SIMON TRPCESKI & ELIAHU INBAL / RACHMANINOFF & SHOSTAKOVICH / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

SIMON TRPCESKI

& ELIAHU INBAL:

RACHMANINOFF & SHOSTAKOVICH

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (28 March 2026)

This review was first published in Bachtrack.com on 31 March 2026 with the title "Eliahu Inbal enlivens the Singapore Symphony in Shostakovich and Rachmaninov".

British-Israeli conductor Eliahu Inbal, who turned 90 last month, neither looks nor feels his age, evident by his latest concert leading the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. He is remembered here for conducting the SSO in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony on the eve of Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew’s funeral in March 2015, dedicating the performance to his memory. On this evening, he helmed two full-length works, and even appeared fresh and revitalised at its end.

Photo: Clive Choo

Opening with Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor (Op.18), he kept the orchestra in sync with Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski. Loose and easy was Trpceski’s approach, happy to do the accompanying as orchestral strings sang the big tune, and coming in from the cold for solo flourishes. There was neither coming on strong nor gilding the lily, and there were moments in the first movement when the orchestra almost drowned out the piano. 

Trpceski even resembles Rach in profile.

No such worries in the Adagio sostenuto central slow movement, when the piano’s solo line sang out unabated, in a gradual unwinding that climaxed in a brilliant solo cadenza. The strings accompanying piano chords at its denouement provided the concerto’s most sublime moment. The finale was a thrilling white knuckle ride. Trpceski’s treatment of the big melody was initially subdued, and the intention was to work its way to a glorious apotheosis, and before that a central fugato section negotiated with the skill of a high-wire act.

Trpceski leaps off the stool after the last chord.

The close was predictably splashy, drawing a chorus of cheers, followed by two vastly varied encores. The Precipitato finale from Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata was devastating in its drive, contrasted with Rachmaninov’s serene Vocalise (Op.34 No.14) with guest concertmaster David Coucheron on violin. The latter was dedicated to the memory of Hans Sørensen, former SSO Director of Artistic Planning who passed away unexpectedly in January, and a plea for world peace.

Inbal cut a sprightly figure as he mounted the podium for a rare performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No.11 in G minor (Op.103) or The Year 1905, first and last heard in Singapore in 1998. Composed in 1957 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution, it commemorated the slaughter of peaceful protesters on “Bloody Sunday” outside St Petersburg’s Winter Palace by Tsarist forces. 

Questions on whether this was programme music with a Socialist Realist agenda were moot once the portrayal of icy wintry scenes of the Palace Square first movement got underway. Perhaps the most protracted and portentous slow boil in all of classical music, the music was a supreme test of patience with the tension built-up by desolate flutes, muted trumpets and ominous taps on Christian Schiøler’s timpani. The unbearable tension was unloosed by 9 January, a crescendo that would put Shostakovich’s earlier Leningrad Symphony and Ravel’s Bolero in the shade. The furious fugue of death led by the strings provided the coup de grace.

Performed without breaks between movements, the cinematic score unfolded magisterially under Inbal’s direction. The variations that came in the In Memoriam third movement were not in passacaglia form but what stuck firmly in the mind were the excellent violas’ consolatory tone, and one was well within the midst of a requiem. The finale’s Tocsin flew with all cannons blazing, but with the reprise of the Palace Square and Elaine Yeo’s poignant cor anglais solo, memory rather than vengeance was the goal. Closing in tragic G minor rather than triumphant G major, and clocking in at 60 minutes, Inbal’s epic view could survive several lifetimes.

Star Rating: ****

The review as published on Bachtrack.com:

Eliahu Inbal enlivens the Singapore Symphony | Bachtrack

SIMON TRPCESKI Piano Recital/ Review

 

SIMON TRPCESKI Piano Recital 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Sunday (13 April 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 April 2025 with the title "Simon Trpceski's transcendental technique in full flight".

It was 2013 when Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski last appeared here, performing in the Singapore International Piano Festival and with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. His most recent solo recital, presented by Altenburg Arts, showed that time has not dimmed the memory of an artist who has very personal ideas about music, married with a transcendental technique that invites superlatives. 

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

The manner which he hung on the opening note of Frederic Chopin’s Mazurka in G minor (Op.24 No.1) - for almost an eternity - showed that rubato was a vital element of his Chopin playing. The delaying of the next note and making up for it with faster tempi was the lifeblood of Romanticism, also informing the three Polish dances of the set that followed. 

Some may find this mannered, but Trpceski has the ability to persuade, winning the listener over with beauty of tone and no little force of personality. For the apparent neoclassicism of Edvard Grieg’s Holberg Suite, he applied generous helpings of sustaining pedal, such that it exhibited none of the dryness of baroque dances. 

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

Audiences will be far more familiar with the version for strings, thus his approach was one of lushness and an unabashed sweep of sound. The Air, emotional heart of the suite, was taken at such a deliberate pace that it risked somnolence but there was much to admire how he crafted its elegiac melody on the left hand over the right hand’s repetitive accompaniment. 

An in-your-face virtuosity arrived with Russian pianist-conductor Mikhail Pletnev’s stupendously challenging transcription of the suite from Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker. There were just four movements in common with the orchestral Nutcracker Suite, most notably the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Seldom has the celesta’s tinkles been so well mimicked, the result of Trpceski’s lightness of touch and very deft use of pedalling. 

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

The March, Tarantella and Trepak were a tour de force of barnstorming but it was the grandstanding melody of the final Andante maestoso, achieved with extreme smoothness and lyricism, that stole the show. This same work was performed by the 15-year-old Elisey Mysin just six weeks ago, but Trpceski’s experience and maturity made the telling difference. 

The stage was bathed in Soviet red
for the performance of Prokofiev's wartime sonata.

Closing the recital proper was Sergei Prokofiev’s Sonata No.7 in B flat major (Op.83), which sometimes carries the nickname Stalingrad as it was a wartime creation. Trpceski’s performance took no prisoners, with the fidgety opening movement exhibiting percussive violence and an undertow of disquiet. 

The apparent warmth of the central Andante caloroso was just a guise, its escalation to turmoil later tempered by the tolling of funereal bells. The infamous Precipitato finale began at break-neck speed, and if one wondered whether Trpceski could sustain the rapid machine-gun fire, that was emphatically in the affirmative for an ear-shattering conclusion. 

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

There were five encores in total, by Prokofiev (Scherzo Humoristique, Op.12 No.9), Rodion Shchedrin (Humoresque), a Macedonian folksong (Don’t Sell Your Estate, Koljo) and lovely duets by Debussy (En bateau from Petite Suite) and Brahms (Hungarian Dance No.5) with two of Singapore’s young talents Maxim Oswald-Lim and Theodore Penn Hur. Just charming.

Post-concert photos:

Simon Trpceski autographs
Kevin YL Tan's CD recording.

Macedonia meets Montenegro.
Simon meets with Boris Kraljevic.

Lynnette Seah had accompanied Simon
in his last SSO concert in 2013.

A PIANO RECITAL NOT TO MISS: SIMON TRPCESKI on 13 April 2025

Here is another piano recital not to be missed. Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski might just be the most famous personality to come out of Macedonia (now North Macedonia) since Alexander the Great. He came to prominence after winning 2nd prize at the London International Piano Competition in 2000, after which he made several highly-acclaimed solo recordings on EMI Classics as well as piano concertos by Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and Brahms.

His debut solo recital in Singapore will be no less momentous. The programme as follows:

CHOPIN Four Mazurkas, Op.24

GRIEG Holberg Suite, Op.40

TCHAIKOVSKY-PLETNEV

   Nutcracker Suite

PROKOFIEV Sonata No.7 

   in B flat major, Op.83

5 pm, Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday, 13 April 2025

Get your tickets here:

https://www.sistic.com.sg/events/simon0425

Now watch this video:

Simon Trpceski is presented 

by Altenburg Arts.

SSO Concert: SIMON TRPCESKI PLAYS CHOPIN / Review

SIMON TRPCESKI PLAYS CHOPIN

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (28 June 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 July 2013 with the title "Macedonian pianist a delight".

Youth was the unifying theme of the works presented in this evening’s SSO concert conducted by Music Director Shui Lan, as every note was composed when both Sergei Rachmaninov and Frederic Chopin were barely out of their teens. The evening began with two excerpts from Rachmaninov’s one-act opera Aleko, after on a short story by Pushkin, which was his graduation piece.

The brief but dramatic Introduction and syncopated Gypsy Men’s Dance bore certain hallmarks of the brooding and melancholic Russian but still sounded heavily influenced by his mentor Tchaikovsky. Also an early piece was the symphonic poem Prince Rostislav, a setting of Tolstoy, with its sedate opening that immediately reminded one of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture.

Its murky beginning, set in the depths of a river, could have sounded more mysterious. Subtle pianissimo playing does not always come easily to the orchestra, but this improved with the surging main theme that was more recognisable as Rachmaninov. Somewhat meandering by way of development, this was not one of his best scores. Nonetheless Shui’s charges put on a spirited showing, even if this is not going to eclipse his later works of the form, The Rock or The Isle of the Dead.

Arguably the highlight of the concert was to be Chopin’s First Piano Concerto with the Macedonian Simon Trpceski as soloist. The prize-winning pianist seemed to delight in the work’s abrupt shifts in dynamics, such as entering with loud and emphatic chords and octaves and exaggerating certain gestures for effect.

Accenting grace notes, prolonging a pause and stretching out a rubato passage were ear-catching for certain, but that did not get in the way of a silky cantabile which was the composer’s most distinguishing feature. The dreamy Romanze came through beautifully as a nocturne-like interlude, and all the stops were pulled for the exciting Rondo finale that closed the work.

As the concert proper ended early, just five minutes after nine o’clock, no way was the audience allowed an early ride home. There were three generous encores, an elegant Chopin Waltz in A minor sandwiched by two Macedonian pieces which were a trademark of Trpceski’s performances.

Known for introducing little-known folk-influenced music from his homeland to worldwide audiences, he was aided and abetted by leader Lynnette Seah, whose violin playing sounded both idiomatic and ravishing in these jazzy dances from Skopje. Whoever thought the land of Alexander the Great would also be the home of great entertainers as well?