VIVA CONCERTI: WHERE THE TWAIN SHALL MEET / Niu Niu with Metropolitan Festival Orchestra / Review

 

VIVA CONCERTI:

WHERE THE TWAIN SHALL MEET

Niu Niu (Piano) with

Metropolitan Festival Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Tuesday (27 October 2026), 7.30 pm

This review was published in The Straits Times on 30 October 2026 with the title "Pianist Niu Niu pulls off eight concertos with soul and no showboating".

Experiencing eight concertos in a single evening is the musical equivalent of feasting at an international buffet – a guarantee of indigestion. Yet there was method in the madness of this mammoth undertaking by the Chinese former child prodigy pianist Niu Niu (Zhang Shengliang).

Viva Concerti was the fundraiser for the 20th anniversary of VIVA Foundation for Children with Cancer whose chairperson is Mrs Jennifer Yeo, herself a fine amateur pianist. Supported by the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra conducted by Chan Tze Law, the first half was crafted like some Romantic mega-concerto of three movements.

The first movement of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with all its majesty accompanied by crunching piano chords opened the show. Niu Niu announced himself as a highly musical and sensitive soul, whose virtuoso feats are accomplished without extraneous gestures or showboating.

Those tired of self-serving antics by pianists pandering to popular appeal will find him a refreshing change, as he lets the music speak for itself. In the Romance from Fryderyk Chopin’s First Piano Concerto, lyrical sensibilities ruled, backed by silky-smooth orchestral strings.

Its sublime conclusion in the key of E major segued seamlessly into the finale of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, which also opens in the same key. Here, the tendency to milk the big melody was hard to resist but allied with a superior technical arsenal for a spectacular close, such quibbles were rendered irrelevant.

The second half opened with the Butterfly Lovers Concerto by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao, in an abridged version with Niu Niu making his fiddling debut on a 1753 G.B.Guadagnini violin from the Rin Collection. A slender tone and sounding over-cautious made this his least successful outing.

It was back to keyboard swashbuckling for the dramatic but short first movement from Franz Liszt’s First Piano Concerto, which in E flat major became the perfect prelude to the joyously romping Rondo of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, also called the Emperor.

So far, Niu Niu had been mostly strait-jacketed by classical forms and norms, and he made a spectacular departure with the only work performed in its entirety - George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Piquant harmonies in various passages soon gave way to long stretches of free improvisation, fleshing out the work to brilliant effect. That alone was worth the price of entry.

The eighth and final concert was the finale, Defend The Yellow River, from the Yellow River Concerto composed by a committee of six from Beijing’s Central Philharmonic Society. All the tropes and cliches from earlier concertos came to a flag-waving, tub-thumping and jingoistic head.

Niu Niu’s three encores included the delightful Beautiful Garden by Jennifer Yeo (composed as a 19-year-old) performed with orchestral accompaniment, his own bossa nova-filled Sunny Day and an outlandish improvisation of Nessun Dorma from Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot. After such keyboard riches, none shall sleep indeed.

All photos by courtesy of 

VIVA Foundation for Children with Cancer.

PEOPLE-WATCHING AT NIU NIU'S VIVA CONCERTI CONCERT FOR VIVA FOUNDATION FOR CHILDREN WITH CANCER

Niu Niu's gala concert with the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra on 27 October 2026 was a sold-out event, attended by Singapore's high society and for a good cause. All proceeds go to VIVA Foundation for Children with Cancer, chaired by Mrs George Yeo, celebrating its 20 years of raising funds and awareness for childhood cancer research. Who attended this special evening where eight concertos were performed? Here are the pics!

The Chairmen of Singapore Chinese Orchestra
and Singapore Symphony Orchestra get to meet.
Mr Ng Siew Quan with Mr & Mrs Goh Yew Lin
with SCO CEO Terence Ho.

Agnieszka Kovalczuk & Layla Pi

James Khoo, Yeoh Cheng Kung & Peter Chew

Mr & Mrs Rene Tan

Mr & Mrs Lee Suan Hiang

Marcel & Emily de Bruijckere

With Liu Huimin & Song Ziliang

The VIPs meet Niu Niu & Chan Tze Law,
including Mrs George Yeo and
Mrs & Mrs Heng Swee Keat.
Photo: VIVA Foundation for Children with Cancer

A PIANO RECITAL NOT TO MISS: DANG THAI SON & EWA POBLOCKA on 7 November 2026

Here is a piano recital not to miss. Altenburg Arts has brought together two of the planet's greatest Chopin performers in a joint concert. Both Dang Thai Son (Vietnam) and Ewa Poblocka (Poland) came to prominence in the 1980 Fryderyk Chopin International Piano Competition, an event overshadowed by the spectre of Ivo Pogorelich's elimination and Martha Argerich's infamous jury walk-out.   

Both Dang and Poblocka have gone on to solid and steady musical careers distinguished by high musicianship and utmost musical integrity. Both have also cemented rightful places on the jury of the Chopin Competition, which awarded first prizes to Eric Lu, Bruce Liu and Seong Jin Cho in recent editions. Both have also performed Chopin's First Piano Concerto with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Poblocka in 1983 and Dang in 2010.  

The programme:

DANG THAI SON performs solo in the first half:

MOMPOU Preludes Nos.1&7

MOMPOU Le Lac from Paisajes

MOMPOU Cancion y Danca No.8

CHOPIN Nocturne in B flat minor, Op.9 No.1

CHOPIN Polonaise in C# minor, Op.26 No.1

CHOPIN Three Mazurkas, Op.50

CHOPIN Ballade No.1 in G minor, Op.23

DANG THAI SON &
EWA POBLOCKA
perform duos in the second half:

MOZART Sonata in D major, K.381

SCHUBERT Rondo in D major, D.608

CHOPIN Rondo in C major, Op.73

POULENC Elegie

POULENC Capriccio d'apres Le Bal Masque

Saturday, 7 November 2026

Esplanade Concert Hall, 7.30 pm

Tickets available at SISTIC:

From Solo to Dialogue - Dang Thai Son & Ewa Pobłocka

 

Dang Thai Son in Chopin's Ballade No.4

Ewa Poblocka in Chopin's Scherzo No.1

                     FROM SOLO TO DIALOGUE

       is presented by Altenburg Arts.

PRE-CONCERT EATS: YGF MALATANG @ ESPLANADE XCHANGE

It looks like I'm determined to try all the Malatang eateries near Esplanade. Malatang and its variants are a quick and easy meal, and as long as you do not dally with the hot soups, you can still attend a concert with time to spare. The next malatang place I visited is apparent the biggest chain globally - YGF Malatang or Yangguofu for its full name in Chinese - at its Esplanade Xchange outlet which is located directly above Esplanade MRT.

The modus operandi is simple - stack all your ingredients into the big plastic bowl, choose your soup stock, and the cashier will weigh the contents and charge you accordingly. Most bowls require a minimum of 300 grams and prices range upwards from $10. My haul this time - mostly of vegetable, mushrooms and other varieties of fungi - came up to $12. The soup I picked was minimally spicy and enjoyed about 4 to 5 bowls of high sodium content goodness. 

What you need to do afterwards is to load up on water. After that, you are ready to go.

YGF MALATANG

Esplanade Xchange #B1-27

Above Esplanade MRT

JONATHAN YEO IN RECITAL / Review

 

JONATHAN YEO IN RECITAL

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday (28 October 2026)

And the piano music continues. As if an entire weekend of piano performances were not enough, here was another excellent recital to add to the fray. Singaporean pianist Jonathan Yeo originally graduated in mechanical engineering, then completed post-graduate studies in piano in Scotland and is now an adjunct lecturer at Singapore Raffles Music College. His highly demanding solo recital was a refreshing mix of the arcane and the familiar.

The first half showcased two Romantic composers who deserve to be better known. How much of Frenchman Gabriel Fauré’s piano music do we actually get to hear? Other than his popular Dolly Suite (for four hands), not much. Yeo’s choice to programme three contrasting Barcarolles (there are 13 in total, not a single one is populist repertoire) was an excellent one.

Opening with No.2 in G major (Op.41), he brought out the music’s lyricism, backed by the gentle lilt typical of gondolier boat songs. Rising to series of climaxes was the work’s ultimate pay off. No.4 in A flat major (Op.44) is a shorter work, technically easier but no less sublime. No.6 in E flat major (Op.70) is much in the same vein and just as lovely. Yeo’s sympathetic view and fine technique are always in service of the music, and there is nothing to dislike in these revelatory readings. Fauré’s harmonic language is an embarrassment of riches and variety, often begging the question: why don’t we hear more of this?

The American Edward MacDowell is known here for only two works – the miniature To a Wild Rose from Woodland Sketches and his Second Piano Concerto. Forget about the four sonatas, of which the Third Sonata in D minor (Op.57) or “Norse”, was likely given its Singapore premiere by Yeo. The music is dark and smouldering, chordal in most part, and armed with an epic severity associated with legends and sagas of the north (hence its nickname), and there are similarities with Rachmaninov’s First Sonata (in the same key) and Sibelius / Arnold Bax tone poems. 

Yeo’s vision was not to shy from its vast and broad vistas but to embrace them whole-heartedly. The intellectual and technical vigour invested in its three heroic movements, admirably played from memory (of course), was rewarded with a performance that was worthy of its conception. Do not expect to hear it again any time soon.

Claude Debussy is so popular in Singapore that his Preludes Book 1 (the more familiar of two volumes) might seem like old hat. However, Yeo’s traversal of the full set, with emphasis on colour, light and shade, achieved with judicious pedaling, thus providing maximal contrasts. The opening Danseuses de delphes (Dances of Delphi) immediately set the mood, its chords coloured with excellent sostenuto pedalling, then contrasted by the airy lightness of Voiles (Sails) and Le vent dans la plaine (The Wind on the Plain).

It took a feat of concentration to master these, yet be completely unfazed by the audience applauding inappropriately between preludes, a total of 10 times. The only one they missed was after Pas sur la neige (Footsteps in the Snow) probably because they did not know it had ended, and so Yeo merrily went on to gulp down Ce q’ua vu le vent d’Ouest (What the West Wind Saw) with its violent flailings, without interruption. One could go down the rabbit hole with each and every prelude, but suffice to say, Yeo’s performance was an invigorating one. Care and love were lavished on all the pieces, all through to the final dances of Puck and the black-and-white Minstrels.

His encore of Scorpion Fire or Sasoribi (Anti-Ares) by Jun Wakita (whose pseudonym is Virkato Wakhmaninov) comes from anime / videogame music. This is popular with young people these days, and who could not blame them after it is filled with all the tropes and cliches from the Romantic era piano music which oldies love, like Rachmaninov. Wakhmaninov? Go figure.

PASCAL ROGE & ELENA FONT WITH RE:SOUND / Review

 

PASCAL ROGE & ELENA FONT

WITH RE:SOUND

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (23 October 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 October 2026 with the title "Chamber orchestra re:Sound in fine spirited form with pianist duo Pascal Rogé and Elena Font".

Forty years ago to the month, French pianist Pascal Rogé made his first appearance in Singapore playing Camille Saint-Saens’ Fifth Piano Concerto with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. He has since graced our stages on multiple occasions through the years. Celebrating his 75th birthday this year, he and his Spanish pianist wife Elena Font made their debut with re:Sound on two pianos.

Opening the concert was an old favourite, Saint-Saens’ The Carnival of the Animals, backed by an ensemble of just ten players. This zoological fantasy in fourteen movements included witty rhyming verses by Ogden Nash narrated by Natalie Ng, who had also supplied the very well-written programme notes.

It was perhaps nerves which affected the piano duo as some of the earlier movements, such as Royal March of the Lion and Wild Donkeys, were not immaculately synchronised, but it soon got much better. In the infamous case of the movement titled Pianists, the uncoordination was deliberate, an in-joke that would-be virtuosos practising scales badly should be locked up.

This performance also gave orchestral players solo opportunities to shine, including double-bassist Julian Li in The Elephant, violinists Wilford Goh and Kim Kyu Ri in Personages with Long Ears (more donkeys, actually music critics), offstage clarinettist Lee Wai Teng in Cuckoo in the Woods, and cellist Lin Juan in the most famous movement of all, The Swan.

The Singapore premiere of Concerto for Piano Duet and Strings (Op.32) the British composer Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006) was completely left-of-field and a brilliant choice. Rogé and Font were now cramped onto a single keyboard and backed by a larger body of strings, but the excellent overall balance allowed them to stand out.

This unusual work combined mild dissonances including passages of polytonality with outright lyricism that was hard to dislike. The highly syncopated Vivace finale was extremely tricky but all on deck navigated its swelling waves with great aplomb for an uproarious close.

Its inclusion was was strategic, as this was an opportunity for virtuoso strings expertly led by Yang Shuxiang to work with piano virtuosos. The Rogés completed the coup with a lovely encore, The Fairy Garden from Maurice Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite.

The evening concluded with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No.31 in D major (K.297), also known as his “Paris Symphony”. In this short-winded symphony of three compact movements, the ensemble produced a sound much bigger than its size suggested. Ten woodwind and brass players (pairs of flutes, oboes, bassoons, French horns and trumpets) did the job by creating a spirited and celebratory air.

Its grandeur was meant to impress its 1778 listeners, yet it was the graceful dance in its central slow movement which had an equally big impact. The finale’s prestidigitation and fugal passages, so skilfully and passionately negotiated, were sufficient evidence that the clearly enthused audience was witnessing yet another prime performance from Singapore’s finest chamber orchestra.

All photographs by Jack Yam.