MARK CHENG Piano Recital / Review

 

MARK CHENG Piano Recital 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Saturday (14 September 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 September 2024 with the title "Mark Cheng's recital boasts unusual programme but restrained delivery".

Lovers of rarely performed piano music in Singapore would have over recent years noticed that the most varied and exotic of recital programmes are not offered by concert pianists, or people who make a living from professional music making. 

Instead, the most intrepid recitals have come from Clarisse Teo (lawyer by training), Jefferson Darmawan (scientist) and most recently Mark Cheng, who is also an attorney. All three are united by being alumni of the National University of Singapore Piano Ensemble and students of Timothy Ku, locally based pianist known for exploring daring and offbeat repertoire. 

True to form, Cheng’s recital offered no Bach, Beethoven, Chopin or Rachmaninov. Instead he opened with Frenchman Gabriel Fauré’s Ballade in F sharp major (Op.19), a work of lush lyricism but notorious for multitudes of ornamentations which get denser as it progresses. While assiduously maintaining a singing line, his playing was hampered by over-pedalling, causing a smudging of textures and loss of clarity. This need not have been so as his technical command was secure and there were little or no indiscretions to hide. 

One remembers an infamous incident when a famous French pianist (Marie-Francoise Bucquet) performing this work with the Singapore Symphony during the early 1980s coming to grief by grinding to a complete halt. Cheng had no such issues, his phenomenal memory serving him well to the last note. 

Just as tricky were six varied short pieces from Forgotten Melodies (Vergessene Weisen, Op.38) by Nikolai Medtner, known as the “Russian Brahms” for his attention to serious compositional form. These were dances and songs, with recurring themes that unite the pieces. Cheng found a syncopated lilt in Danza Graziosa, delighting in bell-like sonorities in the celebratory Danza Festiva before playfully toying with the canonic form of Danza Rustica. 

After wallowing in the gorgeous melody of Canzona Serenata, there was a donning of fairies’ dancing shoes in the animated Danza Silvestra, a true scherzo in every sense. Given the freedoms afforded, one just wished Cheng could have broken out from a somewhat constricted bandwidth to further express himself. 

After the intermission, the recital was completed by the Four Rhapsodies (Op.11) of Erno Dohnanyi, considered by many as the “Hungarian Brahms”. This very substantial work plays like a four-movement sonata, with dark-hued passion worn on the sleeve in its opening. Finally the smily Cheng would emerge from his protective shell by taking some risks, and he did so while still exhibiting sensitivity and lovingly detailed counterpoint in the brooding second piece. 

The march-like Third Rhapsody in C major was Dohnanyi’s piece de resistance, a favourite encore of esteemed British pianists like Martin Roscoe and Joseph Cooper. Cheng should have just let it rip, however his restraint and politeness stood in its imperious way. 

The last piece used the Dies Irae medieval chant (as in Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody), and also relived themes from earlier movements. A sort of musical memento mori (a reminder of mortality), Cheng’s fondness of the sustaining pedal finally became wholly appropriate as his fascinating recital drew to a sonorous close.

Pianophiles unite!