CHASING LIGHT: DING YI X DICK LEE 70 / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

CHASING LIGHT

DING YI  X  DICK LEE 70

Ding Yi Music Company

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (26 July 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 July 2026 with the title "Ding Yi celebrates Dick Lee's wide-ranging musical legacy in birthday tribute".

National Day is around the corner, and one is guaranteed to hear more than a few performances of Home (1998) in its various versions. However, did one know that its composer singer-songwriter Dick Lee wrote far more than that, besides his iconic musicals in English, Beauty World (1988), Fried Rice Paradise (1991) and Forbidden City (2002)?

This special concert by Ding Yi Music Company conducted by Dedric Wong celebrated Lee’s 70th birthday with a programme wholly dedicated to his songs in Cantonese and Mandarin. Many of these do not even have English titles. Arrangements for Chinese instrumental ensemble by eight composers from Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China were songs “reimagined”, and have never been previously heard by Lee himself.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

Concert director Jet Ho’s conception of the evening was a chronological one, built around a sequence of filmed interviews with Lee, detailing a life story when he began writing songs in Chinese. His 1990 relocation to Japan was pivotal, as he was soon ushered into the world of Hong Kong Cantopop by Sandy Lam. He was introduced to the “Four Heavenly Kings” - Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Aaron Kwok and Leon Lai – and he composed songs for all of them.

Dick Lee with Sandy Lam, 1991

Attended by a full-house of mostly the boomer demographic, this was more than an evening of nostalgia. It was a journey through the “Golden Age of Cantopop”, before the British colony’s handover to mainland China, and viewing the genre through new lenses.

Jessie Yeong & Skye Sirena
Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

The concert was fronted by four singers, Jessie Yeong (from Malaysia), Lennerd Lim (Malaysia), Skye Sirena (Singapore), Wysom Wong (Singapore), each bringing their own style to the songs. Yeong exuded sensuality in songs sang by Sandy Lam, Dawn and Ye Hua (Night Flower). Skye shined in Anita Mui’s slow ballad Ru Yue (Like Night) and Kit Chan’s Den Le You Den (Still Waiting).

Lennerd Lim & Wysom Wong
Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

Lim exuded “pretty boy” vibes as he roused the audience in Jeff Chang’s Mandopop Duo Xiang (Longing). It was Wong’s crooning and more leisurely manner in Andy Lau’s Jue Dui Zhai Hu Ni (Absolutely Care For You), however, that gained the most traction. Together, the two men courted and rocked the house in Love Is Cha Cha Cha.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

Besides accompanying, there were ample opportunities for Ding Yi’s musicians to shine as soloists. In Tracy Huang’s Everything I Know, Koh Yu Jie (erhu) and Yvonne Tay (guzheng) stole the show with purely instrumentals, while Lyu Sih-Ying’s dizi was always on hand to lend soloistic colour to the songs.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

After the Snow.Wolf.Lake Medley, it was the man of the hour Dick Lee himself who came forward to sing and tickle the ivories, In Jacky Cheung’s Love Is Eternal and Leslie Cheung’s Zhui (Chase), he exhibited a voice still in full fettle and an irrepressible presence. An encore of the ubiquitous Home, sung by all the singers and the audience, closed the evening on a nationalistic high.

Dick Lee is Singapore’s Paul McCartney, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Elton John all rolled into one.

Photos: Ding Yi Music Company

Happy Three Score and Ten,
Dick Lee!

SUKA MAKAN: LES BOUCHONS @ ROCHESTER PARK

Can anyone be tired of a good steak? Short of being vegetarian or vegan, a big juicy steak represents a pinnacle of dining Western style. And there are few places that can match the luxury of sinking one's teeth into meat than Les Bouchons, the French steakhouse. Rochester Park, just opposite Star Vista, is where this posh eating place is located, a single restaurant occupying an entire bungalow house.

The word bouchon is French for a "cork", a stopper for wine bottles, which explains the restaurant's extensive wine-list and the many bottles that line its walls. 

Escargots, best eaten on a bread roll.

Parma ham salad

Truffle fries and salad

I was honoured to be a guest of the Tan family, who ordered some of their favourite steak treats, on this occasion the Butcher's Selection, which consists of two heartily tender steaks and two lamb chops. Add on a few sides, such as escargots, salad, fries and French onion soup, a full French feast was served. Here is the photographic evidence. Vegans should look away.

French onion soup

Spinach on the side

Butcher's Selection

Another view of the cuts.

Tiramisu

Dame Blanche

A big till for a big bill.

The view from Vista Green Exchange.
Truly a buona vista.

LES BOUCHONS

10 Rochester Park

Rochester Commons

Singapore 139221

Les Bouchons: Best Steak House & Authentic French Restaurant in Singapore

ZARATHUSTRA AND BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

ZARATHUSTRA AND 

BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (24 July 2026)

This review was published on 25 July with the title "Dynamic SSO steps up to music director Hannu Lintu's unusual pairing of Strauss and Bartok".

The tandem of German composer Richard Strauss with Hungarian modernist Bela Bartok does not seem like obvious bedfellows. However, the two major works programmed in the second concert of Singapore Symphony Orchestra new music director Hannu Lintu’s inaugural series proved uncannily synergistic.

Both Richard Strauss and Bela Bartok
composed these masterpieces in their relative youth.

Strauss was the master of orchestral opulence, and his tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1896) had it all. Is there any classical work with a more recognisable opening two minutes? His famous depiction of Sunrise opened with a low rumble from Koh Jia Hwei’s pipe organ, ushering in the iconic three-note motif (C-G-C) on Jon Paul Dante’s solo trumpet and an orchestral outburst in glorious C major.

Such an arresting opening gambit could have rendered the rest of the 33-minute work superfluous, but Lintu’s clear-headed direction ensured this first of climaxes to be part of a series of coherently connected episodes. While reveling in big moments, many moments of chamber music-like intimacy also stood out.

The journey of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ubermensch (Superman), pondering his yearnings and celebrating his achievements, also found a pivotal role for SSO’s new concertmaster Andrew Beer, whose ecstatic violin solo in the great waltz of the Tanzlied (Dance Song) was another high point. The orchestra responded with much immediacy, responsive to every dynamic shift in the music’s ebb and flow all through to a retiring but fulfilling close.

Photo: Jack Yam

While Strauss exulted in great aspirations of mankind, Bartok’s only opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, composed in 1911 but premiered in 1918, probed the underbelly and unmentionables of the soul. This highly effective concert-staging was sung in the Hungarian with Bela Balazs’ original libretto, with a spoken prologue voiced by famous Hungarian conductor Gabor Takacs-Nagy.

Photo: Jack Yam

There were sinister undertones to this “Once upon a time” introduction, heralding an hour-long psychological drama plumbing the deepest and darkest recesses of human ambition. Chinese bass-baritone Shenyang portrayed the eponymous villain with a cool and unflappable mien meant to be inscrutable. Opposite him was British mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston as newest bride Judith, displaying a tour de force of contrasted emotions – overbearing love, extreme vulnerability and inquisitiveness with a penchant for self-destruction.

Photo: Jack Yam

The pair of opposites were well-matched, their emotional tug-of-war accompanied by music of intricate detail best appreciated in a live performance rather than in recordings. This was Bartok’s orchestration at his most Romantic, preceding a more recognisable brutalist style of later years. A huge climax was reached at the opening of the fifth door, a revelation of Bluebeard’s immense wealth and territory, with stentorian chords in glorious C major - a most Straussian moment.

Photo: Jack Yam

The unfolding tension was acutely matched by Gabriel Chan’s deft lighting design and the audience engaged by English surtitles (expertly operated by Michael Huang). Most of all, the very positive audience response for sophisticated programming choices such as this bodes well for the concert seasons under Lintu’s helm to come.

A SPECIAL PRE-COMPETITION PIANO RECITAL BY TOBY TAN

 

TOBY TAN Piano Recital

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory 

Ensemble Room 2

Wednesday (29 July 2026)

The Ettlingen International Piano Competition in Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany is one of the most prestigious concours for young pianists, many of whom go on to win major honours in senior competitions and have important concert careers. Lang Lang, Li Yundi and Yuja Wang have all won prizes here in the very beginning of their journeys as piano superstars.

Seventeen-year-old Singaporean pianist Toby Tan will take part in Category B during the first week of August, and I had the rare opportunity to preview his two concert programmes for the competition. The first recital of under 20 minutes opened with J.S.Bach’s Prelude & Fugue in F major from Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2. Evenness and legato lines defined the Prelude, contrasted by the skittish little dance of the Fugue, both brought out with much clarity. In a similar vein, there was humour in the first movement from Haydn’s Sonata in C major Hob.XVI:50 (the so-called “English” sonata), again contrasted with passages of smoothness which made this a fascinating listen all round.

Then the gloves came off for Liszt’s Transcendental Etude No.2 in A minor, which sometimes carries the nickname of Fusées or rockets. Whatever its moniker, Toby unleashed its torrents of shock waves and chordal outbursts, reminding one why Liszt was called the “Paganini of the piano”, a pianist’s vision of violin pyrotechnics. Closing the first recital were two contrasting movements from 20th century Armenian composer Arno Babadjanian’s Six Pictures, displaying a flexibility of form and tempo in the near-atonal opening Improvisation, and the biting ostinatos and Bartokian violence in the Toccatina.

The second recital requires playing of 30 minutes, including a full sonata from the classical era. For this, Toby picked Beethoven’s Sonata in E flat major (Op.27 No.1), the first of the two Sonata quasi una fantasia (the second being the Moonlight Sonata). This was a very astute choice juxtaposing contrasting moods and textures, combining lyricism and requisite razor-fast reflexes for rapid playing. He handled these transitions very well, upholding Beethoven’s idea of “fantasy” (its four movements are unconventional and unusually sequenced) and wry humour. A return of the third movement’s chorale theme – well-realised in Toby’s reading - represented a déjà vu which Beethoven would observe in his late sonatas.

There were two Chopin works, the Mazurka in G sharp minor (Op.33 No.1), which revealed an instinctive feel of the Polish folk rhythm and that paradigm of Romantic lyricism that is the Barcarolle (Op.60), building up to a heady climax before unwinding with a series of elaborated filigreed passages to close. The full recital closed with Prokofiev’s Four Etudes (Op.2), early works which revelled in relentless mechanistic rhythms and technical facility. 

Toby was able to tease out hidden melodies amid the pummelling, and find poetry in the gossamer lightness of the second study. A “no prisoners” approach was applied to the motoric running thirds of the third number (finding notoriety by Kissin in his Carnegie Hall recital), and riding high on the boogie woogie rhythm of the finale, which closed the recital on an exalted and musical high. To all this, one could only exclaim "bravissimo"!

I can only wish Toby Tan all the best success in this competition before he returns to serve his national service. Another Singaporean pianist, Casey Li, is also competing in this age category. I am certain both Toby and Casey will do Singapore proud.