruda's love poems in parallel that I nearly smothered myself with South American passion. It could very well be one of the best things you will ever read in your life. You will learn to love it as you learn to love.

"Lolita" (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita, hard to swallow, pain in the backside. Rewarding pain, if anything. Let's put it out there first: there are the obvious controversial and outrageous contents - paedophilia, deceit, kidnap, rape, murder. It has all the thrills to warrant a Stanley Kubrick treatment. It is not difficult to see why it is highly and widely regarded as an important piece of literature despite the subject matter, but it takes a lot of effort to align your thoughts as you read on. The novel is famous for having an unreliable narrator - that is, the story of paedophilia, deceit, kidnap, rape and murder is told by the offender. The prose is written in some flowery language that is legitimately beautiful. It is full of double entendres, puns, literary references, allusions and metaphors, and French. It is a masterclass in the English language and in the art of narration. Because it is effectively written as a stream of consciousness, or the "memoir", of a beguiling criminal mind, you have to constantly peruse the text to distill out the "hard facts" and patch up the events in chronological order. It sounds like detective work, but it is worse as you need to keep judging. There are clearly no morals to the story, and the author makes it clear by appending a fictional foreward given by some "psychology scholar" at the beginning to "critique" the "memoir". Nabokov himself then published a genuine afterword to disown the foreword. It is not so much about messing up one's mind in terms of being factually confusing, but upon finishing, the more thoughtful and inquisitive readers are left with plenty of unsettled questions: in each scenario, who really are the victims and offenders given the readers only have one heavily biased perspective? Did event A happen before event B, which would change the order of precedence in terms of offence? Where do my own morals lie? In fact, are my comprehension skills intellectually sound? In any case, every character in this novel is a loser in a dystopia that inevitably collapses in a magnificent way. Fundamentally, this novel is a long stretch of good quality black humour. It is sufficient to merely say, "Haha, that was good."

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967) by Gabriel García Márquez

What do we know about "One Hundred Years of Solitude"? Let's list the obvious: it is Márquez's magnum opus, an epic story of the seven generations of the Buendía family and of the establishment and rise and fall of the fictional Colombian city Macondo; there is the famous "magical realism" bending the real and surreal; the trademark humour and sarcasm; lots of incest; and of course, the theme of solitude. Who suffers from solitude? Well, everybody, you can't escape it. It is written in the stars, or in the cards, or... I won't spoil the book for you. One can be the person who brings utopia and order to everybody, but when one declines, in health or in power otherwise, one is left to rot in solitude. One can, of course, choose to voluntarily pursue solitude - in times of despair, regrets, remorse, obsession or madness. Unpopular people are left in solitude. Popular people so perfect to the point of being untouchable are left in solitude. Well-endowed children die in the hands of men (boys) - in solitude. Neglected children die in the hands of nature - in solitude. It does not matter what names you are given, it does not matter what (political or religious) beliefs you have, it does not matter whether you die for common good or ascend to the heavens without even dying, as long as one lives, fundamentally, one lives and leaves in solitude. It is a somewhat Buddhist worldview. These microcosmic stories of solitude are considered to represent the fate of an entire continent. It is very easy to over-interpret the work. The content is rich, the language is dense and it takes a lot of effort to parse 400 pages of solid text (10 pt font, single line spacing), but when you close the back cover at the end, you take a deep breath, then realise we are all tiny ants in the history of humanity. It is comparatively dry and emotionally detached against "Love in the Time of Cholera", but it is one of those magnificent human achievements that, in reverence, makes you feel irrelevant as a person.

"Yama no Oto" (The Sound of the Mountain, 1949 - 1954) by Yasunari Kawabata

There is always something very sad about Japanese culture. As the only country that has been nuked, twice at that, there is something in the mentality of the post-war Japanese population that we, as foreigners, would find difficult to comprehend. Written in some graceful and lyrical prose, this novel is astonishing in that it encapsulates all the anxiety of living under the shadow of defeat at a time of monumental social and cultural transition. It is epic in length by Kawabata's standard, and is impossible to discuss all the symbolism in a short IG post. The story follows the life of the aging man Shingo, who is gradually realising his own mortality, and is living to bear witness to the sequential deaths of his own generation and the PTSDs of the younger generations. He blames himself for the failures of his children's lives, and attempts to rectify problems against the tides. It cuts very deep into the ramifications of war, and the futile attempt of living under decaying circumstances, yet, as the ending suggests, they must charge on. It is also interesting and somewhat refreshing to read in an era of individualism about the parental perspective on society and the social responsibilities such attitudes entail. Having said all that, this is not a depressing text, but softly glows in a sort of "Yugen" (幽玄) way as in Noh theatre. (I will leave you to Wiki that term.) This novel has been hailed as the most important piece of post-war Japanese literature. It is not easy to interpret this work, nor would the regular reader find it immediately relevant. One can read it on surface level as well as performing a Jungian analysis of dreams on it. It is a substantial work, but worth every effort to go through it.

"Mizuumi" (The Lake, 1954 - 1955) by Yasunari Kawabata

In "Maihime", the concept of "the realm of the wicked" (魔界) was introduced, but what happens when one actually enters it? "Mizuumi" might be a novella, but is a psychologically turbulent one. Here, Kawabata offers an insight into his vision of dystopia in a rare outing of stream-of-consciousness narration. As a metaphor for the defeated nation of WWII, it encapsulates all the powerless sentiments of living as a "loser". Much like "Pelleas and Melisande", various forms of water provide unifying backdrops linking themes together in an otherwise fluid progression - the protagonist was born to a lake-side house; he lost his father in said lake; he was rejected by his first crush by the lake; he discovered his own ugliness in a bathhouse; he failed as a schoolteacher and was reduced to robbing a woman called Mizuki Miyako ("mizu" means water in Japanese), who herself lives off a sugar daddy to support her brother's education, who in turn has a good friend called Mizuno, with whose 15-year-old girlfriend the protagonist falls in love and stalks; he loiters in a sewage after failing an affair with his former student; he is confronted by Mizuno and eventually resigns from further perverted advances by a river. Almost everything goes wrong for the protagonist but the novella offers a slightly positive resolution in the end: he maintains some decency by rejecting the advances of a random encounter and facing his own ugliness (of the foot) directly and charges on. Perhaps it is what they call honour. This is a dark work, elegantly structured and as ever intellectually stimulating. Perhaps not the best entry point, but one that is essential when one has entered the world of Kawabata.

"Meijin" (The Master of Go, 1949 - 1954) by Yasunari Kawabata

For all the descriptions about gradual breakdown of tradition in the other novels, this extraordinary work chronicles the total and irreversible disintegration of a particular cultural practice, namely, the artistic emphasis of playing the chess game Go. It was made even more philosophically interesting when one read the work in August 2017, three months after DeepMind's AlphaGo won 3 - 0 to the World No. 1 - this reprint is update enough to include the results in the preface. In the modern world, we consider a game of chess a competitive sport, where the objective is to win within set rules. It is a battle of decision making - reason rather than feeling - so the advent of artificial intelligence brings all sorts of wonders about the limitations of human intelligence. In the days of Imperial Japan, however, to practice the art of Go was a well-paid honour, in which the playing style and respected conventions are direct reflections of sophistication so there was more to mere winning and losing. The best player, often undefeated, was given the title of "Meijin". There was only one Meijin at a time and the titleholder retained it for life. This tradition diminished when it lost official support, and eventually ended when the last Meijin decided to retire the title in a last match against a tournament-chosen challenger in 1938, and this novel is a historical account of this encounter. It is remarkable in that the book not only details the 237 moves that spanned over six months in 41 chapters, it is also an epic description on and, at times, unusually blunt commentary of all the psychological and physical struggles of both players, the changes of the surroundings, the spectators and cultural significance. It writes as much about facial expressions as urination frequencies. Apparently it is recommended reading for all aspiring Go players. You really have to read it to believe how the arrangement of 237 black and white dots in a regular-spaced 2D grid can be so engrossing.

"Nemureru Bijo" (The House of the Sleeping Beauties, 1960 - 1961) by Yasunari Kawabata

This is a conceptual masterpiece: through extreme creepiness, bleakness and decadence draws the beauty of pure love. This novella is an acute and haunting reevaluation of the perennial love-death cycle. As the introduction at the back aptly suggests, it has "the unique aroma of over-ripe fruits". In a cliff-side house, a mysterious woman hosts impotent old men and allows them to sleep with naked young girls who are drugged with a heavy dose so they would not wake up for the entire night. The old men can do anything with the girls as long as there are no penetrations of any sorts, and they are provided with sleeping pills so they could dream about their past with these young beauties in arms. For the old men, these visits are as rejuvenating as humiliating, as they can exert power by freely manipulating motionless limbs when in reality they are merely being patronised. The protagonist refuses to categorise himself alongside fellow clients, and considers demonstraing his manhood by violating the rules - raping the girls, impregnating them, killing them even. Then he remembers his past, realises the girls are virgins and decides to respect the rules. The writing is so deeply sensuous it is a wonder in itself. Just as he discovers the inner romance of "pure" love by negation, this nightmarish dreamworld collapses in some quiet ways. It paves way for a suspiciously similar novella by Gabriel García Márquez, "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" (2004), which offers a sunnier resolution. Fellow Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee wrote a fantastic review on both, and reading that is totally worthwhile in itself.

Boeing 787 Smart Glass

Nobel Week Latergram Science: When I was travelling earlier in the year, I had the fortune of flying on a Boeing 787 with Virgin Atlantic. The unusual thing was that I had to put up with a window seat for the first time in years, but it allowed me to discover this fun piece of gadget. So on 787 Dreamliners, they no longer have standard physical blinds for the windows. Instead, they have installed these fascinating smart glasses. There are five settings for each window and you can change the amount of shading from near-complete transparent to near-complete translucent within seconds. Out of curiosity I looked up the technology behind it. Apparently these glasses, patented by Research Frontiers, belong to a class of materials called Suspended Particle Devices (SPD). On standing, the particles are distributed across space randomly and move about by Brownian motion and block out light. When you apply a voltage, these particles line up and arrange themselves to allow light to pass through. Three questions came to mind immediately: 1) what are these particles (presumably molecules with large dipole moments); 2) how energy efficient are these given you have to apply voltages across all the windows to keep them transparent and; 3) how many reversible iterations can they perform before these glasses fail (for chemical reasons)?

P.S. They also have "Le Marteau sans maître" (Sony recording) on the classical playlist. Virgin Atlantic has very good taste in music.

BBC Proms 2017: Prom 72 - Mahler: Symphony No. 6 (WPO / Harding)

MAHLER Symphony No. 6

Wiener Philharmoniker
Daniel Harding (conductor)



As I will be unlikely to be in London next year, this is probably my last Prom for a while. That's right, I chose to end my five-year run with two hammer strikes: Mahler 6 performed by Vienna Philharmonic. I was late for the queue and literally got the very last standing ticket, then the doors closed behind me. It must be symbolism of sorts. Anyway. Daniel Harding started the performance without letting the applause to settle. WPO was without doubt impeccable, strings in particular, but Harding wasn't exactly the most inspired conductors around. For the majority of the symphony, it was pretty relentless. To put it crudely, across I-III, it had little dynamic variations. Contributing instruments took over from the previous instruments and patched up the sound to form one single moving entity. It made the "chasing game" in I very messy. Frankly, the block of sound was quite tiring to hear, esp. the Scherzo (played as III). The Andante (II) was quite beautiful, but could be done with more shaping. I think the first hammer blow in IV was off by a semiquaver. Despite knowing M6 for years, it's only recently that I start to extend my goldfish memory to listen to (any) Mahler from a large-scale structural perspective, and I kept looking out for architectural checkpoints. The "climax after climax" of IV must be terribly difficult to pull off. It was exhilarating, but again too much unshaped sounds. On the whole, it was a pretty vulgar and bombastic performance for my taste. You can easily find a recording of finer performance, one with more Viennese grace than the Austrians tonight. But I am very glad to have attended. The recent run of Mahler symphonies proves that I have mentally moved to a new listening mode. The end is a new beginning, and there is so much to look forward to the next time I am here.

BBC Proms 2017: Prom 71 - Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1; Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 (Ibragimova / LPO / Jurowski)

STRAVINSKY Funeral Song
STRAVINSKY Song of the Volga Boatmen
PROKOFIEV Violin Concerto No. 1
BRITTEN Russian Funeral
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 11

Alina Ibragimova (violin)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)



If it wasn't the centenary of the Russian Revolution, you don't have an excuse to put on a programme like this, as regular audience would not easily form emotional connections with any of these historical works. I missed the Philharmonia/Salonen UK premiere of the Stravinsky "Funeral Song" in February, good that their RFH cousins and fellow local heroes, the LPO, are making up for me. This pre-"Firebird" work paints the picture of a developing composer, who is exploring his voice with much colourful orchestrations and unsubstantiated ideas. Haunting, evocative and surprisingly Romantic. It paved the way for his 2-min arrangement of "Song of the Volga Boatmen". Proms darling and astonishing violinist Alina Ibragimova then impressed the audience with Prokofiev VC1. A lot of chromatic sequences upon chordal figures, it brought out the expressive, melodic and Romantic side of Prokofiev, esp. in III, with much admirable filigree from beginning to end. There was so much head-banging in the audience I feared a head might drop off before the interval. As if that was not enough, she offered the first movement of Ysaÿe 5 as an encore - you know, the one where you play a pressed open fifth whilst having to pizzacato with the remaining fingers? Just a stroll in Kensington Gardens really. After the interval came an obscure brass band (with percussion) work by Britten, "Russian Funeral". Pretty potent, and direct, contrapuntal arrangement of a melody that is also used in III of DSCH 11 that immediately followed. DSCH 11 isn't exactly the most inspiring work on an absolute music level. It is a meaningless work if you don't know any Russian history, and good that I bumped into my secondary school history teacher. It's a very in-your-face depiction of a failed revolution, and a brutal performance conducted by Vladimir Jurowski at that. He did not allow the momentum to dissipate, and presented the four movements in one continuous 65-min stretch, one which maintained pretty homogeneously thunderous throughout. The tumultuous strings, especially the violas, were beyond impressive. Be it the elegiac contemplation of the slow movements, the bombastic brass in II, the crazy cor anglais and bass clarinet solos in IV, this powerful rendition kept smacking you in the face. It was very exhausting, and overwhelming. Perhaps it was a good conclusion to my 2017 Proms season.

BBC Proms 2017: Prom 69 - Anne-Sophie Mutter, Pittsburgh SO, Manfred Honeck

JOHN ADAMS Lollapalooza
DVOŘÁK Violin Concerto
MAHLER Symphony No. 1

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Manfred Honeck (conductor)



Well, Anne-Sophie Mutter. Undoubtedly the violin legend in the world. She defines and "owns" a lot of works, notably the contemporary repertoire, but has become rather polarising in recent years. Her latest recordings are so self-indulgent and excessive in using vibrato that make them excruciating to listen to. However, her 2013 recording of the Dvořák VC was revelatory. It was successful in that she brought out the muscular potential of the Romantic work, and the torrential onslaught of III was jaw-dropping. Hearing it live, you get to see the physical involvement, and it's a nostalgic experience to witness a concerto performance where everybody was transfixed by the soloist alone. It takes a lot of charisma to make the orchestra virtually irrelevant, and you kind of earn it when you enter by sawing a brutal high A. For Mutter, massive applause is almost guaranteed and assumed, and it made standing through 7 min of John Adams' "Lollapalooza" worthwhile. What wasn't assumed was that she was eventually upstaged and made virtually irrelevant by the orchestra. Mahler 1 isn't the most dramatic or emotionally turbulent work of his, and the half capacity tonight probably wasn't having high expectations either. but 1 min in I felt it's the most rejuvenating music-making I have ever heard from a Mahler. I haven't quite worked out what exactly the magic was, there was something in the very nuanced conducting that was very gripping. The colourful shadings of the instruments, particularly the brass, was remarkable. The organic pacing of the narration made it very comfortable to listen to. The structural transparency was consistently masterful and made reading the programme notes redundant. It was never overdone and glorious, and sent the audience exploding in applause. The regulars I spoke to, who boast to have attended the Proms since the days of Adrian Boult, all agreed that "it was one of the best Proms in history" and inserted that "not even the Vienna Philharmonic would match that on Thursday" (Mahler 6/Harding). Who would have thought Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Manfred Honeck, of all people, doing Mahler 1, of all pieces, would win over London. I can't wait to see the professional reviews tomorrow. If they record for big labels, I think they would be massive by now.

BBC Proms 2017: Prom 66 - Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra II

HAYDN Symphony No. 82
MAHLER Symphony No. 4

Chen Reiss (soprano)
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Daniele Gatti (conductor)



When I took my first conducting lesson, after some warm-up exercises, the teacher pointed to a score of Mahler 4 and said, "why don't we take a look at that." That experience, and the fact that being a lab scientist, soon ended my aspirations to become a conductor. I wasn't trying very hard really, but that extra-musical sense of compact urgency has since been associated with Mahler 4 for me. Compared to the Bruckner last night, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Daniele Gatti seemed to be on better form today. It was a refreshing rendition of Mahler 4, delicate with Classical grace, a lot of pristine ensembleness, not overtly dramatic, with some elegant ländler lilts and the appropriate amount of naivety that is required for the child's vision of Heaven which is fundamentally rather dark if you consider it deeply. It was all very enjoyable until the soprano started to sing. She entered the stage at the end of the third movement at the back of the orchestra and remained behind the brass for her performance, providing some sort of visual manifestation for the voice overlooking the universe from beyond. The problem with this presentation is that they would need a rather penetrating voice to get the subtle vocal line above and across the brass. The vocal support was, frankly, inadequate, the intonation was off and there was no sense of sophistication in the shaping and phrasing. It sounded like a struggle. The orchestra played well to integrate, but could not save it. So that was a shame. I have little intellectual comments for the preceding Haydn 82. The forms were well defined. The academic minds would probably enjoy the lineage relationship between the two works. Otherwise, it's not a very invigorating performance to set the mood up for Mahler 4. I mean, how many people genuinely enjoy a dose of four-squared Haydn symphony on a Saturday night? Consider me uncultured.

BBC Proms 2017: Prom 64 - Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra I

RIHM In-Schrift
BRUCKNER Symphony No. 9

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Daniele Gatti (conductor)



There aren't many reasons I'd sign up to stand for a Bruckner symphony - either it is 1) preceded by an interesting piece; 2) performed by big names; or 3) both. Well, the Dutch Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is in town with its new chief conductor Daniele Gatti. For all his popularity in continental Europe, it is actually incredibly hard to be able to hear Wolfgang Rihm's work live in the UK. Rihm won the 2015 Grawemeyer Award for "In-Schrift-II" when most of the world don't even have the chance to hear its 1995 predecessor "In-Schrift", a commission for St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. Every now and then I would put on a Rihm work to enjoy his sonic imagination. A lot of his works are characterised by some pulsating energy where groups of instruments would gravitate towards "an axis of direction", causing a lot of exciting events within mixtures, and the music keeps mutating around this vortex. Admirers would call them "sound sculptures" as there are indeed copious remarkable explorations of timbres whilst haters would think his music has no real content. Essentially that's the feeling for "In-Schrift". It scores for a very "earthy" group of instruments - no upper strings and includes a contrabass tuba. It's quite something to hear a bunch of low-register instruments blasting out under the high ceiling of RAH, and I don't think many composers are bold enough to insert a whole minute of (5) woodblocks hitting (against nothing else) in the middle of an orchestral work. Rihm has written more intoxicating music (like "Chiffre I") but it was a curious experience nonetheless. I hadn't heard Bruckner 9 since sixth form, and revisiting it reminded me that I used to have a heart. Gatti consciously avoided vulgarity by paring down the earth-shattering drama in the opening movement. It was technically proficient, the structure flowed and there were individual glorious moments but on the whole it did not really take off. II was powerful and clinical. It is difficult to come across a satisfactory ending as the work is technically inconclusive. For all its lovely build up and ebb and flow in III the performance ended with little feeling of structural and emotional resolution and one walked away from this Prom feeling hanging mid-air. Perhaps it was the intention.

BBC Proms 2017: Prom 55 - Classical Music of India and Pakistan

A set of Hindustani (North Indian) music

Budhaditya Mukherjee (sitar)
Soumen Nandy (tabla)


A set of Carnatic (South Indian) music

Kumaresh Rajagopalan (Carnatic violin)
Jayanthi Kumaresh (Saraswati veena)
Anantha R Krishnan (mridangam)


A set of Qawwali (Sufi devotional music)

Fareed Ayaz, Abu Muhammad Qawwal and Brothers



Every time I go to an ethnic music concert, I walk out feeling like an ignorant idiot. It is easy to deceive a "third culture kid" such as yours sincerely to think that being conversant in two cultures makes one sufficiently cultivated. Sadly, for a start, coming from the Far East doesn't mean you know everything about the East. When we did GCSE Music, we had to do a section on ethnic music and we would look at Indian music amongst other things (such as Javanese gamelan and Jamaican ska). It was a section everybody ditched because chances are most 16-years-old signing up to study Mozart and Beethoven probably don't have much time and patience to immerse in the spiritual connotations of ragas and talas. When you spend so much time within the Western musical paradigm, it obscures sonic possibilities and it takes a lot of effort to get out of that mind set. A concert like this offers a very precious and comprehensive overview on the rich cultural heritage of Indian and Pakistani classical music, which shamefully I should know all about 15 years ago. Having said that, having gone through a jazz phase in the interim is very useful in appreciating this music. This late-night Prom consists of three 45-minute sets. The first set is Hindustani (North Indian) music on sitar and tabla. It is some very mesmerising explorations of melodic (raga) and rhythmic (tala) frameworks. The textural complexity is bewildering, where you have this very rich, sonorous, "polyphonic" finger-tapping on the tabla intertwining with some meditative modes of varying metres upon a drone on the sitar. It comes about as being transcendental in feeling. The Carnatic (South Indian) second set provided a stark contrast, where the material is predominantly melodic. The violin and the Saraswati veena are mostly either in unison or playing in question-and-response, supported by the hand-drum mridangam. The works are shorter and more varied in context and mood, ranging from the meditative to the hot-blooded. The amplification spoiled the sound somewhat, as it rendered the veena to sound like an electric guitar, but it can't be helped in RAH. The third set is Pakistani qawwali, a form of devotional music. It is vocally driven, supported by the harmonium and some percussion. It was ecstatic throughout and sent the audience, especially the compatriots, clapping and dancing. On top of this Prom being educational, it was also remarkably touching in a way. It is corny, and perhaps rather surreal, but when you see hundreds of people of different skin colour, religious beliefs, language and age group dancing and clapping in respect and appreciation to each other's culture at 1 am under the same roof of RAH, you kind of wonder why the world at large can't be more like that? Then I walked out feeling like an ignorant and irrelevant idiot, and wanting to see if Messiaen's "Cantéyodjayâ" make any more sense now.

BBC Proms 2017: Prom 54 - La Scala Philharmonic and Riccardo Chailly

BRAHMS Violin Concerto
RESPIGHI Fountains of Rome
RESPIGHI Pines of Rome

Leonidas Kavakos (violin)
Filarmonica della Scala
Riccardo Chailly (conductor)



If I have to pick a favourite living conductor, it would be without doubt Riccardo Chailly. I can't think of other active big names who consistently maintains that seemingly impossible fine balance of youthful freshness, textural transparency and sophisticated rigour, and he can draw that gravitational sound from almost any orchestra - I think it has something to do with his treatment of the lower register instruments. His latest Brahms cycle on Decca is revelatory, and so is the recording of the "Violin Concerto" with Leonidas Kavakos and the Leipzig force. It was with this high expectation that I turned up to this Prom, which involved Kavakos with Chailly's new band, the Filarmonica della Scala. The concert was delayed by 15 minutes as apparently the instruments were stranded at Stansted and only arrived as the audience took their seats, which was totally forgivable except it sent the message out that they did not rehearse the works on site, and it showed. It was a massive shame that the quorum only reached their full potential after exploring the acoustics for most of the first two movements of the Brahms VC. But they are very sensitive musicians, and quickly adapted to the scene, so by the end of the second movement we had that magical sound finally. The brilliant thing about this pairing, on recording or live here, is that they play the concerto with such chamber-like elegance, intimacy and warmth, where every pianissimo sings effortlessly, within that full overwhelming Romantic architecture. Kavakos visually displayed his commitment to the inner workings by actually playing to the orchestra sometimes, and the synergetic conversations flourished. The bigger impact came after the interval when the Italian force played Respighi's "Fountains of Rome" and "Pines of Rome". It was glittering and sumptuous, and the mercurial music (no pun intended) glowed to a triumphant close. Surprisingly, this was only the Italians' Proms debut. We need to hear more from them, let's hope they record more.

BBC Proms 2017: Prom 46 - Schoenberg: Gurrelieder (LSO / Rattle)

SCHOENBERG Gurrelieder

Eva-Maria Westbroek (Tove)
Simon O'Neill (Waldemar)
Karen Cargill (Wood-Dove)
Peter Hoare (Klaus the Fool)
Christopher Purves (Peasant)
Thomas Quasthoff (Speaker)

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Chorus
Orfeó Català
London Symphony Chorus
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)



One returned to London at 4:30 am after sleeping for 4 hours only the day before, what should one do? Stand for 2 hours to listen to a massive hyper-Romantic cantata, obviously. Pre-atonal/duodecaphony Schoenberg is severely under-performed, but are they "overlooked" for good reasons, one wonders? Here we have an ambitious 3-part, 2-hour long cantata, fused with much erotic harmonies in Part 1 and sensational drama in Part 3 and the entire experience is a massive emotional roller-coaster. If one is after quick thrills, then the performance by the choruses and the LSO is hands-down 10 out of 5, for Simon Rattle (and Simon Halsey) extracted every last drop of torrential drama from the immensely complex score to generate waves after waves of eargasm. No one minds some additional endorphin and dopamine in the bloodstream, really, except one cannot help but think "Gurrelieder" is a rather patchy work. There are a lot of interesting individual ideas within the intricate texture, but they fly in every direction and do not gel. It did not help when the protagonist, Waldemar, was almost rendered inaudible by the overwhelming instrumental forces. The other soloists were polarising amongst the Proms regulars as well, especially Thomas Quasthoff's Sprechstimme (I personally rather enjoyed it), citing inadequate passion as the reason. I am unqualified to comment on any singing, but in any case, I am glad and feel privileged to be able to hear "Gurrelieder" live, but still walked out with a reinforced feeling that, unless you are Klaus Haymann, chances are it's one of those works that would have been completely forgotten if not for Schoenberg's later and significant contribution to music. There are some enchanting moments in it, but I'd rather be left in equal measures of awe and bafflement by the "Violin Concerto".

"Maihime" (The Ballerina, 1950 - 1951) by Yasunari Kawabata

On the surface level, this is a story that is inspired by Stravinsky's "Petrushka" and the life story of Vaslav Nijinsky, the ballet dancer who performed the part of Petrushka at its premiere - in essence, a love triangle and the lament and psychological shell-shock of war. When one re-assesses the text using 2017 lingos, one realises that this is a visionary commentary on the (potential) disintegration of an "ordered" society in the name of liberalism, an inevitable fate that the Japanese society must have been facing at the time. In the novel, a traditional home is torn by personal desire when 1) the faithful but WWII-scarred academic father who lives off his wife's income and house wants to secretly emigrate to the US to avoid suffering from future wars; 2) the unhappy mother who runs a ballet school wants freedom and decides to reunite with a former lover; 3) the teenage daughter who is a promising ballerina elopes with a failed ballet dancer out of passion; and 4) the family feels uncomfortable with the gay teenage son. This title also introduces the very important concept of "the realm of the wicked" (魔界), a term from the words of the Zen Buddhist Ikkyu, that is found in many of Kawabata's later works. "Maihime" is perhaps the most in-your-face story amongst his most popular titles. The metaphorical dusk scenes are as scenic and beautiful as the galaxy ending of "Snow Country". Our "liberal" generation might find the "old-fashioned" sentiments bewildering, but it's an important document that records the predicaments of a rapidly changing world.

"Izu no Odoriko" (The Dancing Girl of Izu, 1926) by Yasunari Kawabata

If there is any trace of unbridled passion and freshness in Kawabata's major works, you would find it in "Izu no Odoriko". Youth creeps in and out of life and by the time you learn to treasure it you would have lost it for good. Such is also true for a lot of encounters in life. Chances are, one matures by regretting and becomes more calculating, so the beauty of innocence and honesty can only be appreciated in hindsight, through the sense of loss. Fate comes unannounced, journey goes on as it happens, and lives carry on with no resolution. Just as stars cross and do not meet again, it enjoys certain transient beauty - it is the aesthetic of "mono no aware" again. The romantic sentiment has become obscure and irrelevant in this rapid social media era, but this brutally short and compact novella reminds us how deep and slow passion used to burn, even in the absence of vulgar physical intimacy. Those who have ever loved unreservedly with no calculation would resonate with it.

"Senbazuru" / "Nami Chidori" (Thousand Cranes / Plovers on Waves, 1949 - 1951, 1953) by Yasunari Kawabata

Those who enjoy allegorical writing would enjoy "Senbazuru" and its (incomplete) sequel "Nami Chidori". It is my favourite work in this collection. This extraordinary Nobel-winning novel is considerably baffling on first reading as the plot appears to be too perverse to be reasonable. The story focuses on the traditional Japanese tea ceremony and the antique utensils it warrants and how they are passed down from one person to the next. The orphaned protagonist is mentally manipulated by the mistress of his father, who had another illicit affair with the wife of a tea ceremony practitioner, Mrs. Ota. The mistress wants to hook the protagonist up with a young girl, but instead he ends up having a affair with Mrs. Ota, who, out of guilt and shame, commits suicide. The protagonist then becomes intimate with Mrs. Ota's daughter, before eventually marrying the young virgin at the beginning. The sequel extends and reevaluates the story. This is a massive metaphorical examination on spiritual, cultural and physical inheritance, in which symbolic figures are augmented by much deeply sensuous writing. When one blindly accepts values and practices, as a lot of people from traditional societies do, one could get compulsive and obsessive to follow certain paths, even if it is morally questionable. There are two more short sequels to "Nami Chidori", and the "open ending(s)" in fact leave a big window for readers to wonder what physical and spiritual awakening of personal desires would eventually lead to. It is remarkable to see how differently Eastern and Western readers of this title interpret the themes if you search for literary criticism and book reviews online, and that is exactly why this book so fascinating.

"Koto" (The Old Capital, 1961 - 1962) by Yasunari Kawabata

The Nobel citation especially praises three of Kawabata's works - "Snow Country", "The Old Capital" and "Thousand Cranes". "The Old Capital" is perhaps the most direct and accessible story amongst Kawabata's major novels, and is most blatant about Japanese heritage and the threats it faces - when Paul Klee, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall are mentioned alongside the discussions of novel designs of kimono parts, the post-war anxiety of "cultural invasion" becomes very obvious. "The old capital" refers to Kyoto, and the novel is a breathtaking travel guide in its own right, in that it takes the readers through the beautiful architectures of the city and incorporates its major festivals in its narration which is often decorated by epic descriptions of seasonal changes. All these captivating illustrations of cultural heritage offer the backdrop for the life stories of a pair of twin sisters, who are separated at birth, which in turn serves as a commentary of the perpetual struggle and price of establishing, maintaining and passing on tradition. In this globalised age where individualism prevails, it's worth reconsidering the perennial question - are life and personal choices worth the sacrifice for the bigger, common good?

"Yukiguni" (Snow Country, 1935 - 1937, 1947) by Yasunari Kawabata

"Snow Country" is Kawabata's best-known work and perhaps the best entry point into his style, aesthetics and philosophy. The haiku-like writing, the elegance of minimalism, the imagery evoked by language, the emotion implied within - the famous opening line epitomises it all: 国境の長いトンネルを抜けると雪国であった。夜の底が白くなった。信号所に汽車が止まった。(Loosely translated as: "Crossing the border through a long tunnel comes the snow country. Under the night sky everything is white. The train stops at the traffic lights.") I don't think anyone who has read the book can ever forget the sensuous, even erotic, opening and the celestial ending. Telling the story of the fruitless love between the metropolitan protagonist and a provincial geisha, this masterpiece is the perfect illustration for the Japanese aesthetics of "mono no aware" (物の哀れ), which conjures up the sort of spiritual and transcendental beauty that could only be felt through the sense of loss and natural passing of things - because existence is impermanent, any effort to attempt is, by nature, in vain. Despite the eventual fruitlessness, the effort validates human existence and therefore constitutes beauty, however ephemeral it might be. That justifies the obsession of "pointless" activities, such as impossible love, and therefore necessitates sadness and the lack of definite resolution. The remote desolation of the setting augments the emotional impact. The fullness from emptiness lingers on and echoes days after you close the book and it is this fascinating feeling that encourages me to read all of Kawabata's output.

Yasunari Kawabata Special: Foreword

I have become a massive fan of Japanese Nobel-winning author Yasunari Kawabata, ever since picking up the seminal novel "Snow Country" by chance. Initially I had no particular interest in any traditional Japanese sentiments or culture, but the poetic and graceful prose, the enchanting imagery, and the acute psychological insights of the writings enticed me to pick up his other works. Every work draws me deeper into this quiet vortex of emotional turbulence that pinches you in every direction days after closing the book. If you enjoy voluntarily losing yourself in streams of sensuous stimulation, reading about foreign cultural practices, or merely looking for "beauty", then join me in the next two weeks when I will share my love of all his major novels in a series of nine Instagram/Facebook posts. I don't intend to preach or indoctrinate, but I hope you will also find joy in discovering these transcendental writings that have kept me in awe in the past six months or so.

Yasunari Kawabata 川端康成 (1899 - 1972) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968 "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind".

"The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro

"In bantering lies the key to human warmth", reads one of the concluding lines of this book. I think I will quote that a lot. So, finally, I have finished "The Remains of the Day" two years after reading "Nocturnes" (see post on 20th April 2015). Several people have recommended me this (including a somewhat hyperactive Waterstones cashier). I did the unwise thing of starting it straight after "Orlando", which made the languid opening a bit lethargic to read, but once one has got going, there is something gravitational about the narration that drags you in, keeps you there and implodes in you. All the irreversible losses caused in the name of professionalism are quite saddening, and the last 30% of the book is emotionally turbulent to go through. The political commentaries, especially those on direct democracy, are topical to read, if also rather elementary. I can see why this book resonates with so many people, though I actually find "Nocturnes" more intense and rewarding. "Never Let Me Go" next.



This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.