TIFFANY QIU Piano Recital
Esplanade Recital Studio
Wednesday (11 February 2026)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 February 2026 with the title "Pianist Tiffany Qiu plays with extremes of dynamics in eclectic programme".
With Polish pianist Rafal Blechacz’s concert last week, the Singapore piano recital season has begun in earnest. This week saw the local debut of Ireland-born Chinese pianist Tiffany Qiu, whose eclectic recital built upon two Romantic era sonatas played to a small but discerning house.
To follow Blechacz in Frederic Chopin’s music was a tall order, but Qiu’s sense of rhythm and feeling for nostalgia had much to recommend in the Pole’s Five Mazurkas (Op.7). The first, in B flat major is the most familiar, being regularly played by children. She imbued it with a robust sonority, not least in the rustic drones of its central section.
She also found the requisite melancholy and sprightly spirit that occupied these short peasant dances in three-quarter time, where Chopin’s yearning patriotism was worn on the sleeve. Robert Schumann described his Mazurkas as “cannons buried in flowers”, where seemingly innocent dances concealed a burning nationalism.
All this set the stage for Chopin's Sonata No.2 in B flat minor (Op.35), better known as the “Funeral March” Sonata, which Schumann referred to as “four of Chopin’s wildest children under the same roof”. Extremes of dynamics inhabited Qiu’s view, with vehemence and violence sitting comfortably alongside lyricism and poetry.
This was most apparent in the Scherzo, which rumbled and raged, but tempered by the song-like central section. Similarly the eponymous Funeral March built up a head of steam before being tamed by some of Chopin’s most tender music. The relentless but mercifully brief Finale, redolent of cold wind sweeping over a graveyard, brought the first half to a tumultuous close.
Sergei Prokofiev’s Prelude in C major (Op.12 No.7), delighted in rippling arpeggios and glissandi. Its apparent innocence heralded the Asian premiere of Singaporean composer Elliot Teo’s Intervening Moments (2023), a suite in six movements.
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| Tiffany spoke about Elliot's work and how it was far from easy to perform. |
A significant addition to the small canon of Singaporean piano repertoire, it headily relived the atonalism of Arnold Schoenberg’s Sechs Kleine Klavierstucke (Op.19), except there was nothing kleine (little) about these pieces.
Bell sounds, dance rhythms and resounding chords a la French composer Olivier Messiaen occupied its pages, and there were even hints of jazz and funk colouring a score that was constantly shifting and never allowing interest to wane. The fifth movement’s passacaglia were perhaps the most memorable, a droll right hand theme (which could have become a fugue in Dmitri Shostakovich’s pen) being assailed by left hand interjections but still having the final word.
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| Both Tiffany and Elliot receive applause. |
Qiu’s dedicated and trenchant advocacy of her husband’s new work was both moving and touching. That same passion continued into Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata in D minor (Op.31 No.2), or Tempest Sonata, a performance that both full-blooded and riveting. She brooded in the Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) of the opening, then articulated the slow movement with utmost clarity, before unleashing a perpetual motion that consumed the finale till its quiet end.
Reliving more bell sounds, Qiu’s encore of Franz Liszt’s La Campanella was most apt, and eagerly received by the audience.
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| The local community of composers and artists came to support, including Toh Yan Ee, Hoh Chung Shih, Jonathan Shin and Samuel Phua. |
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| With family and friends. |
