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Making
History: how the project began
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About the pieces:
Detailed Track Information
15.
Toccata from 3 KL Miniatures (1995, rev 2006)
for String Quartet
CH Loh
Aroha Quartet:
Liu Haihong (violin I), Xue Beiyi (violin II), Jin Zhongxian
(viola), Cheng Jiaxin (cello)
Premiere performance recorded on 9 February 2007 in St Andrews
Church, Wellington, by Roy Carr as part of the Asia Pacific
Festival and Composers' Conference. This recording was supplied
by Radio New Zealand Concert
Originally composed in 1995, the Toccata was the first
of a series of satiric miniatures based on Malaysian life. At
the time, it was difficult to find a piece of contemporary music
written from a Malaysian perspective, and the KL Miniatures
aimed to fill that niche. A new copy was prepared when Prof
Jack Body, New Zealand composer and the Artistic Director of
the Asia Pacific Festival 07 secured a performance of the work
in Wellington in February 2007, where it finally received its
world premiere.
Writes Nick Choo in a review in Off The Edge June 07 entitled
Faith, Hope & Chaos, "At its most sinister,
it conjures darkly comic images of spiders, the accompaniment
reminiscent of scurrying legs, at once both deadly and beautiful...At
its most effervescent, it is a paean to commotion, to madness
- and to city living: planned and methodical, messy and unpredictable."
The 3 KL Miniatures will be left unfinished as a monument to
the many composers of the past decade who had given up the life
of art for one of practical survival.
The Composer
CH Loh studied music playing the tuba with several
top symphonic bands in Singapore from the 80s to the 90s. His
mentor Hong Kong-born conductor Luk Hoi Yui, former principal
horn player of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and leading
band instructor in Singapore, encouraged him to pursue composition,
and commissioned several band transcriptions including the Yellow
River Concerto and Hong Wu Capriccio for Violin and Band.
Loh is also a music columnist who has written extensively on
Malaysian music over the past 15 years. This anthology is a
culmination of a decade of writing about Malaysian composers,
and is dedicated to the memory of his father Loh Kum Wah, who
passed away on 3 August 2007 before he had the chance to see
this CD in print.
The Performers
 The
Aroha
Quartet are four great friends, all originally from China
and now members of New Zealand's two main orchestras, who get
together to present string quartet music. "Aroha"
is the Maori word for "love" and these four passionate
musicians aim to propagate the love for music in their beautiful
country of adoption.
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Making
History: how the project began
About the pieces
About
the recordings
Press coverage
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