#82 reflections

Such a long time has passed since my last post. So much has happened, things I regretted and cried on. Still time marches on. I'm alone in my room, typing in the dark (a little trick I taught myself to be able to type without looking), the sounds of the woods encroaching my window. I'm listening to Harvey Malaiholo's original version of Jerat, such a lovely song.



Work-wise I am writing a tarantella for wind orchestra, more of a suite as it comes more into form. It is a revision of an earlier work, so I do not have to strain myself too much. I've just finished another overture which in retrospective may have resemble Ross Roy too much. But hell, it's a form of flattery, and de Haan is my favorite concert band composer after all.



I'm happy, healthy and hale, which is more than can be said for some people in the world. Here's to many more posts. Au revoir.

#81 analyse this: cinta beralih arah (aishah)

Aishah is one of the quintessential singers of 90's Malaysian music scene: a mezzo-soprano with a particularly striking timbre and above all, technique to modulate her basic sound to respond to the song and the lyrics. I won't go into how she started out and everything, but I do suspect an early collaboration with the music producer Paul Moss had an effect on her musicianship.

We'll see how she went through (ha!) this song, Cinta beralih arah, which translated means "A love which changes its direction". To what? To Godly love, which is depicted as always in these 'redemption' songs as the higher, more pure love.

She opens the song with a very haunting mezzavoce. She justifies it by the thin instrumentation and the lyrics (Sendiri dalam sepi malam ke pagi - she's sleepless, but it was a quite and serene sleeplessness, not the madness of Lucia). Even when the instrumentation gets thicker with the bass entrance she maintained the mezzavoce but she crescendoes within two phrases as she's angry with her lover, who sees her "jewels and diamonds" as pieces of glass. Here she demonstrates an interesting quality when she opens up her timbre: instead of spreading it narrows, it buzzes more (Marilyn Horne would've called it 'more oboe-like'). And I do know that Aishah and her producers/composers are very aware of this peculiarity of her voice about and above D - most of her songs climaxes just above this point, and above it the notes are more decorative than functional.

What I'm going for is an idea of personal passagio - which remains a personal contention for every classical singers but should not have been an issue for a pop singer. It is an issue of knowing where the voice is more and most attractive, and most functional for a song. In this sense I consider Aishah to be better than most her contemporaries. Is she naturally better, or did she learn through mistakes? Make no point, nobody cared at that point in her career, only that she knows it and her songs always show the best part of her.

Rant over. If you notice, the similar phrases are sung full voice the second time. Why? Even though the voice is produced (er, manipulated) to be in equal mix with the instruments, the instrumentation below the phrases in the reiteration is thicker, with bass moving about and the middle voices more robust. Now I do realise that live, a pop singer may instinctively increase the timbre when accompanied by a full combo. But most of these songs are sung to a playback (which accounts for the manner it is produced), so Aishah either had the instinct to make sure her voice was heard even against a playback, or had access to the master score and saw all those bass figures and harmonies; or was she told to do so by a smart producer? But again as above, nobody cares as she sounds so wonderful and so good that you'd like to imagine it to be effortless (which is not, half the time!).

I do notice little details in the chorus, but most it sung full voice. I do love when she sings about keyakinan diri (or as I would call it 'confidence!') in steady full voice at the end of the chorus when the nature of the music and the instinct would've called for a decrescendo.

Now I would have loved a vocal coda, a few words of serenity in her love to God (goodbye, foolish lover!) but as it was, the song ends with an extended instrumental one. One could not have everything. Still, this song is the second track listed in Aishah's Memori Hit album. That must accounts for something.  

#80 in praise of: kathleen battle

Kathy used to be so hot, as in, legitimately hot.

Oy. People always have "but" when describing Kathleen Battle. "She had a beautiful voice, but..." "Sure she had great coloratura, but..." "She's really great with fans, but..." Fact is many, many, many people hate Kathleen Battle. But that was not her downfall: in fact, it was her decision to sing Zerbinetta.


The voice itself is one of the most beautiful timbres ever produced in USA. It is small, but in its early years it had a piercing quality, and in the notes above the staff sounded as if it could extend itself upwards forever. She excelled especially in oratorio music and Mozart. In fact, I suspect that if she were to remain an exclusively concert-recital artist in the vein of Marian Anderson she would still have a wonderful, fulfilling career as of 2010's. In fact she's still doing jazz performances and the rare recitals.


Of course when talking of Battle we also have to talk about her face - or faces. Another issue was the cloying quality of her middle and upper-middle voice which crept in during the early 80's. She probably felt these contortions helped her intonation, and undoubtedly the cloying sweetness in her voice was a tremndous advantage in crossover rep - it made her voice sounds like a cross between a clarinet and a theremin - but it began to drag her voice down. Her first Zerbinetta's in Covent Garden still had the child-like purity and pearl-like sparkle in the upper voice - a wonderful chest-middle which sounds exactly like her speaking voice was a bonus - but all that disappeared by the time she brought her Zerbinetta to the Met.


Then of course there was the high notes. She could produce them at will, but high D's and Eb's seems to be the limit. By the time of the Met Zerbinetta's the high E has became harsh, scream-like. The quality also changed, earlier they had a laser-like brightness which became velvety and marshmallow-y: no doubt very beautiful sounds all but did not count much projection-wise.


Fortunately she had one of those voices which do as well in crossover music as they do in classical-opera. She became a great proponent of spirituals, and her jazz work is not to be sneezed at, especially her beloved "Creole Love Song", with her in a slinky red dress undulating sinously among her combo members.


It's a loss, a great loss. Who'd predict where Kathy could have gone? When she was fired by the Met she was singing Marie's and Adina's, perhaps she could have went on to Amina. There were talks of Lulu. She was one of the great Handelians of her day, as proved when her Carnegie Hall Semele, with colleagues like Marilyn Horne and ... became a great turning point for Handelian singing in the US. She would have been great in early music like Vivaldi and the Neapolitan school. I shudder to think how her "In furore iustissimae irae" would've sound like. Her French arias album was a gem, as well as her belcanto album. She certainly had the personality for the great operetta parts, like Hanna Glawari, Rosalinde et al. She was also not afraid to venture out, singing Spanish and Catalan lullabies and made-up nonsense Greek. Finally, she would have been great in Broadway, where the size of her voice won't be a factor.


Perhaps I have a bias towards her, because she was my first diva, and like the first fuck you never forget your first diva. I am ashamed to admit I first fell in love with Battle not in opera, not in lieder, but first after hearing her singing the theme from "House of Flying Daggers". Sue me for tackiness, but I have to say that song - or rather, her singing of that song - inspired my great love affair with classical singing. So thank you, Kathy, for making me who I am today.

#79 in praise of: anna moffo

Happy Independence Day, Peninsular Malaysia (because Malaysia didn't achieve total independence until Malaysia Day and I'm bitter like that, heh)!

This is going to be the first in a series of few posts which will be unashamedly about diva-worship. Other opera fans who are claiming to be above such things can go fuck themselves.

The young Anna Moffo circa 1956-59,
before the rhinoplasty and (glorious) weaves

I'd like to start this series with Anna Moffo. Girl was gorgeous. Girl had voice - in spades, literally: she sang Elisabetta on stage. Girl had talent aplenty. So what the fuck happened? According to Herself, it was her first husband who drove her faculties to distraction and extreme fatigue, ultimately destroying one of the most beautiful (soprano) voices to come out of the land of Buffalo wings and french fries.

I first heard Anna Moffo from a YouTube video of her singing Marguerite's Jewel aria in what looked like a fluff-piece cabaret concert. Girl looked fierce, but had no trill to speak off (that impression was wonderfully changed later, of course). I noted though her voice sounded like sex personified. It had throb, it had sensuality, it sounded atrociously *female*. This is the kind of voice you can imagine hearing from her side of the bed after an all-night orgy.

Then I heard her singing a song from Showboat, Bill, as one of the songs from her Italian RAI television show. I don't know then, but I fell in love with her the moment I heard "I don't know" from her lips. I couldn't help it. There's something about the way she phrased this standard that made you believe even though she's probably fucking around this Bill fellow's back, she really did love him, at least when it all first started.

I sound like a crazy fan. I am. I now am the proud owner of several Anna Moffo recordings, including the greatest La rondine ever recorded, a daring take on Luisa Miller, a Madama Butterfly which made a powerful case for the lighter voice (Gheorghiu, I'm looking at you), a perfectly balanced Lucia di Lammermoor with Gorgeous Charlie (passport name: Carlo Bergonzi), even the shitty ones like the duse of crap, the Thaïs recording with the young José Carreras, and the tear jerker of the lot, L'Amore dei tre re.

Her recording which I love most was of course the Rondine. She made Magda sympathetic, which is of course really hard to do. I love the fact that she did not made the dream aria the centerpiece, but gave that place of honor to Ore dolci e divine. Her duets with Daniele Barioni were living gems. The wonderful Act 2 quartet did not turn saccharine, but kept the momentum going: happiness is effervescent, after all.

The second was her L'Amore dei tre re with Domingo and daddy a.k.a. Cesare Siepi. This was unfortunately for a sadder reason: to wonder how the fuck everything come to this. At least the Thaïs was a camp-fest. I couldn't help crying the first time I listened to Moffo's first phrase: "Ritorniamo", intoned in a hoarse middle voice. Return to what? It was a ruin of a voice, but what a magnificent ruin.

Maybe that was the problem. Moffo wasn't exactly a musical genius like Callas was, in the way she never made a phrase her own. Okay, I am probably too harsh; I've heard at least two phrases which had never been bettered by anyone else: "Tu sei con Dio ed io con mio dolor" from Madama Butterfly, and "Per non vederlo più!" from the live 1961 Met Turandot, in which everyone in the cast, even the chorus, was perfect.

But that was not the problem. The problem with Moffo was, once you get through the sheer gorgeousness of her timbre - and that was a great deal of fabulous you have to get over - she was at most an extremely competent singer who happened to have beautiful physical features, and fact is people are shallow like that. I do heard that she was a wonderful affecting actress on stage. I've seen her films: the Sonnambula, Madama Butterfly (which made her one of Italy's most beautiful women) and the Traviata. She indeed looked wonderful and had the operatic naturalism acting style down pat.

But all of this did not deny the amount of artistry she poured for the world. Maybe it's the bitter hag in me, wondering what-if's and what-could-have-been's. In an age where not only beautiful voices were plenty but there were also interesting "artistic" voices (Magda Olivero, anyone?), Moffo certainly held her own. And I'll certainly never forget her heart-aching rendition of Bill.

#78 independence blues / a criticism on "tanah tumpah darahku"

I've listened to the Independence Day song for 2013. I am deeply, undeniably, completely saddened. One of my friends stated he lost his appetite after one listen. I concur with his good taste. I refuse to embed it on my blog. Google "joe farizal, tanah tumpah darahku". The Malay Mail puts on its extra pink rose-tinted glasses to have a look at this piece. I'm a hater, and this blog already states its mission to bitch about other people, so let me put on my critic's hat (made from off-season West Virginia badger fur with pregnant camel skin lining) and bust out a few words.

First the music. We have tons of composers with international credibility and experience, for example the lovely people in this site, (a bit atonal and experimental for my taste but at least they have tons of musicality), can't they commission a song from them? Oh right, they are mostly Chinese composers right, too much artsy fartsy type, allergic la hoy... Haiya.

Seriously, it's a bore hearing a quasi-march song every year with repetitive uninspired motives. I can forgive capitulations, even the Masters use them time and again but I will not forgive lack of inspiration. You have one whole year to compose a decent Independence Day song, and this is the best that you can come up? Che vergogna. I mean, pizzicato WTF? Have you ever heard a rousing pizzicato passage? (Don't quote me the third movement from Beethoven's Fifth or I'll scream a high D at you). And synth. Why not just ask Lady Gaga to write a new anthem?

And the saddest thing is that they can't even hire a decent band or orchestra or "human" performers. Everything is sampled. God knows in Klang Valley alone we have one symphony orchestra, several municipal bands and countless school bands/orchestras and session musicians. We have Juilliard-trained composers, lyricists and singers, and we get stuck with a parody of a song exulting "Kita halilintar". Is this supposed to be a tie-in to "Percy the Lightning Thief"? Because that was also a flop.

Then the vocal line. Which is fine and isn't so bad when you take an instrumental point of view. But come on, all those roulades (ha!) doesn't really scream patriotic spirit does it? You want straight, linear phrases preferably in the middle voice, which allows legato and more importantly maximal volume. This is a song which is going to be sung by everyone, including by people who don't have musical training. You definitely want a song like Perajurit, to this day the best march song ever written in Malaysia.


And why do the theme ends on F#? Any composer worth his/her salt know that note isn't exactly a good place to start or end a phrase if you're writing a vocal piece for mass consumption (as opposed to solo pieces). And on a fucking "A" vowel at that. Are you trying to strangle many people simultaneously? Tip: google "passaggio". No choir director is going to accept that kind of writing. You want something which everyone can sing, not just the sopranos. [Edit: I'm aware that one can always transpose, but the fact there is a choral version of this song made that point moot.]

Finally the lyrics. As I understand it the lyrics are written by our Minister of Communication and Multimedia. And it shows. He falls into the trick of assigning a syllable to every note, which is amateurish for lack of a better word, which would've been fine if the smallest note value in this song is a half-note, which is clearly not. I am not one to say bad things about our esteemed leaders, but please sir, leave these things to people who are paid to do them, had spent years perfecting their art, and actually know how to do their job well.

And I'm supposed to understand that the lyrics are about the Lahad Datu debacle. Fine and dandy. But really, there's no one else in the whole of Peninsular Malaysia better to write the lyrics? Good luck hoping for them to ask someone from Sabah, no, someone from fucking Lahad Datu, a guy or lady who lived THE WHOLE THING HIMSELF/HERSELF, God forbid right? Malaysia Boleh! (And I'm allowed to say this because I'm a Sabahan, so screw you back). Someone actually wrote up on the interwebs that the lyrics have deep meaning. I'm sorry sir; Salina had deep meaning (if you look behind the pseudo-autobiographical details). Usman Awang's "Anjing Itu" had deep meaning. *This* is fluff, hiding itself behind words like "putera-puteri" and "halilintar".

I sound like a bitter man. Well yeah I'm fucking bitter. I deserve to be, when France had fucking Berlioz arranging the anthem, and USA had fucking Sousa, and UK had Handel, Purcell and motherfucking Arne. But whatever right [wall-slide, wiping bitter tears]. 

#77 genuine: dramatic coloratura album (alexandrina pendatchanska)

I have left this blog for so long, I'm starting to get the guilts. I'm sorry, but the exams (of my life!) are coming up, so I won't be much around until at least after September. In the mean time I had the absolute pleasure of purchasing one of my favorite singers' album, Genuine: Dramatic Coloratura Album by the absolutely great Alexandrina Pendatchanska, or as how she goes by nowadays: Alex Penda. When I scoured the nets I couldn't find out a decent review of this album, so I think why not I put (an irreverent one of) my own?

Like most of the greats Miss Pendatchanska's instrument is never to everyone's taste. It is heavy, ponderous, extremely dark and vibrato-heavy, and sometimes wavers on pitch. By all accounts despite the impression from recordings and YouTube videos, it is not a large instrument (I heard it was the same with Callas, in which post-slimming down it was a cutting/biting voice rather than a large voice on its own. Still the best Gioconda though). But this instrument is capable of doing everything and anything the score wants (which is great) and some more besides (which is awesome!). Pendatchanska is also a kind of vocal wunderkind, performing Sempre libera at 17 (take that Lezhneva!).



We'll start from the superficialities. The cover art is to die for! It shows a picture of her, clad in black satin stole, her hands in what we call the Levine sign position, clutching both the stole and her heart. The focus is on the top of her chest and her neck, before the photo cuts off just above her lips. Et voilà: this album is all about the lungs, the heart, the voice. A bold red GENUINE stamp over her hands, and this cover instantly becomes a classic. No hassle, and definitely no overdone Photoshop bombing cf. Netrebko's Verdi disc, hehehe.

The track list is covers the last years of 18th century up to mid-19th century. The first track is the gran scena from Act 2 of Rossini's Ermione, Essa core al trionfo. This follows with two Mozart selections, Come scoglio and Donna Anna's rondo Crudele!... Non mi dir. As you may suspect Pendatchanska is someting of a Mozartienne, specialising in his crazy bats like Donne Anna and Elvira, Vitellia and her Elettra, which had to be seen to be believed.



Then comes the final scene from Anna Bolena before leaping forward to two Verdi selections (Ernani, involami and Leonora's first aria from Il trovatore), the disc closes with the final scene from Roberto Devereux.

These are my conclusions: Like Sutherland, Pendatchanska is best when the music moves. Not necessarily in fast tempi, but as long the phrase is short or medium. Unlike Sutherland, Pendatchanska wavers in long-breathed phrases. This is not to say she have breathing problems such as Netrebko, in fact she took an extremely long phrase each in the Bolena and Devereux extracts which she manages by tapering the voice to a mere wisp of sound. She has a genuine trill as can be heard on YouTube, but it is absent in this recording. The voice also have what I call the Genaux dilemma: the vibrato increases in amplitude a the voice goes up, giving a false impression that it wobbles. It does not! But the heaviness of her vibrato is definitely scary. The voice is definitely comfortable in the lower and middle ranges, but her top can be glary and her acuti surprisingly thins out, much like Leontyne Price.

For all my complaints, hers is the most committed performer I have ever heard on disc. When she orders her Oreste to kill her betrayer (in the first track), her voice adopts an eerie straight tone, which is grating on a small instrument but definitely stuff of horror movies when done by a large instrument like Pendatchanska's. She also uses this effect in the Devereux extract, depicting the dying queen with as great success as she had on the stage.



She is unafraid to use unorthodox methods to get her points across. She goes sharp and throws out her R's like crazy, for example. And when the fiorature phrases are coming you could almost hear her getting her gears on (small swallowing sounds etc - I blame the recording engineers/mic placement). Her recitative work is first class, as can be expected from a Mozartienne and Handel specialist. That said, I find her Mozart selections in this disc a bit lacking. She does everything right, even the crazy leaps from the Così excerpt and the crazy long cadenza in Non mi dir, but I wish she included Elettra's arias instead.




The orchestra is the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Eralso Salmieri. God forgives me, I don't know this guy but he conducts Mozart and belcanto as if painting by-the-numbers. The Bolena excerpt lacks imagination, ditto the Don Giovanni. At least he is responsive to Pendatchanska's needs. The album also features guest artists who, God forgives me, mar the recording with their contribution, but thankfully not enough.

Verdict: BUY IT, GODDAMN IT!!! Sell your house, sell your kidneys, your babies!!

#76 mawarku - 2by2 and siti nurhaliza

See, I am not a perpetual anti-Siti. She used to have a wonderful biting voice, in the mold of singers like Fauziah Latiff and the young Sheila Majid (the older, more mature Sheila is another thing altogether) and most excellently exemplified by Aishah. She is not a powerhouse singer, never was and never will, but that's okay, the world has enough space for lyric singers. And what she achieved in terms of sheer popularity will perhaps never be exceeded by another Malaysian singer, at least not in this decade (the internet sensation Yuna comes close, but she is a meme at best).

Perhaps the first time I noticed the Siti Nurhaliza instrument was when she sang Mawarku with the boyband 2by2. Looking back, I chuckled at the sheer campiness of the whole thing: the hair parted in the middle, the shuwa-shuwawa voicing, the MIDI oboe. I did remember holding a candle for the male vocalist - ah, youth.

Listening back, one could see how Siti became famous. At that young age she already displayed the propensity for good phrasing and wonderful colouration of her line. Listen to her singing Kau teruna with a staccato mezza-voce on the word kau: it's the vocal equivalent of saying "I know this asshole's bad for me, but look at those eyebrows!" This, and other examples, were especially evident when you juxtapose her phrasing over that of the male vocalist (whose name I've forgotten), who simply sounded amateurish and dare I say bored to be singing this song. Another example: later she employed a slight nasal twinge on pujaan jauhari, where before she had just been singing about pure white roses: she just knew those jewel-smiths are dirty masochists, mistaking thorns for orgasms. Don't blame a guy for making insinuations, I'm not the one putting those huge-ass ropes in the video.

Of course being young she did not really display much variation between her first and second stanzas. After all it was not that difficult; even the climbing scale was essentially an arpeggio. Perhaps this was a conscious decision, after all the premise of this song was basically the seduction of the virgin, so the female part would have to be sung with a more straight approach. There's a very audible register break when she sang the vocalise in the middle of the song, but I guess that's acceptable in popular music nowadays (as in, anything post-Madonna, not that Madonna had ever sang anything beyond her register break). Then there's the issue of her lower range.

My absolute biff with the current crop of Malaysian singers is the lack of a good, working, lower range. I am not talking about the chest function at all, I am talking about having good low notes which are capable of expression without sacrificing the note value, the note place in the harmony, the voicing et cetera. The composer of this song must had had an affair with the guy, when you have an instrument like Siti's, of which the glory is the top range, to give her the lower voicing to sing. What the fuck? It's a crime. It's absolutely a crime. Hear for example when the voicing was reversed, the guy taking the lower part (Senyumanmu yang menawan hati). It's like comparing diamonds to silt.

Of course that was the young Siti, before all the prize, all the gossip and whatnots. The raw material was sterling, and the artist she had developed to today is certainly accomplished if somehow artistically dim. But not everyone can have voice, intellect and the ability to make the hair crawl with a simple gruppetto like Aishah.