30TH SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO FESTIVAL: ASHLEY WASS & MEI YI FOO Piano Recitals / Review

 

ASHLEY WASS Piano Recital 

MEI YI FOO Piano Recital 

30th Singapore 

International Piano Festival 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Saturday & Sunday (8 & 9 June 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 June 2024 with the title "Singapore International Piano Festival closes with first-rate recitals".

One of the more absorbing aspects at the Singapore International Piano Festival is that listeners will find common thematic threads linking each of the recitals. The third evening with British pianist Ashley Wass had late Beethoven, variations and fugues, all encountered in previous evenings, conferring cohesion to the series as a whole. 

Beethoven’s Sonata No.30 in E major (Op.109) is perhaps the most Romantic of his final trilogy. Its music lends wider scope of interpretation while leaving behind classical era constraints. Wass made it sound like a work from the mid-19th century although it was actually composed in 1820. 

Contrasts between its opening mellowness and the second movement’s violence could not be more stark, but it was the finale’s chorale theme and variations which truly sung and shone in Wass’ masterly reading. It had nuance, colour and humour, not to mention a kaleidoscopic view of Beethoven’s emotional upheavals. 

Photo: Clive Choo

The choice of two Preludes and Fugues (Op.87) by Dmitri Shostakovich was a curious one but worked very well. No.4 (E minor) and No.24 (D minor) were two of his more monumental numbers, shorn of his usual anarchic levity, but Wass handled the mounting polyphony with great aplomb. 

One will not find a more dead-serious reading of Robert Schumann’s popular Kinderszenen (Scenes From Childhood), treated by Wass as a world-weary gaze into a distant past. No child’s play here, for the familiar Traumerei (Dreaming) rang with melancholy, Child Falling Asleep foresaw looming mortality, while The Poet Speaks became the reading of a last will and testament. 

Wass’ recital closed with a luminous account of Cesar Franck’s Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, almost a summation of earlier themes, dressed up in rich organ-like sonorities. J.S.Bach would have been proud. Two gorgeously harmonised transcriptions by Percy Grainger as encores gave the evening a more cheery end. 

Photo: Clive Choo

The festival’s final recital was helmed by Malaysian pianist Mei Yi Foo in an uncompromisingly modern programme. Its eclectic mix of tonal and atonal 20th and 21st century works may appear forbidding and turn away concertgoers but in the right hands can be made to sound irresistible, which Foo emphatically proved. 

A childhood link with the previous evening’s recital came in Maurice Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite in Jacques Charlot’s transcription. Its innocence and simplicity came through with utter clarity, not least in the gamelan-like sonorities of Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas and the tenderly gauche waltz in Conversations of Beauty and the Beast. 

Korean composer Unsuk Chin’s Six Etudes found Foo was in super-virtuoso mode, nailing its unforgiving thickets of hypercharged notes with the most natural of ease. These treacherous finger-twisters were mirrored by Italian avant-gardeist Luciano Berio’s Six Encores, which had fewer notes but still fiendishly difficult, especially the flighty Luftklavier and scintillating Feuerklavier. 

How Mei Yi's scores
stacked up for her recital's second half

All these made Bela Bartok’s Out Of Doors, a five-movement suite with folksy rhythms, steely percussiveness and spectral night effects sound positively poetic and inviting. Foo closed her recital with the most physically demanding movement from Olivier Messiaen’s Twenty Looks of the Infant Jesus, The Look of the Spirit of Joy. Its nine minutes may modestly be described as an ultimate joyous orgy of sound. 

After four exhausting evenings of exquisite pianism, the Singapore International Piano Festival remains more vital and relevant than ever. Its inimitable varieties and synergies of artists and programming, educational and inspirational value, make it an invaluable institution that will hopefully endure for a long time to come. 

Encores 

ASHLEY WASS (8 June 2024) 

FAURE-GRAINGER Apres un reve 

TRAD-GRAINGER 

   Irish Tune from County Derry (Danny Boy) 

MEI YI FOO (9 June 2024) 

J.S.BACH Sarabande, Minuet I & II 

   from Partita No.1

30TH SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO FESTIVAL: JIN JU & YEOL EUM SON Piano Recitals / Review

 

JIN JU Piano Recital 

YEOL EUM SON Piano Recital 

30th Singapore 

International Piano Festival 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Thursday & Friday (6 & 7 June 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 June 2024 with the title "Yeol Eum Son and Jin Ju shine at Singapore International Piano Festival".

With so many solo piano recitals featuring marquee artists by independent presenters taking place of late, one wonders whether the Singapore International Piano Festival (SIPF) is still relevant. Long regarded as Singapore’s premier piano event since its 1994 inauguration, has it lost its shine? 

Murmurings among some pianophiles have it that this year’s edition – its 30th - was lackluster, with supposedly a paucity of renowned soloists. Did Piotr Anderszewski and Dang Thai Son, well-known names, perform just recently at Victoria Concert Hall? Yes, but they were presented by Altenburg Arts, curated by former SIPF director Lionel Choi. 

Current director Lim Yan’s festival opened with Chinese pianist Jin Ju, a Tchaikovsky Competition laureate presently based in Italy. She may not be a “big name”, but is possessed with a big technique. Only the most confident of souls would begin a recital with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, a solid 50 minutes of continuous barnstorming. 

Photo: Nathaniel Lim

She immediately nailed her colours to the mast by playing around with publisher Anton Diabelli’s banal waltz theme, applying liberal rubato and exaggerating the left hand accompaniment. It was a way of saying, “this is going to be different”. The fast variations raced to see which was the swiftest while the slower variations were given a latitude that seemed almost improvisatory. A furious fugue and ironic minuet to close was proof of Beethoven’s maverick genius. 

Even better was to come with Frederic Chopin’s Third Sonata in B minor (Op.58). This was a full-blooded reading where the slow movement brooded on raw passion and the Rondo finale built upon boundless reserves of adrenaline. Seldom have Johannes Brahms’ Seven Fantasies (Op.116), late short pieces, resounded with more big-boned passion and heft. The evening concluded with five generous encores played to a smallish house. 

Jin Ju beckons her audience
to go home, after the fifth encore.

Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son, winner at multiple international competitions, was arguably the “biggest” name of four artists, hence a well-filled hall. A common theme of variations and Beethoven from the previous evening carried over with Georges Bizet’s Variations Chromatiques. 

The art of writing variations is abetted by an imaginative pianist who can bring out myriad nuances with a spirit of discovery and humour. With French eccentric Charles-Valentin Alkan’s Variations on a Theme by Steibelt and Carl Czerny’s Variations on a Theme by Rode “La Ricordanza” getting increasingly more florid by the minute, Son became the perfect guide. Her limpid articulation and immaculate pearly runs made these note-spinning potboilers worth listening to. 

Franz Liszt’s Ricordanza, the ninth of 12 Transcendental Etudes, was not so much a variation but a metamorphosis. Its transformation into a sublime tone poem was made complete with Son’s sense of poetry and silky-smooth arpeggios. 

Watch this video of the Liszt:

Literally the
Hair-merklavier Sonata

The evening’s highlight was Beethoven’s monumental Sonata No.29 in B flat major (Op.106), better known as the Hammerklavier, also his longest sonata. Its four movements, running over 45 minutes, could sound like an inchoate mess, but Son’s account was admirable for her sense of architecture and adventure. 

Hers was a young artist’s reading of an ageing man’s rants and raves, capturing impetuosity and impatience to equal degree in its first two movements. When it came to gravitas, she delivered with dividends in the Adagio sostenuto, with brooding and restless rumination at its heart, before giving way to the fugue to end all fugues. A mightily impressive show all round. 

Encores: 

JIN JU (6 June 2024) 

CHOPIN Nocturne in E flat major, Op.55 No.2 

LISZT Transcendental Etude No.10 in F minor 

TCHAIKOVSKY October (Autumn Song) 

   from The Seasons

D.SCARLATTI Sonata in C major, K.159 “Chase” 

LI YING HAI 庆翻身 Qing Fan Shen 

   (Celebrating Freedom) 

YEOL EUM SON (7 June 2024) 

MOSZKOWSKI Etincelles, Op.36 No.6 

   (with Vladimir Horowitz ending)