Opening Gala Concert
Lee Foundation Theatre,
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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