SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION 2025: GRAND FINAL / Review

 

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

PIANO COMPETITION 2025 

GRAND FINAL 

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall 

Sunday (19 January 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 January 2025 with the title "Singapore International Piano Competition levels up with stellar global competitors".

It is a strange but true fact that there has not been a major international piano competition in Singapore since the Rolex International Piano Competition in 1989. The Singapore International Piano Competition, now in its fifth edition, has been operating under the radar for the past few years, organised by the China-based Global International Musicians Association (GIMA) which has otherwise no imprint here. 

Jury members included
Xiaohan Wang (Artistic Director), Danwen Wei,
Adam Gatehouse, Piers Lane, Gesa Luecker,
Noriko Ogawa, Katarzyna Popova-Zydron
& Albert Tiu.

The competition, however, took a massive leap this year by attracting an international cast of young pianists, judged over multiple rounds by an august international jury (comprising well-known concert pianists and pedagogues) and culminating in a final concerto round with a full symphony orchestra. Judging by the playing in earlier rounds, the standard has never been higher, with 20 pianists from ten Asian and European nations whittled down to just three for the final showdown. 

The Metropolitan Festival Orchestra conducted by Chan Tze Law did the accompanying and the final outcome was nothing less than satisfactory. For someone as young as Leyu Xu from China, at 16 and the most junior competitor, it must have been a daunting task. 

Her nerves mostly served her well in Sergei Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, where she matched the orchestra blow-for-blow. Overcoming the most technically difficult variations with relative ease, the chordal climax of the famous 18th Variation became the glorious pinnacle of her performance. Momentary desynchronisations with the orchestra near the final hurdle threatened to derail the proceedings but she held up well to the end. 

Quite unusually, there were two performances of Sergei Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto in G minor (Op.16). This is regularly essayed in high level piano competitions but not often heard in concert because of its ferocious technical demands. That competition warhorses, Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s First and Rachmaninov’s Second and Third Concertos, had been expunged from the prescribed repertoire might have also explained this anomaly. 

Already a seasoned soloist, 26-year-old Russian Philipp Lynov provided the requisite Slavic brooding for the opening slow movement. The gigantic cadenza which entered most surreptitiously was gradually built up with ever-escalating intensity to its monstrous climax of sweeping arpeggios and crashing chords. 

The machine-gun rattling in the Scherzo and myriad grotesqueries of the Intermezzo were very well negotiated before the finale’s tempestuous onslaught of percussive violence. 

This would have been the winning performance if not for 20-year-old Tianyou Li from China replicating the same heroics but in a more nuanced reading which better contrasted darkness and the light of day. 

While Lynov focused fully on the unremitting tragedy, Li’s performance was one that provided glimmers of hope amid a cataclysm. It was this hope that made the difference. And it also helped that the orchestra was performing the concerto for a second time in the evening, hence a better-oiled outing. 

The jury voted to award third place to Xu, second to Lynov and the crowning first to Li, who also won the prize for the best performance of J.S.Bach. A very bright musical future beckons.

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION 2025: HERE ARE THE FINALISTS

The three finalists of the Singapore International Piano Competition 2025 have been named. 

They are Leyu Xu (China), Philipp Lynov (Russia) and Tianyou Li (China). They will perform a concerto each with the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra conducted by Chan Tze Law on Sunday evening (7 pm, 19 January 2025) at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory.

The finals concert:

LEYU XU (China) performs 

RACHMANINOV Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Op.43)

PHILIPP LYNOV (Russia) performs

PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto No.2 in G minor (Op.16)

TIANYOU LI (China) performs

PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto No.2 in G minor (Op.16)

Tickets at $30 are available at SISTIC:

https://sistic.com.sg/events/lite_2025sipcfinal

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION 2025: PRELIMINARY ROUND SESSION V

 

PRELIMINARY ROUND 

Session V (Wednesday, 15 January 2025) 

Wednesday afternoons are when I usually take a long nap at home, but this was an opportunity to catch another four pianists at the Singapore International Piano Competition, something not to be missed. And I wasn’t disappointed. 

Roman Lopatynskyi (31, Ukraine), a former runner-up at the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition, took an epic view of J.S.Bach’s slow Prelude & Fugue in C sharp minor (WTC Book 2), which had such broad tempi that one could drive a T-64 tank through. This was at the risk of losing the narrative, but the build up of the stately fugue was one worth waiting for. 

Brahms’ late Four Pieces (Op.119) are also his most modern piano works, particularly the first two which look ahead to Schoenberg’s unstable harmonic world. Again, very deliberate tempi and unusually placed accents distinguished the B minor Intermezzo, the tonality of which kept one guessing for a while. Similarly ambiguous was the E minor number that followed, but the glorious central melody in E major was well brought out. The C major Intermezzo could have done with more lightness and charm but no arguments against the E flat major Rhapsody which had the right heft and bluster to close. 

And who wasn’t waiting for the burly Ukrainian to deliver Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka with true Slavic intensity? Although a tad slapdash in the Danse Russe, his view of Chez Petrouchka was to bring out as many jarring dissonances as possible, and it worked. The bustling Shrovetide Fair was a high decibel event, which despite some missed notes was fully characterised. The octave leaps at the end were just stunning and the thunderous close was pretty much what was expected. 

The choice of Elia Cecino (23, Italy) to juxtapose the contrapuntal prowess of Shostakovich’s Prelude & Fugue No.21 in B flat major (Op.87) with J.S.Bach’s Toccata in G minor was a touch of genius. Both have breathless fugues which make for absorbing listening, and the two centuries that separate the Soviet and the German seem much narrower now. He also proves a supreme colourist in two of Ravel’s Miroirs. Alborada del Gracioso, with its clacking castanets and sweeping glissandi, sparkled ever so brilliantly but even better to come was his aromatic and bell-filled visage of the Orient in La vallee des cloches. 

A more gripping performance of Scriabin’s Sonata No.3 in F sharp minor would be hard to find. He stamped his authority on the main theme and the struggle of the “states of the soul” was at hand. The second movement’s imperious romp was well contrasted with the slow movement’s dreamily reflective state, the latter I have never heard more clearly or persuasively rendered. The first movement’s emphatic theme would come back one last time before the finale’s relentless rush of adrenaline to complete this unusually creative recital on a high. 

The repertoire choices of Yi-Teng Huang (26, Taiwan) were puzzling for this level of competition. Mozart’s “easy” Fantasia in D minor (K.397) followed by J.S.Bach’s Toccata in E minor seemed odd, both opening with recitatives which could have been freely improvisatory but instead came out as heavy-handed. Maybe he wanted these to sound like coming from a pipe organ. The happy conclusion to the Mozart and the fugal climax of the Bach were fine heard on their own, but were less than the sum of the parts. Schubert’s Impromptu in F minor (Op.90 No.1) is not often heard in isolation from its siblings, but Huang made as much possible from its slim musical content. 

I am beginning to wonder if Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka, heard for the second time this afternoon, is becoming competition-weary. Everybody plays it, almost becoming a cliche for loud and unapologetic barnstorming. It is business as usual in Huang’s reading, slightly more accurate and conventional but less characterful than Lopatynskyi’s. I think that’s enough Stravinsky for this competition. 

The preliminary recital programme of Tianyou Li (20, China) was centred wholly in the key of C minor. That was a risk unless he could make the music sound special, and he more than accomplished that. J.S.Bach’s French Suite No.2 and its short dances were ripe his ornamentations, which were interesting and ear-catching, almost improvisatory in nature. This is crisp Bach-playing that is hard to dislike. 

His tour de force came in Schubert’s mighty Sonata No.19 (D.958) from the great final trilogy. This is a young person’s reading, full of rhythmic vitality and a lust for life. When one considered that Schubert died soon after this was premiered at 31, he was still very much a young man. 

The tragedy was well captured with the opening chords, confidently punched out, and the harrowing development section of the first movement. The hymn-like slow movement was beautifully sung, and the tension was raised for the third movement’s Menuet and Trio. The finale’s tarantella rhythm had a fatalistic finality to it, and even though there were two more sonatas to come, Schubert knew his time was up. Li’s eventful Schubert and Cecino’s Scriabin were the two transcendent performances of the afternoon.

JUDGES' VERDICT

The six pianists chosen by the jury to proceed to the Semi-Finals are:

Tiankun Ma (China)

Leyu Xu (China)

Jiyoung Kim (South Korea)

Philipp Lynov (Russia)

Elia Cecino (Italy) and

Tianyou Li (China)

The Semi-Finals take place on Thursday and Friday (16 & 17 January 2025) at the SOTA Concert Hall.