THE CARNIVAL OF ANIMALS / Piano Duo CieL / Review

 

THE CARNIVAL OF ANIMALS

Piano Duo CieL

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (17 August 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 August 2025 with the title "Piano Duo CieL combine kid-friendly programme with fine playing".

The modern piano’s ability to mimic the sounds or evoke the spirits of animals was the basis of this enjoyable recital for young people by the Seoul-based Piano Duo CieL. The husband-and-wife duo of Singaporean pianist Jared Liew Wei and South Korean pianist Juyen Chai was formed as recently at 2021, and has won various international prizes including being shortlisted finalists at the prestigious ARD Piano Duo Competition in Munich the same year.

Their recital opened with solo repertoire that was technically challenging and meant to be performed by adults. Take George Gershwin’s Promenade, also called Walking The Dog, played by Liew. It juggled between staccato and legato passages and involved rubato to imitate the stop and start nature of taking Rover out into the street.

Or Aaron Copland’s Scherzo Humoristique, or The Cat and the Mouse, performed by Chai, which had smooth gliding motions alternating with mad scampering. Guess which was the cat, and which was the mouse. Such music sparked the imagination, and piqued the curious child in listeners.

Birds featured prominently in the programme. Spanish composer Enrique Granados The Maiden and the Nightingale (from Goyescas) stirred up romantic ardour amid trilling birdsong by Liew. Mikhail Glinka’s The Lark in Mily Balakirev’s virtuosic transcription found Chai in scintillating form, which contrasted with the repetitious strutting of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s The Hen.

Even insects had a look in, with shorts by Francois Couperin (Le Moucheron or The Gnat), Alexander Scriabin (Mosquito, Op.42 No.3), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (the ubiquitous Flight of the Bumble Bee) and Edvard Grieg (Butterfly, Op.43 No.1), both pianists alternating pieces with technical adroitness and care for detail.

The inimitable classic was Liew’s account of Bela Bartok’s The Night's Music (from Out Of Doors) which eerily portrayed terrors of the dark, inhabited by rustling creepy crawlies, night bird hoots and croaking frogs. Listen more closely, one will also hear fidgeting children, handphones and arm-rests being dropped, and parents trying to maintain control.

Photo: Darrel Tan

The concert’s major work was Camille Saint-Saens’ The Carnival of Animals, uniting both pianists in its two-piano transcription. The original was written for two pianos with orchestral instruments, and some things are lost when there is neither cello (for The Swan), nor double-bass (The Elephant), clarinet (Cuckoo In The Woods) and xylophone (Fossils).

The duo nonetheless did the best on two keyboards, with some excellent results, such as the incessant clucking of Hens and Roosters, stampeding Wild Asses and the flowing fluid realm of Aquarium. Humans also appear in its 14 movements, not just Pianists practising scales badly but also the hilarious hee-hawing of Persons with Long Ears, which actually refers to music critics.

Photo: Darrel Tan

The uproarious Finale, which recapped exploits of earlier beasts, closed with those donkeys having the last laugh. After encouraging applause, the duo performed a lovely encore: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze in a neat and effective four-hand arrangement by Mary Howe.