HONG KONG'S ARISTO SHAM WINS CLIBURN GOLD!

Hong Kong pianist, 29-year-old ARISTO SHAM has just been awarded the Gold Medal (1st Prize) at the 2025 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. He bested 27 other pianists from around to world to clinch this covetous accolade, the first pianist from Hong Kong to do so. 

He also won the Audience Prize, this being a rare occasion when both the competition jury and audience concurred. In 2017, Hong Kong's Rachel Cheung, a non-medaling finalist, also won the hearts of the audience. Both pianists had been students of Eleanor Wong at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts.

The Silver Medal was awarded to Vasily Starikov (Israel/USA) and the Bronze Medal to Evren Ozel (USA). The three other finalists were Angel Stanislav Wang (USA), Carter Johnson (USA) and Philipp Lynov (Russia), the last of whom had earlier won 2nd prize winner at this year's Singapore International Piano Competition.

It was not a great surprise why Aristo won. His solid musicianship and sensitivity in a wide range of repertoire over the competition's six gruelling rounds (three recitals and three concertos), not including an earlier audition round, paved the way to ultimate victory. His humility, generous and sincere demeanor, and charismatic dress sense (a Horowitzian bow-tie and check out his socks!) also stood him out as an artist to look up to.   

Here to relive Aristo's performances 

in the Cliburn 2025:

Preliminary Round Recital

Quarter-Final Round Recital

Semi-Final Round Recital

Semi-Final Round: 

Mozart Piano Concerto No.23

Final Round I:

Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No.1

Final Round II:

Brahms Piano Concerto No.2

Interestingly, the last three editions of The Cliburn have been won by Asian pianists. Yunchan Lim and Yekwon Sunwoo, both from South Korea, were the winners in 2022 and 2017 respectively. The last non-Asian pianist to win was Vadym Kholodenko (Ukraine) in 2013. The 2009 edition was dominated by Asians, with Zhang Haochen (China) and Nobuyuki Tsujii (Japan) sharing Gold, and Yeol Eum Son (South Korea) winning Silver. The last pianist from the People's Republic of China to make the grand finals was Fei-Fei Dong in 2013.

Also significant in Cliburn 2025 was the first-ever appearance of a Malaysian pianist - Magdalene Ho. She was eliminated in the Preliminary Round, becoming a cause celebre of sorts but without sparking quite the same outrage as Ivo Pogorelich in Chopin 1980.

Here is Magdalene Ho's very interesting and curiously absorbing Preliminary Round recital. Judge for yourself. 

Ben Laude's now famous fume

 about Magdalene Ho's premature 

ejection from the Cliburn.

PURGATORY / L'arietta / Review

Namiko Chan Takahashi's portrait of
Reuben Lai as The Old Man
formed the cover of this production

PURGATORY

L'arietta

54 Waterloo Street

Tuesday (31 October 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 November 2017 with the title "Creepy enough for Halloween".

Halloween night was an apt occasion to witness local opera company L'arietta's production of Gordon Crosse's one-act opera Purgatory (1966), a musical setting to W.B.Yeats' disturbing play of the same title from 1938. Unlike last year's macabre barrel of laughs that was Operacalypse Now!, Purgatory was deadly serious, but made topical by director Eleanor Tan's transforming an Irish saga of familial decline and degeneration into a Peranakan one. 

The hour-long opera benefitted from the “immersive experience” offered to its audience, by means of acting, dance and portraiture in addition to purely musical values. Before the actual opera began, listeners were ushered into a Straits Chinese decorated ante-room where the back-story was played out. Well-heeled Nonya girl has an affair with a lowly commoner, but dies after giving birth to a son, who grows up to become the troubled Old Man in the opera. 

Singaporean tenor Reuben Lai must have gained a headful of white hair singing the Old Man, for this was the most exacting and convincing portrays of descent into psychosis even winessed on the local operatic stage. Jack Nicholson in Kubrick's cult horror movie The Shining readily comes to mind.

Opposite him, Malaysian tenor Peter Ong was the blase and not-so-innocent Boy, whose Oedipal antagonism with his father was clearly palpable. This uneasy chemistry between both stage veterans was excellent. The only female presence was provided by a 6-member women's chorus, representing the Old Man's dead mother and spirits of the dead who observed, reacted and commented on goings-on like some spectral Greek chorus.

Crosse's music was tonal but dissonant, much in the manner of Benjamin Britten. The chamber orchestra led by Aloysius Foong comprised cello, flute, keyboards and percussion, the latter providing ominous hoof-beats which spelt doom besides ratcheting up the ante to heart-stopping highs.

The set design by Grace Lin was darkly evocative, dominated by an arc of wooden slats from a burnt-down house under the shade of a haunted banyan tree, which revealed a hung skeleton during the latter stages. Only the taped Balinese music that accompanied random village scenes before the opera came across as misplaced.

It is said that the sins of the father are visited upon the children, and it was the premise of the Old Man (who as a 16-year-old had killed his own father) to stop that endless cycle of death and free his mother's soul from purgatory. The purging of his emotions and downward spiral, so vividly played by Lai, would lead to another death in his hand, but could two wrongs ever make a right?

Short as this opera was, there was no shortage of dramatic tension and one was led on a noose to its bitter denouement. This was so effective that one individual in the front row was seen to make convulsive stabbing motions all through to the end. If that does not give one the Halloween creeps, nothing else will.  

Purgatory plays till Sunday 

at 54 Waterloo Street. 

PIANO RECITAL BY STUDENTS OF ELEANOR WONG / THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL 2013 / Review

THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL 2013

Here I am back in Hong Kong for another helping of musical treats organised by the Chopin Society of Hong Kong – The Joy of Music Festival, and held at Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall. Primarily an international piano festival centred around the 1^st prizewinners of the Hong Kong International Piano Competition (which the Society also organisers) and other laureates, it also features chamber music, which have been an added delight.

Monday (14 October 2013)

Recital by Past and Present

Students Of Eleanor Wong

The festival opened with a recital by four piano students of leading Hong Kong pedagogue Eleanor Wong from the HK Academy of Performing Arts. Her students have won important prizes at major international piano competitions and represent the acme of Hong Kong’s piano talents.

Johnson Li Zhong Xin (above), only eleven years old, has been tipped to be the next Lang Lang, having been taken under the wing by the Chinese phenom himself. That might just be an underestimation, as I think he may be the next Glenn Gould. In Bach’s French Suite No.5 in G major, one would expect note perfection and rhythmic accuracy at the very least. He delivers those and more. He sounds like he knows exactly what he wants to achieve, and how to get it without affectation or extraneous gestures. He strides confidently on stage like a pugilist and sits at the edge of the piano stool; his feet barely touch the pedals and he cannot sit any higher! His sound is clear, the notes and passages are precisely articulated without idiosyncrasy or other effects that colour Gould’s playing. After the breathless Gigue, he followed with Chopin’s First Impromptu in A flat major (Op.29) which showed he understood the nuances of rubato and the suppleness of tonal colour. Li is certainly not a cookie-cutter prodigy, and I expect to hear more from him in years to come.  

Tsang Hin Yat, 20 this year, has also gone by the name of Mozar Tsang (Mozart sang, get it?). He is nattily attired in white, looking every bit the part of a cruise ship pianist or a Liberace wannabe (minus the candelabra). Thankfully, his playing is as serious as they get, beginning with Samuel Barber’s Nocturne, a night piece in homage of John Field rather than Chopin. He shades the short but dark work quite beautifully, bringing out its subtle dissonances over an uneasy calm of cantabile, before drawing out a brief but turbulent centre. His big work is Schumann’s Humoreske (Op.20), the longest work of the evening, and one not easily programmed within the confines of a recital. Its half-hour could be laborious listening, but Tsang varied its myriad moods and sections well. Schumann sang in the achingly lyrical opening and the ensuing allegro was well contrasted. In short, he made one listen through its longeurs and his technique is well up to the work’s demands. Only the final section came across as repetitious but that was before he romped home on a spirited high. Perhaps we can hear some “Schuber Tsang” from this fine young artist.    

Professor Eleanor Wong with her students, (from left)
Colleen Lee, Rachel Cheung, Mozar Tsang and Li Zhong Xin.

Rachel Cheung, now 22 but a finalist in the Leeds International Piano Competition as a teenager, is already a celebrity of sorts in the SAR. Her recital comprised two 20^th century sonatas. Leos Janacek’s Sonata “On The Street” was conceived as a requiem in memory of a worker killed in a 1905 riot in Brno. Overlooking its socialist overtones, it is a dark and bitter work in which Cheung was sensitive to its every note and phrase. The sense of foreboding was ever-present and she maintained that tension quite expertly without going into overdrive. The “Death” as portrayed in the second movement was swift and violent (as murders tend to be) and the catharsis seemingly unresolved (as all premature deaths are) by the work’s quiet end. Almost completely different in tone and mood, but equally convincing in performance, was Bartok’s Sonata. To these ears, Cheung’s take was refreshingly free of the usual percussiveness and banging, the sharp and angular contours smoothed over by a musicality that was utterly convincing. The slow movement was plain-speaking, and although I don’t know the Hungarian language, I can only guess what she was saying would have been a result of her two years of studying with Peter Frankl at Yale. Similarly, the relentless pursuit in the finale impressed by its sheer pace and stamina, and again in full control of all faculties.

Colleen Lee is the senior colleague in this company, having just crossed over the competition circuit age-group into the reality of adult concert life. What she has won in terms of prizes was brought to bear in her recital; she is a finished product of years of studies, training and competing. And she is a totally musical soul, as her reading of Cesar Franck’s Prelude, Choral and Fugue showed, with full attention paid to colour, texture and sonority. The spirituality of its musical language shone through in its lachrymose themes, arriving radiantly in the arpeggiated Choral section. Through the dizzying fog of the final Fugue, light and clarity - not to mention digital brilliance - illuminated the way.

By now the audience had been treated to music from the Baroque to the 20^th century, and it was for Lee to finish off with a living composer’s music. The choice of Nikolai Kapustin’s Variations was totally astute, given that its subject is that opening bassoon melody from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, the centenary of which is celebrated in this festival. Her approach was cool, even nonchalant, but that allowed much of the grace notes and harmonic nuances to be better savoured, and when the heat was on, she turned on the quintessential jazzman’s swagger to complete the concert with great aplomb.

HK Chopin Society President Dr Andrew Freris
with the score of Lavignac's 8-hands masterpiece.

Hong Kong has very much to be proud about with its surfeit of piano talent, and Eleanor Wong was rightly acknowledged for her inimitable contributions. All four pianists finally converged on the single Steinway keyboard for the delicious and totally frivolous Gallop-Marche by Albert Lavignac which brought down the house. Now that is something the ex-Bukit Damai piano quartet of Neil, Boris, Etienne and yours truly should try out sometime! 

RACHEL CHEUNG Piano Recital @ The Joy of Music Festival 2006 / Review

RACHEL CHEUNG has just been awarded the 5th Prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition 2009. She made history by being the first pianist from Hong Kong to reach the final of this competition. Here is the review of her solo piano recital in 2006 which I wrote for The Flying Inkpot.

RACHEL CHEUNG Piano Recital

@ The Joy of Music Festival 2006

14 December 2006

Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall

The Joy of Music. What a great and totally appropriate name for a music festival! TJOM is a 10-day piano-cum-chamber music festival organised by The Chopin Society of Hong Kong, the very same people who inspired the first Hong Kong International Piano Competition held in September 2005. Ambitious, all-encompassing, eclectic and inspirational were just some adjectives that came to mind to describe the scope of this very commendable enterprise that attempted to inject some culture and sanity in a metropolis trapped in the frenzied throes of festive shopping and hyper-commercialisation.

My healthy dose of pre-Christmas musical sustenance began with a solo recital by Hong Kong’s pre-eminent young pianist, 15-year-old Rachel Cheung. She was the 1st prizewinner of the Gina Bachauer Junior Artists Piano Competition in 2004, and her photograph was splashed on the pages of International Piano. In 2005, she also became the youngest pianist ever to give a solo recital at the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

Was she up to all the hype? Yes, very much so. With a confident stage demeanor, impeccable deportment and totally winning musicianship, Rachel could be described as every piano teacher’s dream.

Beginning her recital with Mozart, the Fantasia in C minor K.396 was characterised more by the polish of the playing rather than sheer interpretive insight. It was more Romantically inclined, with generous use of the sostenuto pedal and not a little rubato. And she does not shy away from making a big sound. 

The Sonata in D major K.576, Mozart’s last, highlighted a fine and fluid technique that found her most comfortable with the running notes in the outer movements. The song-like slow movement “flowed like oil”, but and she could have done more to vary her tonal colour as her well-spun notes remained on much a single plane. It is said that Mozart Sonatas are too easy for amateurs but too difficult for professionals, and Rachel has just about crossed that threshold.

Her Liszt selection posed some questions of balance. Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude (from Harmonies poetiques et religieuses) is one of Liszt’s greatest and most sublime works. In this lush slow extended movement, her right hand filigree was just about ideal, maintaining a finest pianissimo possible while the left hand baritone melody struggled – in vain – against sounding stodgy. Although she managed to bring the work to an impassioned climax, the overall impression was a mixed one. Perhaps she is not totally ready for this piece. The great Claudio Arrau also had similar problems in his recording, so Rachel is in good company.

No ifs or buts in the Two Concert Études, the second of which – Gnomenreigen - received a totally stupendous performance. Staccatissimo e scherzandissimo, Rachel’s goblins are of the supersonic kind, progenitors of the wildest and naughtiest antics, and capable of leaping over Victoria Harbour and IFC 2 (HK's tallest building) in a single bound. I cannot possibly imagine it being better played.

Rachel Cheung with her teacher

Eleanor Wong (right) and Annarosa Taddei.

(Photo taken in December 2007)

The second half showed the same promise. In Schubert’s Three Pieces (Drei Klavierstücke, D.946), she alternated between muscular, big-boned playing and lyrical beauty of the cantabile kind, with all the contrasts well brought out. In the third piece, there was drama and humour, suggesting that she is fully immersed in and has a full measure of Schubert’s idiom. More of the same please.

The obligatory Chopin included Four Mazurkas Op.24, which despite their beguiling simplicity, housed a world of nostalgia and deep-seated emotions. “Cannons in flowers” was Schumann’s aphorism and Rachel did much to reveal their melancholy, mystery and a muted kind of playfulness. 

The large work, Ballade No.4 in F minor (Op.52), however felt too deliberate. Refusing to go headlong into rapturous elaborations of the main theme, Rachel remained on a slow boil throughout until the climactic three chords just before the tumultuous coda. Unfortunately, the tightly wound-up spring had gotten loose and the desired impact had slipped away. She has no problems technically with the piece, but will need to work on its delivery. Like a good stand-up comic, always keep the audience hooked on your story and later slay them with a totally wicked punchline.

The recital proper ended with Poulenc’s Trois Pieces (composer pictured left). Her dreamily impressionistic vision of the languorous Pastorale suggested she might revel in Szymanowski, while the triumphant chords of the Hymne pointed to her probably having heard and enjoyed Poulenc’s Gloria (If not, she ought to!). But it was the sewing-machine prestidigitations of the Toccata that seemed to impress the most – there is hardly any technical difficulty that fazes Rachel – even if the memories of Vladimir Horowitz or Pascal Rogé are not effaced.

There were two encores: a ubiquitous Chinese melody (Autumn Moon on a Calm Lake) and more sewing machine music - Poulenc’s Mouvement perpetuel No.1 - played with the keen spirit and verve that distinguishes the young.

Rachel Cheung is by no means a finished artist. And that is the good news. Her teacher Eleanor Wong is doing a fine, fine job. She will – with the further guidance, inspiration and in her own time – grow and further develop as a musician. The sky’s the limit for her, so it would be a total pleasure to witness her again in three to five years.

Rachel Cheung's début solo recital CD will be issued on the Alpha Omega Music label in October 2009.