Chloe Chua: Butterfly Lovers & Paganini
Pentatone

To say that Chloe Chua's star has risen rapidly hardly captures it. Born in January 2007, the Singaporean violin prodigy was eleven years old when she was awarded the joint first prize at the 2018 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists. Five years later, she issued her recording debut with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in performances of Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Locatelli's Harmonic Labyrinth and now follows it with her sophomore Pentatone release, this one coupling Niccolò Paganini's Violin Concerto No. 1 with Chen Gang and He Zhanhao's Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto and Gang's Sunshine Over Tashkurgan. She reunites with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra on the album, with Mario Venzago conducting the Paganini work and Rodolfo Barráez the other.

Not yet eighteen, Chua has already accomplished much. Preternaturally mature and poised, she possesses a staggering technical ability but also an emotional grasp and musicality one more associates with someone twice her age. As she delivers one stunning turn after another during the Paganini concerto, don't be surprised if you're awed by the amazing feats she accomplishes with seeming ease. It's in her performance of Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto that Chua's expressive side is more called upon, however. Yes, there are again dazzling displays of technique, but to do justice to the music's rhapsodic character requires an emotional sensitivity and connection to the material that the young violinist clearly possesses. That Chua already had a history with the work—long ago she heard one of her granduncle's grandchildren play an excerpt from it at a family gathering—no doubt helped as she prepared for its recording.

She's also in excellent hands with Barráez, Venzago, and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO). Her comfort level with the latter was no doubt fortified by her role as Artist-In-Residence with the company during its 2022/23 and 2023/24 seasons. Found in 1979, the SSO has released over fifty recordings (thirty on the BIS label, including a terrific recent rendering of Herrmann's Wuthering Heights) and two years ago was deemed one of the twenty-three best orchestras in the world by BBC Music Magazine. The Berlin-based Venezuelan conductor Barráez is currently Assistant Conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and is Conductor-in-Residence at the Paris Opera. A composer as well as conductor, Venzago was the Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Bern Symphony Orchestra until summer 2021 and has conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and many others.

Composed by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao in 1959, the writing of the seven-part Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto was inspired by a romantic saga often described as the Romeo and Juliet of ancient China. Now considered one of the most renowned pieces of Chinese classical music, the work combines elements of Western classical and Chinese opera. There are also moments where one might be reminded of Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, which, interestingly, Chua performed in April 2021 at Singapore's Victoria Concert Hall in an all-English composers programme. That occurs at the beginning when Jin Ta's trilling flute suggests birdsong and the orchestral writing conjures images of pastoral countrysides. The Chinese classical element surfaces quickly thereafter in the sweetly singing glissandos Chua contributes during her poignant entrance. Heartfelt expressions by both soloist and orchestra amplify the Chinese connection whilst also recalling the tranquil splendour of the Williams work. Both parties romp confidently through the allegro movement after the opening adagio, and the animated movement also showcases Chua's breathtaking technique in the rapidity of her bowing. Serenity returns for the “Adagio assai doloroso” before things take a dramatic turn in the frenetic fourth movement, marked “Pesante – piu mosso – duramente.” The alternation between frenzy and tranquility continues as the work moves towards its rapturous final adagio, the fifth movement (“Lagrimoso”) moving in its tenderness and the sixth (“Presto resoluto”) as rousing as a country hoedown. Regardless of the demands imposed by the work's extreme tonal shifts, Chua rides the music's challenging waves like one born to it.

Occupying the album's centre position is Gang's Sunshine Over Tashkurgan (1976, orchestrated by Yang Li Qing), an infectious rhythm-charged setting that offers Chua a ravishing, eight-minute showcase for her scintillating technique. At album's close is Paganini's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 6 (1815), written in an Italian bel canto style and structured in three parts. While its florid second and impish third movements aren't lacking for impact, it's the twenty-three minute first that's the work's major attention-getter. After the orchestra sets the scene with a graceful, Mozart-like intro, Chua enters three minutes in and then establishes her presence with authority. Pitch-perfect intonation, expertly executed double stops, light-speed scalar runs, upper-register acrobatics, and a flamboyant cadenza make for an utterly engrossing performance by the soloist, and the bowed flourishes she so brilliantly executes in the rondo-styled third movement are no less ear-catching. That Chua is already performing so impressively, not only technically but also expressively, augurs well for what's to come. Certainly the remarkable level at which she plays on this Pentatone outing suggests she has the ability to realize whatever future goals she sets for herself.

August 2024