Sunday 20 January 2019

NANYANG PIANO ACADEMY Opening Gala Concert / Review



NANYANG PIANO ACADEMY
Opening Gala Concert
Lee Foundation Theatre,
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts
Thursday (17 January 2019)

The first ever edition of the 3-day long Nanyang Piano Academy opened with a gala concert featuring members of its faculty, which included pedagogues from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) and visiting professors from several renowned music education institutions. It was a mini piano festival wrapped up within a two-hour long recital.


The recital opened with Singapore’s own Shaun Choo, now pursuing his Masters degree at the Salzburg Mozarteum, in Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C minor. A more confident and convincing performance would be hard to fine, with each of its very short variations carved out with lapidary care and finesse.


Next was a duo with NAFA Head of Piano Studies Lena Ching and her former student, the Juilliard-trained Nellie Seng in Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor. This has to be the greatest of hausmusik ever conceived, a work of utmost beauty yet imbued with a sense of dramatic seriousness. It was a good performance from the duo, however one wished for more a gemütlich feel in their reading, which pursued many notes with a grim determination albeit punctuated by moments of levity.


Nigel Clayton from London’s Royal College of Music closed the first half with Debussy’s Estampes and a selection from the George Gershwin Songbook. He was the only pianist to give a short preamble before the works, which was well-appreciated by the audience of young people and their parents. The contrasts in Pagodes, La Soiree dans Grenade and Jardins sous la pluie, representing the Far East, Spain and France were also well-brought out.

There was to be no improvisations in the Gershwin shorts, crafted like preludes, but Clayton took some liberties with repetitions, especially of melodies that were too nice to be heard just once. The clearly enthused audience was hit for six: I’ll Build A Stairway To Paradise, The Man I Love, Fascinatin’ Rhythm, Someone Loves Me, Do Do Do and I Got Rhythm.  


The longest work of the evening was Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, almost half-an-hour in duration, performed by Claudius Tanski, a German professor from the Salzburg Mozarteum. Clearly he has a firm grasp of its epic scope and architecture, knowing exactly where the music inexorably leads, and the wherewithal to conquer its multitudes of octaves and chords. Any performance of this behemoth runs the risk of being overwrought, and there were some brief lapses, from which he recovered well to complete the arduous journey.


The final solo came from Shaun Choo, where he let it rip in Chopin’s First Ballade. This was a most accomplished performance, and an individual one which benefited from his extrovert personality. Clearly a showman, he also did a bit of acting leading up to the evening’s communal encore, Albert Lavignac’s showboating Galop Marche for 8 hands, where he was joined by Lena Ching, Nellie Seng and Nicholas Ong making a brief cameo. It was a harmless bit of fluff, vulgar and filled with horseplay. Whoever said that serious classical pianists should not have a bit of fun? 



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