SUKA MAKAN: BUTTERMILK N CREAM @ SUNSET WAY

We've always passed by this cosy-looking Western-styled eatery on the way to Five Star Hong Kong Dim Sum or Mariner's Corner on Sunset Way, and this weekend we finally walked in. No regrets, as this is a rather nice fusion restaurant - Buttermilk N Cream - with a small but attractive menu. The weekday set-lunches look particularly attractive, which means we'll have to come again.

It's a small restaurant...

...but its outdoor seating area is spacious.
Pets are welcome too.

Nice place to have tea.

The ambience is homely and wholesome, and the service excellent. It did not take long before our lunch was served, and we were amply rewarded. I've always liked a hearty seafood stew, and this one was served with a large croissant for which dipping became a pleasure. We also ordered Chilean mussels, which meant that we had a lot of mussels to get through. Both dishes were served with different savoury sauces. To try the other inviting dishes, a return is imperative!

Chilean mussels

All day breakfast

Seafood stew - a treat!

BUTTERMILK N CREAM

Blk 106 Clementi Street 12 #01-52

Sunset Way

Tel: 8645-5670

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VICTOR KHOR PLAYS CHOPIN AND NIER / Review

VICTOR KHOR PLAYS CHOPIN AND NIER

Victor Khor, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (27 June 2026)

It takes some guts and chutzpah to make a comeback piano recital at the age of 60, but Victor Khor is not an ordinary pianist. His programmes have been unusual and different, and this one was par for the course. Opening with Fryderyk Chopin, his view is not the hyper-accurate and gladiatorial variety to be found in Warsaw competitions, but one so personal as to be almost haram.

The very deliberate pacing in Ballade No.4 in F minor (Op.52) is rubato pulled to its extremes, with accents so placed as to be the opposite of subtle. He wants the melody to be heard in expense of everything else, and elsewhere he wants inner voices to be brought out. Whatever it is, he makes you listen intently. At his languorous tempi, his technique also held up and there was no moment of doubt or that of losing control. The struggles of the ferocious coda were well-captured, with all caution thrown into the wind for a tumultuous finish.

In the Barcarolle in F sharp major (Op.60), one wished for a greater variety of colour and tone. Hidden voices were brought out, and his epic view incorporated that of a rather aggressive gondolier plying overused Venetian canals. Growing into confidence, Ballade No.3 in A flat major (Op.47) followed the course of its successor by combining lyricism with dogged vehemence. Victor’s Chopin is in-your-face and certainly not for everyone. This Moscow Conservatory-schooled pianist might just be Singapore’s solution to Ivo Pogorelich, not the 1980 version but his 21st century iteration.

Over the years, Victor has been most successful playing the music of Radiohead, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Joe Hisaishi. Now his attention is turned to the videogame music of NieR: Automata. This is not to be confused with Nie Er, the composer of China’s March of the Volunteers, but by a collective of Japanese composers formed by Keiichiro Okabe, Keigo Hoashi and Kuniyuki Takahashi. His suite of six selections, arranged for piano, was very well chosen to showcase the music’s acute introspective qualities and sentimentality.

Most of all, these pieces suited Victor’s temperament to a tee. City Ruins (Okabe, arranged by Yo Suzuki) possessed rich harmonies, sometimes even sounding symphonically conceived. Peaceful Sleep (Okabe, arr. Yasumasa Kumagai) is a slow and leisurely trawl in cool jazz sensibilities. The lushness of Voice of No Return (Okabe, arr. Suzuki) needed no special pleading, neither did it outstay its welcome.

The Tower (Okabe, arr. Kumagai) was perhaps the most reflective piece in the collection, and Victor was ever sensitive to its plaints. Its pulsing heartbeat was carried on in Vague Hope (Hoashi), which was very sentimental but not to the point of being cloying. Ending with Weight of the World (Okabe, arr. Dai Sakakibara), its upbeat vibe, excitably generated, provided an optimistic close to the recital proper. I have heard these on YouTube, all of which pale in comparison to Victor’s live readings, where he adds notes of his own, and where passion is worn on the sleeve, expressed to the fullest possibilities.

I will be happy to hear these again in a heartbeat, but only with Victor as the guide. As an encore, Victor offered an improvisation, the rapid figurations of Vavilovskaya (titled after a new Moscow underground station) inform this to be a short and flashy railway piece. Simply brilliant.

VICTOR KHOR was presented by VIRTUOMUSIC.

RANDOM HEARTLAND EATS: SHANGHAI TAN PAN-FRIED BUN @ GOLDHILL SHOPPING CENTRE

OK, this isn't exactly in the heartlands. And it's not a post-concert eats either. I had just heard excerpts of Singapore composer Tan Chan Boon's last two symphonies played on the piano at United Square, and we were both hungry, not having had dinner earlier. It's 9.30 pm and most eating places were closed (except for a very uninteresting Burger King with disinterested staff), and we stumbled across this eatery - Shanghai Tan Pan-Fried Bun - in the old school Goldhill Shopping Centre.

Shanghai Tan is an iconic location in the famous Chinese city, specifically the Bund district, which is perhaps why this eatery specialises in pan-fried buns. But that's not what we ate - noodles, xiao long bao (soup-filled dumplings) and finger food was what we tried. Not bad, according to Chan Boon who had recently been to Shanghai (my visit was way back in 2014). I was just hungry and wolfed down everything. 

Braised pork chop noodles

Classic xiao long bao

Wonton Soup

Fried pork tenderloin strips

The shop closes at 10 pm, but the wait staff was very patient and ensured we had finished everything and satisfied, before turning off the lights. You cannot say that about most places in Singapore.

SHANGHAI TAN PAN-FRIED BUN

153 Thomson Road

Goldhill Shopping Centre (1st floor)

Singapore 307607

Shanghai Tan Pan Fried Bun - Goldhill Shopping Centre - Deals | Grab Dine Out

I STILL DON'T GET MODERN ART: WHERE THE CITY SOFTENS by HANS CHEW

Caution: Men at Work.

I still don't get modern art. Wandering around Esplanade just before Tze Toh's Unwelten piano recital, I chanced upon a new exhibition of modern art called Where The City Softens by local visual artist Hans Chew. At first, I thought part of Esplanade had been fenced off for the usual repairs or restoration, but no, they actually paid someone to do certain installations.

Trying to understand the situation better, some form of explanation had been included. Catch phrases like "inherent value of making" certainly helped to differentiate items which were "functional and non-functional", "essential and the trivial", "discarded and abandoned". There was also on display a "repository of objects that contemplate our anthropic relationship with the material environment".  Yes, that's so much better.

 

I thought I'd have some fun to try and distinguish which parts of the exhibition were essential and which were trivial, and which were functional and non-functional. This reminds me of a game we used to play on Sesame Street, "One of these things is not like the others". So here are the photos.

WHERE THE CITY SOFTENS

by HANS CHEW

Esplanade 3rd floor

The exhibit runs till 23 August 2026

Admission is free

(Would you even pay to view this?)

ANNA GENIUSHENE Piano Recital / TZE TOH Piano Recital / Review

 

BEGINNINGS & BRILLIANCE

ANNA GENIUSHENE Piano Recital

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (14 June 2026)

UMWELTEN

TZE TOH Piano Recital

Esplanade Black Room

Saturday (20 June 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 23 June 2026 with the title "Anna Geniushene plays with youthful virtuosity; Tze Toh is alchemist of musical ideas".

Russian pianist Anna Geniushene, silver medallist at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, was presented by Altenburg Arts in a recital which focused on the early works of Fryderyk Chopin and Johannes Brahms.

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

Chopin was 14 when he composed his Opus 1 Rondo in C minor. Influenced by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Carl Maria von Weber and bel canto opera, the music can sound impossibly florid, but Geniushene brought out lyrical lines with a singing tone. For her, it was not just a showpiece but something more than that.

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

Her views of Three Mazurkas (Op.50) and Three Waltzes (Op.34) saw generous use of rubato and extremes of dynamics. These contrasts gave the Ballade No.2 in F major (Op.38) an added edge of vehemence, while the rarely-heard Tarantella (Op.43) bounded with rumbling athleticism.

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

Alfred Cortot’s lovely transcription of Brahms’ Wiegenlied (Lullaby, Op.49 No.4) separated two of the German romantic’s most dramatic piano works. The Scherzo in E flat minor (Op.4) bristled with rough and ready humour, while the First Sonata in C major (Op.1) from the 20-year-old was a tour de force of youthful exuberance and virtuosity.

Photo: Ung Ruey Loon

Its big opening chords referenced Beethoven’s monumental Hammerklavier Sonata, a reflection of young Brahms’ ambitions. The slow movement saw Geniushene evince genuine poetry before the final two movements swept the board with full-blooded passion. The Steinway grand more than withstood the pummelling, and this was where Geniushene directed her first of many bows.

Photo: Jeff Wong

While every note of Geniushene’s recital was scripted to the last detail, homegrown jazz pianist Tze Toh’s recital of orginal works was almost entirely improvised. Umwelten is the German word for environment, from the title of Baltic German biologist Johann von Uexkull’s book A Foray Into The Worlds of Animals and Humans.

Photo: Jeff Wong

This was his inspiration, with compositions likened to simple organisms which react to their environment and grow. In that respect, Anemone started with a modified Alberti bass (as heard in Mozart’s sonatas) over which simple minimalist variations were grafted on.

Photo: Pianomaniac

In Machines That Fly, after Leonardo da Vinci, tempo, volume and momentum were upped, reaching a feverish climax before closing quietly. Time was a work that felt timeless, a sequence of chords giving way to a Michel Legrand-like melody, which was allowed to drift in whatever direction Toh fancied and ending without actually resolving.

Photo: Jeff Wong

The regenerative ability of starfish was explored in A Star Is Reborn, where Carnatic scales heard in Indian ragas were exploited to quite magical effect. Sentio was described as a contemporary take on the ancient passacaglia where the right hand performed embellishments over a constant bass on the left hand. In truth, there was little separating Toh from J.S.Bach or Handel.

Photo: Jeff Wong

Here With Me reveled in Dave Grusin-like chords often heard in gospel music, totally in line with its description as a musical prayer. 12 Dimensions On Strings In Theory was given an impromptu premiere, a journey through twelve major and minor keys, where dodecaphony as practised by Arnold Schoenberg had never sounded so inviting.

75 minutes passed ever so quickly that Toh never got to perform all 12 works he had programmed, but he closed on a happy and upbeat note with Symphony (from Wanderers), where the dictum was to play as freely as possible. Toh is not just a jazz pianist, but an alchemist of musical ideas.

To hear more of the pianist as composer, transcriber and improviser, be sure to catch the six recitals of the 32nd Singapore International Piano Festival from 2 to 5 July at Victoria Concert Hall and The Arts House.

Singapore International Piano Festival | Singapore Symphony Orchestra