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

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, May 2013)

 

MUSICAL TOYS

MEI YI FOO, Piano

Odracek Records 1799302 / ****1/2

 

This is an excellent introduction to the genre of piano miniatures in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. The earliest music is the Hungarian Gyorgy Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata (1951-53), short disparate numbers that progress according to the number of tones used, from just two notes in the first piece to all 12 tones in a chromatic scale for the eleventh. From the old Soviet Union comes Musical Toys (1969) by Sofia Gubaidulina, 14 quite charming visions related to memories of childhood and playtime. Various styles are evoked, including boogie woogie in A Bear Playing The Double Bass and a droll Shostakovich-like march in The Drummer.

 

Anything but child’s play are the Six Piano Etudes (1995-2003) of Korean composer Unsuk Chin, here receiving their world premiere recording. These carry on the hallowed tradition of the 20^th century study, exploring a variety of tonal textures and rhythms in the manner of Ligeti. Modern sounding these are, but rather accessible to a first-time listener. The London-based pianist Mei Yi Foo (left), originally from Seremban, exhibits intelligence in programming, sensitivity of touch, digital brilliance and tonal allure. She provides her preferred order of the 31 pieces to be heard in sequence but one can also listen straight through. Either would still provide an illuminating experience. This CD may be purchased through online retailers.

This CD won the BBC Music Magazine's Best Newcomer Award in 2013.

GREAT PIANO CONCERTOS

Naxos 8.501056 (10 CDs) / ***1/2

In the Naxos 25^th anniversary survey of the piano concerto, two pianists stand out: the Hungarian Jeno Jando and Turk Idil Biret. Both are the Hong Kong-based label’s house pianists, assigned to record large swathes of piano literature for its repertoire-based catalogue. Jando is tasteful and stylish in Mozart’s piano concertos, five of which (Nos.20, 21, 23, 25 and 27) are included here. He is also impressive in Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, and the regularly coupled A minor concertos of Schumann and Grieg, although the latter could have done with a lighter touch.

 

The former child prodigy Biret (left), who studied with Boulanger, Cortot and Kempff, is excellent in both concertos by Brahms, which are full of passion and fervour. Her idiomatic accounts of the two Chopin concertos are however let down by the hyper-reverberant acoustics, which sabotage the listening experience. Naxos recordings by Russian Eldar Nebolsin should have taken their place, and his inclusion for both Liszt concertos is a right one.

 

The Austrian Stefan Vladar shines in Beethoven’s Third to Fifth Concertos, fine and youthful recordings before he was poached by a “larger” label. The 20^th century piano concerto is represented by just one disc. Frenchman Francois-Joel Thiollier and Korean Kun Woo Paik get it right for Ravel’s G major Concerto and Prokofiev’s Third Concerto respectively, but Australian Kathryn Selby’s view of Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue is unremarkable. There are more hits than misses in this budget-priced collection.

Piano Competition Update

Young 18-year-old Singaporean pianist Shaun Choo (left), a student of the Salzburger Mozarteum, has been selected to take part in the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition to be held from 1 to 15 May 2009. 45 pianists will slug it out in four rounds of piano performances, which include a set piece by an Irish composer and a concerto competition finale.

I will never forget Shaun’s performance of the Bach-Busoni Chaconne at the quarter-final stage of the 2007 National Piano & Violin Competition, where he appeared with poise and assurance of someone double his age. His DVD of Chopin’s 24 Préludes Op.28, recorded when he was 16, is simply stunning.

As prodigious teenagers go, his biggest rival will be 18-year-old Rachel Cheung (left) from Hong Kong, already a veteran in piano competitions. She won 1st prize at the 2004 Gina Bachauer International Junior Competition, and recently placed 2nd at the 2008 Casagrande Piano Competition. Not to be underestimated is 18-year-old Jong Hai Park of Korea, who was 2nd at the 2008 Hong Kong International Piano Competition.

At the other end of the age spectrum for competitors, 29-year-old Mei Yi Foo (left) of Malaysia has been selected as one of 24 pianists for the 7th London International Piano Competition (18-28 April 2009). This is probably her last shot at fame in the competition circuit. She was 4th in the 2005 Hong Kong International Piano Competition, and 2nd at the 2008 Maria Callas International Piano Competition (Greece).

Her fellow competitors include Jin Sang Lee (Korea), the most recent winner of the 2008 Hong Kong International Piano Competition, Tatiana Kolesova (Russia) and Ran Dank (Israel), who placed 2nd and 3rd respectively at the 2008 Sydney International Piano Competition.

At the Minnesota International Piano-e-Competition (29 June – 10 July 2009), Helene Tysman (France, 5th at Hong Kong 2008) and Eric Zuber (USA, 6th at Sydney 2008) will be featuring as is our Russian friend Eduard Kunz (left). This time, however, he goes by the name Eduard Kunts.