THE ROMANTIC PIANO VIRTUOSO
ALYSSA KOK Piano Recital
Esplanade Recital Studio
Tuesday (11 August 2026)
Very often, we as an audience get to experience a young prodigy perform in concert, often wondering what happens to them later in life. Chances they become doctors, lawyers, engineers et cetera, lost to the world of music. On a rare occasion, that prodigy blossoms to become a concert artist fair and true. This was the case with Singaporean pianist Alyssa Kok, whom I last heard in 2014. Twelve years on, she has graduated from the Salzburg Mozarteum University, later pursuing further studies in Poland. It was an absolute pleasure to see her again in concert.
Entitled The Romantic Piano Virtuoso, she waxed lyrical about two pivotal figures of early musical Romanticism, Fryderyk Chopin and Franz Liszt. She spoke most eloquently and engaged the audience on historical backgrounds and lives of both composers. She opened her recital with the Variations on La ci darem la mano (Op.2), the famous duet from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. An early work from 1827, it is impossibly fussy with filigreed ornamentation, where digital brilliance often trumped musical substance.
The solo version also includes orchestral tuttis, and there is a lot going on. An extended introduction soon ushers in the theme, which she plays plainly and without exaggeration, leading to six variations which get more florid as they come. Surmounting all the technical difficulties quite effortlessly, these included treacherous leaps from both hands in opposite directions in Variation 4, which must have given Schumann ideas for his Fantaisie Op.17. There was no loss of momentum all the way through to the final Alla Polacca, in the form of a striding polonaise for a blazing conclusion. Little wonder Schumann had exclaimed, “Hats off gentlemen, a genius!”
Coming from the polar end of Chopin’s output was the mature Sonata No.3 in B minor (Op.58) from 1844. By this time, Alyssa had sufficiently warmed up, bringing out quintessential qualities of Chopin’s Romanticism, contrasting fierce Polish nationalism with pure lyricism in the opening movement’s themes. She omitted the exposition repeat, going straight for the jugular in the development and the gambit worked wonders.
The swift etude-like Scherzo was dispatched with ease before baring the soul in the nocturne-like Largo, the true beating heart of the work. The final Rondo in tarantella rhythm was a return to scintillation, building up to a simply thrilling close. One can already imagine this passionate first half to be one straight out of the later rounds in the Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw.
Alyssa then emerged in a fire-engine red gown for a much shorter second half of music by Franz Liszt. She began with the popular Paganini Etude No.3, La Campanella, where the repeated finger leaps and extended trills held no terrors for her. Later, her account of running straight into a fiesta in Spain, wide-eyed and starry recollections, were relived in the blistering Rhapsodie Espagnole.
A symphonic poem for piano in all but name, the opening La Folia theme was delivered in full glory Technicolor, its massive octaves and chords coalescing into a satisfying whole before the more animated Jota Aragonesa took over. There was some loss of control at this blinding speed, but there was no doubt she was building to something monumental. Generating a big plethoric sonority that completely filled the hall, she brought her recital to a grandstanding close.
Her encore of Chopin’s achingly beautiful Nocturne in E major (Op.62 No.2) showed where her allegiances and empathies lay, in the lap of the long-suffering, consumptive Pole.
