CHIAROSCURO
JESSIE M. Piano Recital
Esplanade Recital Studio
Wednesday (1 July 2026)
In a farewell piano recital before she embarks for undergraduate musical studies at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Young Steinway Artist Jessie M. (Jessie Meng YiRuiXue) gave a very well-conceived programme of mostly late-Romantic works inspired by classic works of art. Winner of multiple prizes including the 2021 National Piano Competition (Intermediate), the 19-year-old displayed a daunting technique that would be the envy of concert pianists double or triple her age.
She began with Enrique Granados’ The Maiden and the Nightingale, the fourth piece from Goyescas (a suite of six pieces inspired by Francisco de Goya’s paintings). Jessie might have opened a little too loud, as the build-up to the climax did not get the gradual work-up of passion it needed. Nevertheless, full-blooded heart-on-sleeve emotions were on show, before enthralling with the nightingale trills in its closing cadenza. An excellent start.
Debussy’s L’isle Joyeuse, after Antoine Watteau’s La Embarquement pour Cythere, seemed like a breeze for Jessie. The play of the waves and outbursts of ecstatic emotions coming to bear before the big payout and a splash to the bottom of the keyboard. She is on a roll, and the audience reciprocating accordingly, witholding applause after the Granados but letting loose on Debussy.
The lyrical lines of Liszt’s La Sposalizio from the Italian Book of Annees de pelerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), inspired by Raphael’s painting The Betrothal, were gorgeously brought out, contrasted with big left hand octaves and celebratory chords. Rachmaninov’s darkly passionate Prelude in B minor (Op.32 No.10) followed. Its inspiration was The Return by Swiss painter Arnold Bocklin (he of Isle of the Dead infamy), with a “sigh” motif of descending notes depicting nostalgia and regret, one that would return with a vengeance in the second half.
Opening the second half was Liszt’s Ricordanza, the ninth and longest of his 12 Transcendental Etudes. Here Jessie generates playing of much warmth, its remembrances likened to a “bundle of faded love letters”. Her arpeggio technique holds up seamlessly well, as do the dizzying cadenzas, this performance of mostly slow music a clear sign of astonishing maturity.
To close the recital, Rachmaninov’s Sonata No.2 in B flat minor (Op.36) in its earlier 1913 edition was a very brave choice. This version has at least five minutes of extra music, which Rachmaninov thought to be excessively discursive, making many excisions for its better-known 1931 iteration. Jessie launches into the music with fearless abandon, later feeding on its adrenaline from first to last. The descending “sigh” motif returned but more fully fleshed-out, indeed all three movements of the sonata were built around it or some variation of it.
The brooding was palpable but this was still a young person’s vision, and more power to Jessie as she made the slow central movement sing before erupting in that “mother” of orgasmic cadenzas. There might have been a little loss of control in the tumultuous finale, but that meant little in the grand scheme of things, as it was a grandstanding performance all the way to its ecstatic end. With a little tweaking, this was a show to win further piano competitions in the long road ahead.
As encore, Jessie offered Prokofiev’s Toccata (Op.11), a dream performance of a mechanistic nightmare, and Chopin’s final Prelude in D minor (Op.28 No.24), concluding with its fatal three low Ds. Since we are in the key of D minor, will Rachmaninov’s First Sonata and Third Piano Concerto be next?
Jessie M. was presented by Songs Without Words Piano Studio
