Arts Picks: Classical music, contemporary art and theatre worth your time this weekend

Classical music from 1825

Chamber Music and Arts Singapore (CMAS) knows just how fertile it was for classical music exactly two centuries ago.

From the temperamental Ludwig van Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge to the first piano sonata published in the lifetime of the endearingly sweet Franz Schubert, 1825 was a milestone year as the Classical period gave way to the Romantic.

From Nov 7 to 9, audiences in Singapore have a chance to refresh or be introduced to this treasure trove at four concerts.

This is the second instalment of a multi-year project by CMAS – the first was music from 1824 in 2024 – coinciding with its fifth anniversary celebrations.

The first performance at the Esplanade Recital Studio on Nov 7 offers the first of Beethoven’s set of late string quartets, firmly in the heroic mode in E flat major, as well as Schubert’s Piano Sonata D. 845 and classical music poster child Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Quartet In G Minor K. 478.

The second at the Victoria Concert Hall on Nov 8 offers stark contrast in Felix Mendelssohn’s String Octet In E Flat Major, composed when he was just 16, Beethoven’s then-universally panned Grosse Fuge and Mozart’s D Minor Piano Concerto.

For the pedantic, note that the works by Mozart were composed earlier in 1785. CMAS has brought them back as a sort of bonus to amp up tickets’ value for money.

The remaining two concerts on Nov 9 are marketed for children, featuring once more Mendelssohn’s string octet with its youthful verve. CMAS’ animateur E-van Yeung will conduct interactive activities to help children and families navigate the music. Mendelssohn was inspired by fairies and spells and loved William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The CMAS project is called dal segno, the Italian musical term instructing players to repeat a section of music from a symbol. It will continue to present music composed in the years till 1828 in the succeeding editions.

CMAS founder Tang Tee Khoon says: “It would be impossible for CMAS to let go of such an opportune time in history, to take these five years to look back exactly two centuries into the golden period of chamber music and the treasure trove of works this era gifted to humanity.”

Where: Esplanade Recital Studio, 1 Esplanade Drive; and Victoria Concert Hall, 11 Empress Place
MRT: Esplanade/Raffles Place
When: Nov 7 and 8, 8pm; Nov 9, 10am and noon
Admission: From $32
Info: 

str.sg/dRcz

Being Human: Forging Fields Of Experience

Taiwanese sculptor Liu Po-chun plays with scale and weight, presence and absence in this unusual activation of Helutrans Artspace at Tanjong Pagar Distripark.

Hundreds of little people, forged from industrial steel foraged from dumps, flex their muscles in a tessellated show of force. They come together to make a larger figure or are suspended in the air to form a thunderous cloud.

The exhibition is presented by Sculpture 2052 and curated by Dr Susie Lingham, who says these line figures seek to encapsulate both strength and self-doubting frailty. In shaping these silhouettes, the hardy material demands honesty and compromise from the artist.

There is spiritual resonance too, with these ironmen figures also possibly interpreted as the Jing Gang guardians of Buddha. One installation is 6m tall, comprising 188 figures weighing over 400kg.

Dr Lingham adds: “They are very much echoed in popular culture, whether as revisited mythologies like the Marvel gods in comics and movies, manga animation or in science fiction.”

They speak to fragile masculinity but their doubtless imposing aura also seems to say: There is strength in numbers.

Where: ArtSpace@ HeluTrans, 01-05 Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 39 Keppel Road
MRT: Tanjong Pagar
When: Till Nov 30, 9am to 6pm daily (lunch break from 1 to 2pm)
Admission: Free
Info: 

str.sg/Aqs47

Rewind

Actress Goh Guat Kian is a 64-year-old Singaporean woman battling cancer and wrestling with questions of self-worth and purpose in this play created by Phua Yun Yun at the Gateway Theatre Black Box.

Written by Neo Hai Bin and directed by theatremaker Li Xie, Rewind is a Mandarin play paying tribute to every cancer warrior.

Confronted with her mortality, protagonist Madam Ong is taken back to her schoolgirl dreams of basketball, dance and dressmaking, but finds that meaning must be sought in the present – not only for herself, but also her children and grandchildren.

Phua says: “Your illness doesn’t define your worth.”

Where: Gateway Theatre Black Box, 3615 Jalan Bukit Merah
MRT: Redhill
When: Nov 7, 7.30pm; Nov 8 and 9, 2 and 6.30pm
Admission: From $40
Info: 

str.sg/cArb