MORE HISTORY MADE: YONG SIEW TOH CONSERVATORY ALUMNA KHANH NHI LUONG MAKES THE FINALS OF THE LEEDS!

More history has been made! Vietnam's Khanh Nhi Luong, once of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, has been admitted to the Finals of the Leeds International Piano Competition 2024! 

Her performances of Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op.110, Kate Whitley's Five Piano Pieces and Faure's Violin Sonata No.1 (with Elena Urioste) in the semi-finals were judged to be supremely musical (despite her short playing time), and thus advanced to the Grand Finals on 20 and 21 September 2024.

With the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Domingo Hindoyan, she will perform Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto. Her performance and the rest of the finals at St George's Hall in Bradford may be viewed on YouTube.

Relive Nhi's marvelous semi-final performance here:

The finalists (from L):
Kai-Min Chang, Jaeden Izik-Dzurko,
Junyan Chen, Khanh Nhi Luong
& Julian Trevelyan

The concerto finals schedule as follows:

FRIDAY 20 SEPTEMBER

JULIAN TREVELYAN (UK)

   BARTOK Piano Concerto No.3

KAI-MIN CHANG (Taiwan)

   BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No.4

JUNYAN CHEN (China)

   RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto No.4

SATURDAY 21 SEPTEMBER

KHANH NHI LUONG (Vietnam)

    PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto No.3

JAEDEN IZIK-DZURKO (Canada)

    BRAHMS Piano Concerto No.2

Wishing Nhi and the finalists all the best for their performances. It's going to be two very exciting evenings.

 

FUN FACTS:

Although Nhi is the first YST graduate to make the finals of a major international piano competition, it is Singapore's Kahchun Wong who is the first YST alumnus to win a major first prize, at the 2016 Mahler International Conducting Competition. He is now the chief conductor of the Halle Orchestra in Manchester. Might he someday conduct the finals of the Leeds International Piano Competition?

Kai-Min Chang (張凱閔) is not the first person with the surname Chang (張) to make the finals of the Leeds. Chiao-Ying Chang (張巧縈), also from Taiwan, was awarded fifth prize in 2003. Rachel Cheung Wai Ching (張緯晴) of Hong Kong, fifth prize winner in 2009, also qualifies for having the same surname in Chinese. So far, no Zhangs from PRC or elsewhere has made it to a final. 

Jon Kimura Parker's debut album
after winning the Leeds.

Only one Canadian pianist has won first prize at the Leeds, and that was Jon Kimura Parker in 1984. Jaeden Izik-Dzurko might very well be the next.

There have only been two women awarded first prize at the Leeds in its 61-year history (20 editions). They were Sofya Gulyak (2009) and Anna Tsybuleva (2015), both from Russia. The two women in this year's finals, Khanh Nhi Luong (Vietnam) and Junyan Chen (China) also come from communist nations.

Junyan Chen's performance of Rachmaninov's Fourth Piano Concerto in G minor (Op.40) will be the first time this "Cinderella" concerto is performed at the finals of the Leeds. The usual warhorses, Concertos Nos.2 and 3, had been put down, omitted from this year's repertoire list.

Finalist Julian Trevelyan (UK) was not originally on the list of 24 pianists selected to perform in the second round of the Leeds. He was the first reserve pianist, and was admitted when Nicolas Margarit (Australia) had withdrawn from the competition. He shares the same name as the English artist Julian Trevelyan (1910-1988), who is his great uncle.

Now do you see the resemblance?

YONG SIEW TOH CONSERVATORY ALUMNA MAKES THE SEMIS OF THE LEEDS!

A little history was made, when for the first time, a Yong Siew Toh Conservatory alumna has been admitted to the semi-finals of the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition. Her name is Khanh Nhi Luong, a former student of Thomas Hecht, and is incidentally also the first ever Vietnamese pianist to have been selected to take part in the Leeds.

Her performance in the Second Round of Henri Dutilleux's Piano Sonata, a rarity if any, was one of lyrical eloquence and digital brilliance. You can watch it here after Beethoven's Sonata Op.90:

Her performance of Prokofiev's Sarcasms in the First Round, recorded in New York City, may be enjoyed here:

Nhi, as she is known by her friends, had earlier studied at the Graz University of the Arts (Austria), and is presently pursuing her Doctorate of Musical Arts at the University of Michigan. Singapore is proud to have been part of her musical journey.

Here's wishing Nhi all the best for the semi-finals, and if God willing, the finals as well!

The ten semi-finalists of the Leeds
named by competition director Adam Gatehouse.
Nhi is standing 3rd from the right.
Photo by Buzz Singer

Update: Watch her semi-final performance here:

THANK YOU, PROFESSOR THOMAS HECHT

THANK YOU, 

PROFESSOR THOMAS HECHT

 

On Saturday 16 April, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall was packed to the rafters to witness a moving event, a concert that marked the farewell of Professor Thomas Hecht, Head of Piano Studies, retiring after 19 years of faithful service to the Singapore classical music community. A native of Baltimore, Maryland, he was a former student and teaching assistant of the great American pianist Leon Fleisher. He arrived in Singapore in 2003 as a founding member of the Conservatory faculty and its first head of piano. Later, he also became the National University of Singapore’s first full professor of music.

 

His students, who came from all over the planet to study with him, reads like a Who’s Who of piano performance in Singapore. Names like Abigail Sin, Azariah Tan, Clarence Lee, Jonathan Shin, Mervyn Lee, Khoo Hui Ling and Serene Koh, many of whom became prizewinners in national and international piano competitions. More recently, his Taiwanese student Chang Yun Hua was invited to perform at the 2021 Singapore International Piano Festival. His students remember him for his keen intellect, holistic approach, nurturing spirit, infinite patience and kindness. The archetypal short-tempered and knuckle-rapping pedagogue he was certainly not. One of them, now a well-known musical personality, said, “he did not just teach playing, but imparted musical and life values in the most generous way possible. I would not be a professional musician today if not for him.”  

With his colleagues, 
Qian Zhou and Qin Li-Wei,
heads of violin and cello respectively.

 

Thomas performed concertos regularly, including those of Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, Mozart and Ravel with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Conservatory Orchestra and Orchestra of the Music Makers. Notably, he also gave the Singapore premieres of Poulenc’s Aubade, Thomas Ades’ Concerto Conciso, Bruch’s Double Piano Concerto (with his colleague Albert Tiu), and piano quintets by Anton Webern and Alfred Schnittke, not to mention works of a host of American composers.

 

For the farewell concert, sporting a Chinese outfit, red scarf and a Bashkirovian goatee, he performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.24 in C minor (K.491) with the Conservatory Orchestral Institute conducted by Jason Lai. This was a reading of great poetry and sensitivity, contrasted with the sturm und drang of main theme and orchestral accompaniment. He played his own cadenzas, including a suitably grand and blustery but totally idiomatic one for the first movement. In the romance-like slow movement, his added personal touches in various passages helped enhance the narrative. 

A standing ovation greeted the Theme and Variations finale, and his encore was the poignant central movement of Rachmaninov’s Second Sonata. The video tribute by his colleagues and students was a truly touching one, and one can imagine Thomas staving off the tears for as long as possible after that.

You can view the full concert here:

Orchestral Institute: Thomas Hecht Plays Mozart (16 Apr 2022) | YST Conservatory - YouTube

 

Nineteen years seems like a long time, but it passed like a flash. Imagine the number of music students who have passed through the doors of YST, to become excellent performers and teachers themselves, to create and recreate great music all around the world. The legacy of spreading classical music globally, to make our wretched earth a better place to live in, is the purview of great teachers of music and life. We thank you, Professor Thomas Hecht, for making all this possible. We wish you the best in all your future endeavours.

10TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION CONCERT Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra / Review

10^TH ANNIVERSARY 

CELEBRATION CONCERT

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Wednesday (4 September 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 September 2013 with the title "A shining showcase".

The two fixtures that have most transformed the Singapore classical music scene in the past decade culminated in a harmonious confluence with this evening’s concert. In 2003, both the Esplanade Concert Hall and the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory first opened its doors to musical excellence, and have not looked back ever since.

Maestros of YST: Chan Tze Law, Wang Ya-Hui & Jason Lai.

The Conservatory Orchestra has matured into a classy outfit, under the nurturing influence of conductors-mentors Chan Tze Law, Wang Ya-Hui and Jason Lai. Led by the eminent American conductor Robert Spano, the orchestra showed how the millions of dollars pumped into tertiary musical education at the National University of Singapore have been more than well spent.

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony was an unusual choice to showcase the ensemble’s strengths. It is his shortest symphony, comprising just a single movement which also happens to be his longest symphonic movement. Cast in humble C major, it is a paradoxical masterpiece that concentrated big ideas with astonishing compactness. It resounded with an epic breadth but was soon over in 21 short minutes.

Spano’s breathtaking view of its unfolding musical narrative was reciprocated by the young musicians with great responsiveness. The strings radiated a gorgeous sheen, one that blossomed with each crescendo, the warmth of which would be the pride of top professional orchestras. Brass and woodwinds shined at just the right intensities, always luminous but never overpowering.

The climactic wrenching string chord near the end came like an epiphany. The imagery was that of glacial ice, thawed by the sun’s rays, melting and becoming the source and sustenance of life itself. It was that sort of life-affirming performance that made the evening rather special.

Another true epic was Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, which at 50 minutes is the longest piano concerto in the active repertory. All too often, the piano solo becomes submerged by the orchestral forces. Thus the Conservatory’s piano studies head Thomas Hecht seemed determined to ensure that every note of his was clearly heard. 

With shoulders built like a lumberjack’s, he applied an overpowering heft to every chordal and octave passage in the opening two movements. It was arresting at first, often pungent and never bland, but the ears soon tired to a take-no-prisoners approach of piano as percussion. This was thankfully tampered by moments of filigreed lightness and poetry, which showed that Hecht was equally capable of utmost sensitivity.

There was a lapse of concentration during the Scherzo’s most frenzied page, but he recovered quickly. The best was reserved in the slow movement, where young cellist James Cowell’s beautifully sung solo set the mood for the emotional heart of the work, where the balance between piano and the orchestra’s marvellous support was close to perfection.

The mood then switched to jocularity for the finale, where the gaiety of Viennese waltzes and dollops of schlagobers (whipped cream) ruled to close the concert on a satisfying high. Hecht’s solo encore was also by Brahms, the “Edward” Ballade (Op.10 No.1), a summation of all the drama that had come and gone.

Two piano titans confer, Thomas Hecht with Albert Tiu.
("This Brahms' a bitch, you know!")

The loud cheers came from Thomas Hecht's piano studio.

A cell of cellists: Qin Liwei, Leslie Tan and Ng Pei Sian,
also known as The Cello Guys.
(from L to R, as if you didn't already know)

OMM PRE-TOUR CONCERT / Orchestra of the Music Makers / Review

OMM PRE-TOUR CONCERT

Orchestra of the Music Makers

School of the Arts Concert Hall

Friday (22 June 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 June 2012 with the title "Great end to a tour sneak peek".

This fact may have gone under the radar: the Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) will become the first Singaporean orchestra to be the resident ensemble of a major British music festival. During the first week of July, OMM led by Chan Tze Law will perform three concerts at the Cheltenham and Lichfield Festivals. This evening’s concert afforded a sneak preview of its interpretively demanding tour repertoire.

The Anglo-French programme opened with Frederick Delius’s Paris - Song of a Great City, a work that owes more to the so-called French impressionist aesthete than English pastoral traditions. Its quiet beginning, evocative of a metropolis fitfully arousing from slumber, demonstrated a fine control of instrumental forces. Howard Ng’s excellent oboe solo led the procession, which ambled through insouciant dances while alternating moments of quiet contemplation and outright gaiety. Quixotic yet coquettish, Delius knew how to be very French.

In the transcription by Andre Caplet of Debussy’s piano piece Pagodes, the mystique of the Orient was however not so well captured. The lead-footed trudge had nothing on the shimmering original work, its carillons of gamelans and gongs being bogged down in soggy padi fields.

American pianist Thomas Hecht, Head of Piano at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, was the scintillating soloist in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major. His firm grasp of its jazzy idiom and rhythmic drive was the bedrock upon which this performance thrived, exhibiting Mozartean clarity in the slow movement and sure-fingered incisiveness elsewhere. Only in the mad scramble of the Presto finale did nerves fray, with some orchestral solos going awry or astray. For the July Cheltenham outing with Melvyn Tan, more tightness will be expected.   

Any hint of being less than totally well-prepared evaporated in the second half with an invigorating performance of Holst’s Beni Mora, a suite of three dances inspired by Algeria. A musty incense-laden aroma filled the air, as the orchestra negotiated its exotic sonorities and rhythmic subtleties with great confidence. Kelly Loh’s alto flute, made to play a sinuous repeated motif 163 times, provided the key to the final dance’s success.  

Two years ago, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra took Debussy’s La Mer to London’s Royal Festival Hall with much critical acclaim. OMM’s take on the same work was to be no less gripping, and here conductor Chan has to take credit for tautly leading his charges through the music’s surging waves and ripping tides. Judging the flow to perfection, the overall impulse was one of unimpeded buoyancy, best exemplified in the middle movement, Play of the Waves.  Never lightweight and with no details glossed over, this was one performance the young musicians should be proud of.  

As an encore, the Singapore-Britain connection was celebrated with Eric Watson’s Intersections, a celebratory work that fully highlighted and exploited all sections of the orchestra. Whether playing on Javanese scales or reliving the hallowed brass-band culture of British collieries and coalminers, this happy East-meets-West encounter made for a rousing close. OMM’s stay in UK is going to be a hit. 

TWO YOUTH ORCHESTRA CONCERTS WELL WORTH ATTENDING: The Orchestra of the Music Makers and Queensland Youth Symphony Orchestra

Those hungry for the sounds of an orchestra but cannot wait for the SSO season to begin in July will be happy to note two forthcoming concerts by two of the top youth orchestras of this region. They are Singapore's Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) and Australia's Queensland Youth Symphony Orchestra (QYSO). This pair of concerts take place at the School of the Arts this weekend on Friday (22 June) and Saturday (23 June). Both concerts begin at 7.30pm. 

The programmes are as follows:

OMM, Maestro Chan Tze Law and Thomas Hecht

22 June 2012 (Friday)
Chan Tze Law, conductor
Thomas Hecht, piano
Orchestra of the Music Makers

DELIUS Paris, Song of a Great City
DEBUSSY (orch. CAPLET) Pagodes
RAVEL Piano Concerto in G Major
HOLST Beni Mora (Oriental Suite)
DEBUSSY La Mer

The big news is that OMM has been named the Resident Orchestra for this year's Cheltenham Festival in the United Kingdom. It will perform two concerts in July at the Cheltenham Festival and one concert at the Lichfield Festival. This is the first time that a Singaporean orchestra has been invited for an overseas residency. This will be its pre-tour concert, showcasing the young orchestra's very demanding repertoire at the festival. At the festival proper, Singapore's Melvyn Tan will be the pianist in Ravel's G major Piano Concerto. Singaporeans here will get to enjoy a performance by Thomas Hecht, Head of Piano Studies at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory. This concert, filled with exotic colours, promises to be a cracker.

QYSO, Maestro John Curro and Jayson Gillham.

23 June 2012 (Saturday)

John Curro, conductor
Jayson Gillham, piano
Queensland Youth Symphony Orchestra 

BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No.5 in E flat major "Emperor"

SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No.12, "The Year 1917"
JOHANN STRAUSS JR. Emperor Waltz

The QYSO is widely considered Australia's top youth orchestra and proves its mettle in a solid programme that is worthy of top symphony orchestral seasons, one that centres on Habsburg Emperors and the toppling of Romanov Tsars. Of note is the Singapore debut of young Australian pianist Jayson Lloyd Gillham, one of the continent's brightest talents, who was recently named Commonwealth Young Musician of the Year. He is the most recent winner of the Royal Overseas League Competition, and 3rd Prizewinner of the 2005 London International Piano Competition.(PianoManiac was particularly blown away by his performance of Chopin's Twelve Etudes Op.10 at the 2004 Sydney International Piano Competition, when he was just 18 years old!)  

Don't miss these two excellent youth orchestras, representing the future of music in Australasia.

MIXED METAPHORS / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory New Music Ensemble / Review

MIXED METAPHORS
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory 

New Music Ensemble
Esplanade Recital Studio
Wednesday (9 November 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 November 2011 with the title "Moving images add suspense".

Probably the best way to approach new music is to leave all pre-conceptions and expectations at the door, and let the occasion and process of performance sweep you along. New music has had bad rep, especially when what one normally defines as music – a regulated combination of melody, harmony and rhythm - is suspended, replaced by seemingly random sounds, even noises. However, little effort is made on the part of listeners to understand the minds of composers and performers.

Performances by the Conservatory’s New Music Ensemble in Esplanade’s ground-breaking Spectrum Series have helped bridge this creator-audience divide. With the national orchestra avoiding this hazard-laden path, nobody does it better. The Singapore premieres of three landmark works, conducted by Chan Tze Law (left), could not have been more persuasively handled.

Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel (1971) is not for the impatient, as it ambles along in a static and glacial pace. When silences and pauses are as important as sounds, we begin to appreciate their true value. The sparse scoring gave much scope for Jonathan Lee’s throaty but emphatic viola to be a protagonist, alongside Yoo Seol Ah’s haunting dulcet soprano tones and serene voices from the SYC Ensemble Singers. Commissioned for a performance in a Houston (Texas) chapel adorned with Mark Rothko’s iconic paintings, its contemplative thirty minutes passed for a seemingly far shorter duration of time.

Quite the opposite was Thomas Ades’s Concerto Conciso (1997), which packed a great deal in three short movements. Pianist Thomas Hecht provided the main cut and thrust, with winds and brass gelling rhythmically like a jazz band. As if constrained by compositional form, there was a mini chaconne and a round dance (called a brawl), bringing the bustling work to an abrupt end with the piano’s lid slammed shut.

The evening’s most challenging work was Edgard Varese’s Deserts (1954), scored for winds, percussion and electronic tape. The composer’s vision was of vast wastelands of the physical and metaphorical, including solitude of the soul. Its dense swathes of sound were interpolated with taped noise of a more mechanical kind, and accompanied by Bill Viola’s more contemporary film of geographical wildernesses, lightning, fire and water.

This was the rare case of moving images accompanying music, but it added an edge of suspense and the unexpected to the proceedings. But given the committed and convincing playing of all involved, it also became an added luxury.

SPECTRUM: MUSIC AND WORDS / Conservatory New Music Ensemble / Review

SPECTRUM: MUSIC & WORDS / Conservatory New Music Ensemble

Esplanade Recital Studio / Sunday (10 April 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 12 April 2011 with the title "Soaking in surprises".

With new music, one really does not know exactly what to expect. Just take each surprise as they come. The first was conductor Tony Makarome himself. More familiar as a jazz bassist, he ambled in attired like some extra on the set of Casablanca. Assuming the role of engaging introducer and stand-up comic, he looked like a cross between circus ringmaster and Uncle Peter of Babies Proms.

Breaking the ice which often frosts up concerts of contemporary music, his way was direct and unstuffy. Soon the music began, with luscious strains of America-based Indian composer Juhi Bansal’s song cycle The Lost Country of Sight, based on Neil Aitken’s words. The scoring was light and transparent, for just cello, piano and sparing percussion, enabling the words to be highlighted.

Unfortunately soprano Khor Ai Ming, audibly recovering from laryngitis and placed too posteriorly, was limited in range and projection. Struggling with the words, much of the nuances in this exotically-coloured idiom were lost in the fray. Another reading on a better day will be keenly anticipated.

No such problems existed for the programme’s main work, Morton Feldman’s Music & Words. The 1987 collaboration between the New York avant-garde composer and playwright Samuel Beckett explored an uneasy relationship between the spoken word and music, encapsulated in a radio play.

The protagonists, played by narrators Craig De Wilde and Thomas Hecht, were holed up in a mock-up of a disc-jockey’s studio, complete with illuminated “On The Air” sign, reel-to-reel tape-player and several LPs. The props did not obscure a tour de force from De Wilde, whose typical broadcaster’s drawl was as convincing as his efforts to sing like a drunkard. The droll and grizzled Hecht, enacting a godlike character called Croak, was the perfect foil. Seven musicians performed sequences in interjection, but seemed distant from where the action was, which was probably what both creators had intimated all along. While it will take some time for this Asian premiere to sink in, just sitting back to contemplate this 35-minute Godot-like effort and its inanities was reward enough.

The concert closed with Chinese composer Huang Ruo’s Chamber Symphony No.1, named after the Sung Dynasty patriot-general Yue Fei. Mostly instrumental, its blend of Chinese and Western idioms was alluring, closing with the players laying down their instruments and chanting incantations. In this case, music often better expresses feelings which elude words.

PAINTED SCENES by Yong Siew Toh Percussion and New Music Ensemble / Review

PAINTED SCENES
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory
Percussion & New Music Ensemble
Jonathan Fox, Conductor

Conservatory Concert Hall
Saturday (27 March 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 March 2010.

People who attend orchestral concerts and carry the misconception that percussion players have it easy could do worse than attending all-percussion concerts, now regular features at the Conservatory. Led by SSO’s principal percussionist Jonathan Fox, these students of the “kitchen department” are bona fide virtuosos.

The opening work, Conversations In The Forest III by Japanese marimba doyenne Keiko Abe, featured just two players. Just how Sun Yi and Akari Tsurata, who played facing each other, reflected and reacted to each other’s playing was pure choreography. The marimba music was mellow timbred yet sonorous, filling the hall with a gentle and soothing aural glow.

Even more vibrant was American minimalist Steve Reich’s City Life (composer pictured left), performed by the New Music Ensemble and percussion casually attired in T-shirts, jeans, jockey caps and sneakers. Conductor Fox then turned up in his favourite Boston Red Sox jersey. In five conjoined movements, the 1995 work not mindless looping but a colourful mosaic of the urban landscape.

Recorded sounds of street cries such as “Check it out!”, taxi horns, car brakes, pile drivers and other heavy machinery “played” on sampling keyboards mingled with those of the orchestra. There was Reich’s trademark rhythmic chugging in the middle movement while a heartbeat pulsed through the fourth. Rhythmic precision ruled in this performance, which ended before it outlasted its freshness.

The big work was Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition (composer pictured left), with the original piano part augmented with six percussionists. Not merely an amplification of the score, Fox’s ingenious arrangement for all instruments available to him also altered the tone and character of some movements. The Old Castle was transported from the Mediterranean to East Asia, while Ballet Of The Unhatched Chicks took on a groovy samba beat.

Through all this, American-born pianist and conservatory professor Thomas Hecht was rock solid in one of his signature pieces, even if there were moments where overdone percussion threatened to drown him out. After the final massive chimes of The Great Gate Of Kiev, the party was just starting.

As the encore, Hecht and all eight percussionists clad in sunshades hammered out Lalo Schifrin’s iconic Mission Impossible theme, including an improvisation that interpolated Mussorgsky’s Promenade theme from the Pictures. They were having fun, and very much so had the audience.

BEATS and PIECES / Low Shao Ying and Low Shao Suan / Review

BEATS & PIECES
Low Shao Ying & Low Shao Suan, Pianos
Esplanade Recital Studio
Sunday (7 March 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 March 2010.

In what is likely to be the most important 2-piano recital for contemporary local music in years, the sister act of Low Shao Ying and Low Shao Suan displayed the range of their performing and composing abilities. Both received their musical education in Paris, so it was little surprise that the programme was predominantly Gallic in flavour and sensibility.

The concert however began with Dane Martin Akerwall’s A Perfect View (2010, left), a tonal and meditative work that exuded impressionist colours and a New Age feel. Soft chimes dressed with arabesques echoing from each keyboard made for a study in quiet serenity.

Bells of a totally different kind tolled in the World Premiere of Singaporean Tan Chan Boon’s 7 and 9 (2010), also titled Along The Seine. In a tribute to Maurice Ravel, a haunted milieu recalling Le gibet (The Gallows) from Gaspard de la nuit pervaded the opening, leading to the slowest of slow Valses nobles et sentimentales before a Satiesque coda of long-held chords and silences.

Curiously no French composers featured but the trio of waltzes by Canadian Jean Chatillon and the sisters themselves were echt-French in aesthete and feeling. Shao Ying’s Valse de printemps (1998) mused on the C major triad, filled with a Poulenc-like gaiety and insouciance. Shao Suan’s Winterland (1998) was darker in shade, reflective with bittersweet moments.

Mastery of sonorities on two pianos reached a zenith with Elegy For The Beloved by American pianist and pedagogue Thomas Hecht (left), now a Singapore permanent resident. The sixth movement from a 65-minute suite What The Virgin Saw (1997), its touching Messiaen-inspired contemplation of Mary at the fallen body of Jesus was a gradual crescendo in the manner of Samuel Barber’s Adagio.

The ear candy came to a jarring halt with the most modern-sounding piece, Hong Kong-born Kawai Shiu’s Jade Luster (2010, left). With the pianos separated to extreme ends of the floor, the Lows emerged wearing gloves à la Glenn Gould and looking more like kick-boxers. Playing off scores projected on laptop screens, the pugilistic ritual of tone clusters commenced, beginning quietly and closing as nosily as possible. All through the back-to-tonality swing of the pendulum, this World Premiere – sympathetically delivered - showed that the avant-garde is still alive and kicking.

Beats & Pieces was presented as part of Esplanade's Spectrum Series for contemporary music.