NATIONAL PIANO &
VIOLIN COMPETITION 2013
PIANO ARTIST CATEGORY FINALS
Sunday (8 December 2013)
The grand final of the Piano
Artist Category of the biannual National Piano & Violin Competition is the
closest thing one gets to the final round of any international piano
competition. Three finalists get to play a full length concerto with an
orchestra, a formula which also applied to international competitions I have
attended in London and Shanghai .
For years, it has been the grand showcase of piano talent in Singapore
and the previous finals have been memorable to say the least. This year it was
even better.
In some ways, this seemed like a
repeat of the 2007 finals held at the Victoria Concert Hall. That edition
pitted Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto
(played by a Chinese student from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts) against
Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20 (by a
student from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory), with a Grieg Piano Concerto as an also-ran. On that December evening, the
Tchaikovsky triumphed.
Due to the order in which
participants had drawn earlier, it was the Tchaikovsky that opened this final,
accompanied by the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra conducted by Chan Tze Law.
NAFA’s Wan Jing Jing (China )
was a rock solid soloist, comfortably issuing big chords that thundered through
the orchestra’s majestic statement of the main theme. The early cadenza was
dispatched with relative ease. A crying baby (why are they even allowed entry?)
did little to faze this assured young lady on her mission. There were a few
missed notes in the long cadenza at the end of the first movement, but that
mattered little.
The main problem with this
warhorse of a concerto is that it calls for big gestures through most of its
pages, stampeding octaves, emotionally driven romantic clichés and the like all
worn heart-on-sleeve. Wan delivered these with true weight and aplomb, but the
overall effect with her and the orchestra operating at full blast in this
reverberant hall was one of sensory overload and exhaustion.
Some respite came in the second
movement, where the serene opening theme was well contrasted with the
quicksilver prestissimo central
interlude. The rollicking finale was also well pulled off, with the orchestra
build up towards the final salvo of octaves being one of the work’s most
thrilling moments. Wan did not disappoint, and even though she could develop
further by bringing more nuances to this less-than-subtle work, this was job
well done.
There was a good reason why
Camille Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano
Concerto was not on the list of concertos for the last three editions of
the competition. It was the 2005 final which infamously featured three consecutive performances of the
piece, each worse than the last. It made for a mind-numbing concert that nobody
was keen to repeat. Thankfully Yap Sin
Yee (Malaysia )
gave a swashbuckling performance that topped all three of those, thus restoring
some faith to the superficial delights of this work.
“Bach to Offenbach ”
is the apt description applied to the concerto’s journey from sobriety to
outright frivolity, one which Yap understood well and
took to her heart. The opening G minor cadenza with its long held pedal-note was
delivered in its full gothic glory. Hardly a note was missed in the loud parts
of the first movement, but it was the fairy-tale lightness in the quieter
passages that impressed. While the second movement’s scherzo could have done with more crispness, the waltz-like soft
centre was milked to its max. Any more sentimentality would have been a descent
into schmaltz, a fine line which the performers treaded quite gingerly.
Any
doubts as to this performance were dispelled in the tarantella finale, which
saw Yap flying off the blocks at a furious pace. How she
maintained this momentum from frenzied start to scintillating end was a
testament to her athletic prowess, but one which took all musical
considerations in the stride. Amid the chase, there was humour and an
ebullience that sparkled like champagne.
Singapore’s hopes lay in Jonathan Shin who cut a supremely
confident figure in Mozart’s Piano
Concerto No.20 in D minor (K.466). He was informally attired and looked
like an epitome of coolness. The playing was however one of warmth and svelte
elegance, though he closely identified with the music’s sturm und drang. Making the music come alive, with its emphasis on
natural flow and innate urgency, there was no resorting to ear-catching agogics
or exaggerated accents. The Beethoven cadenza was well-chosen, dramatic and
trenchant in its delivery.
The slow movement’s Romanze was poetically shaded, and if
there were a minor quibble, he could have stirred up the turbulent central G
minor a bit more to show up the movement’s contrasts. The finale was a return
to the first movement’s dramatics, and while some thought that it was taken too
fast, I felt that he maintained the movement’s tension well, culminating with
an excellent cadenza. In certain ways, this was for me the most satisfying
performance of the afternoon. This was not because Shin did not put a foot
wrong, but because Mozart is so darned hard to interpret convincingly. He seemed
to get everything just right.
So how does one decide between a
sturdy Tchaikovsky, a rip-roaring Saint-Saëns and an urbane Mozart? I don’t for
a moment envy the jury of Gennady Dzubenko, Dean Kramer and Ick Choo Moon who
have to judge these things. For myself, and those fortunate to have attended
the final, this has been a most absorbing concert – perhaps the best final in
years. The result had to be a close one, and here are the placings:
3. Jonathan Shin in Mozart 20
2. Wan Jing Jing in Tchaikovsky 1
1. Yap Sin Yee in Saint-Saëns 2
 |
| The moment when Yap Sin Yee finds out she has won. |
Congratulations are in order to
all the pianists, as well as the semi-finalists (I heard another three) who
have set a very high overall standard for the cohort of 2015 to emulate. Till
the next time!
 |
| All the three winners (from L): Wan Jing Jing, Yap Sin Yee & Jonathan Shin |
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