SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: RESPIGHI CONCERTO GREGORIANO ON MARCO POLO RECORDS

 

RESPIGHI Concerto Gregoriano

Poema Autumnale

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Takako Nishizaki (Violin)

Choo Hoey (Conductor)

   Marco Polo 8.220152

Following the successful collaboration between the Singapore Symphony Orchestra led by music director Choo Hoey and Japanese violinist Takako Nishizaki in the Hung Hu Violin Concerto album, this was a logical follow-up. The Hong Kong-based Marco Polo label was mining little-recorded repertoire to fill gaping lacunae in the catalogue and Italian composer Ottorino Respighi, underrepresented on disc other than his Roman Trilogy, was a good choice.

Respighi’s Concerto Gregoriano (1921-22) is a sumptuously scored violin concerto in three movements based on Gregorian chant themes. The modal character of its melodies places it in the stylistic territory of concertante works like Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending (premiered 1921) and the much later Butterfly Lovers Concerto (1959) by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao. In fact, all three works make a splendid programme for a dreamily rhapsodic album. 

The solo part is virtuosic which Nishizaki masters with aplomb, and SSO is a sympathetic partner which has substantial orchestral chunks of its own to chew on. The 31-minute concerto has a shorter companion in Respighi’s Poema Autunnale (Autumn Poem, 1925), a 14-minute long work with very similar inspirations, making it a virtual twin of The Lark Ascending.

The young Choo Hoey, looking stylish

Recorded in May 1983, both performances have since been eclipsed by Lydia Mordkovitch / Edward Downes on Chandos (1993) and Vadim Brodsky / Francesco la Vecchia on Brilliant Classics (2009-10). This received a dismissive review on Gramophone but garnered 4 of 5 stars on Classic CD. Go figure. Nonetheless, this is an interesting look at how the young SSO accompanied its soloists, usually a prelude to recording more repertoire on its own.

TWO SPLENDID PIANO RECITALS AT YONG SIEW TOH CONSERVATORY

 

The Conservatory's Fazioli Grand
was donated by Mr & Mrs Tan Kah Tee

TWO SPLENDID PIANO RECITALS

AT YONG SIEW TOH CONSERVATORY

   Wednesday afternoon (29 April 2026)

Imagine you are a fourth-year student at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, and your final test before graduation is an hour-long recital, a culmination of years of study and practice. That recital (or practical examination) determines your Bachelor’s degree, and you leave the halls of Kent Ridge as a professional musician. I had the fortune to attend two such piano recitals from two very talented final year students. That these could have been recitals at a piano competition or part of a piano festival is a testament to what the students have achieved.

The first pianist was Chakrit Khanovej from Thailand. I had previously judged his performances at the 2020 Thailand Steinway Youth Piano Competition, where he was awarded the 1st prize in the Senior Category. Only a cruel technicality prevented him from being the pianist to represent Thailand at the Regional Finals. True artists learn from experience and become the better for it, and his senior recital was a serious programme with two major sonatas and a dessert to top it off.

Beginning with Beethoven’s Sonata in A major (Op.101), the gentle giant showed a poetic and lyrical bent in the first movement, then let it rip in the striding syncopated march of the second movement which was the undoubted influence of the corresponding movement of Schumann’s Fantasy (Op.17). The short third movement was merely an introduction to the finale, and it was a magical moment when the first movement’s theme returned, a true reminiscence which was not to him. The heroic finale was where nerves frayed, getting lost in the fugue but he did not stop, instead completing the sonata on an optimistic high.

This was followed by Schumann’s frankly over-long Sonata No.1 in F sharp minor (Op.11) in four movements. The introduction in dotted rhythm and exposition were very well-handled and he made a good case overall. The ensuing Aria and Scherzo were well contrasted, but the problematic and circuitous Finale was where for many coming to grief almost seemed a formality. He shrugged off the lapse to close the work strongly. With the heavy lifting over, Chakrit seemed a far more relaxed personality as he polished off Nikolai Kapustin’s jazzy Variations Op.41 (on a Ukrainian theme which the bassoon solo from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is based on) with cool but stunning aplomb.

Chai Zi Qing from Malaysia used to go by the name Venus Chai, but I am glad she has dropped that Roman goddess name, for nobody can take a moniker like that seriously (much like Aphrodite, Lolita, Kitty or Fanny) except on OnlyFans. She is a serious artist and her performances of two great repertoire works proved just that. It is often difficult to coherently string together the 18 short pieces that make up Schumann’s Davidsbundlertanze (Op.6) but she did it.

The quixotic shifts of mood between the passionate (Florestan) and reflective (Eusebius) movements is bewildering, but she made each piece sound special before moving on the next one. Her technical command was also beyond reproach, making light of some really treacherous passages. The poetry and lyricism in the Innig second piece would soon return and that felt like a welcome homecoming as the work wound to a quietly lilting and reflective close. To make music come alive is true virtuosity, even when there are not so many notes to overcome.

Her pet showpiece was finally unleashed, in another stunning reading of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit. I was not the only person in the hall who witnessed her performance at last year’s Ravel Marathon at the recording studio and returned for more. In the big auditorium, the true sonorities of her vision were realised. 

Ondine was shimmering and sensuous, building up to a thrilling and cataclysmic climax before its placid denouement. The repeated B flats in Le gibet were hypnotic in their intensity, while Scarbo scrambled with manic malevolence that was all-consuming. An absorbing Gaspard is a rare thing to behold, and this brought back to mind the best Gaspard of my memory, some 21 years ago from another lady from Malaysia, Foo Mei Yi.

I have little doubt that Chakrit and Zi Qing, two very musical souls, will have promising careers to come. This is only the beginning of greater things, and I can only wish them well for the future.

SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: WHEN WILL YOU RETURN? & SELLING LAND FOR THE BRIDE-PRICE / THE BEST OF CHINESE EVERGREENS

 

WHEN WILL YOU RETURN

Chinese and other Asian Evergreens

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Choo Hoey (Conductor)

   Marco Polo 8.225815

The Chinese and English titles
do not match!

SELLING LAND FOR THE BRIDE-PRICE

More Chinese Evergreens

THE BEST CHINESE EVERGREENS

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Choo Hoey (Conductor)

   Hong Kong Records 8.240216

   Marco Polo 8.223917

When the Singapore Symphony Orchestra under music director Choo Hoey started its recording relationship with the Hong Kong Records label (founded by Klaus Heymann) during the early 1980s, one of the objectives was to record performances of popular Chinese and Asian tunes in lush “high class” orchestrations. There was a market for such arrangements in those days, and the SSO was ripe for the task as a young newly-founded professional orchestra to fulfil that niche.

The first album, When Will You Return, was recorded in 1984 and issued as a LP, which sold ten thousand copies in its first run. A sequel, Selling Land For The Bride-Price, came one year later. Listening to these recordings, long available on CD on Heymann’s Marco Polo label, was an exercise in nostalgia. These were songs our parents and grandparents knew and loved, and there is no reason why later generations cannot enjoy them too. Simple melodies that linger in the mind, much like those heavily-marketed British or American light music favourites, are the reason for their appeal.

When Will You Return is the more comprehensive album. Besides Chinese standards like Ye Lai Xiang (Midnight Fragrance) and Without You, it also includes popular songs from Indonesia (Bengawan Solo), Philippines (Dahil Sayo), Taiwan (Maidens of Alishan, Ti Or Or, which makes its English translation Dark Clouds in the Sky sound clumsy). The orchestrations of 15 tracks, by Japanese arrangers including T.Suzuki, T.Suzuki, K.Ogokubo and A.Yasuraoka, were very well done, highlighting SSO strings to the full. This possibly the closest one can get to reliving the Mantovani effect.

Its sequel is much less effective. Besides having one fewer track, and playing for just 44 minutes, the orchestrations (uncredited) are mostly anodyne. There are duplications of two songs, Midnight Fragrance and When Will You Return, which are shorter and in poorer orchestrations. To add insult to injury, 8.223917 (presumably for Western distribution), has neither Chinese translations of titles nor programme notes. So why bother having a Part Two without repeating the high standards of the former? The choice is clear, get the earlier album and that would be good enough.

SSO'S FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS: HUNG HU VIOLIN CONCERTO on Hong Kong Records

 

This was the not the original cover design
of the LP, but the first CD release.
Notice how much it resembles
Naxos CD sleeves to come later.

HUNG HU VIOLIN CONCERTO

Singapore Symphony Orchestra 

Takako Nishizaki (Violin)

Choo Hoey (Conductor)

   Hong Kong Records 8.880020

   Marco Polo 8.223902

   Marco Polo 8.225811

This retrospective of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s earliest and forgotten recordings begins with its very first album. Recorded in January 1981, this was born of a quite successful relationship between the two-year-old orchestra and the fledgling Hong Kong-based record label Hong Kong Records, founded by German entrepreneur Klaus Heymann, which would later become the specialist Marco Polo label, which in turn spawned the to-be giant budget label Naxos.

The main work of the LP was A Kejian’s Hung Hu Violin Concerto, a fantasy based on the Chinese folksong The Waves of Hung Hu. At just 15 minutes, this is shorter than the wildly popular Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto, but conceived and scored in the same idiom – that of a Romantic violin concerto. The music is similarly enjoyable and demands made on the soloist par for the course, well suited for Japanese violin virtuoso Takako Nishizaki (Mrs Heymann), who went on to record Butterfly Lovers no less than six times.

The formidable Mrs Heymann

The second work is one half of Butterfly Lovers composing duo Chen Gang’s Fantasy on a Sinkiang Folksong, which is now better-known as Sunshine Over Tashkurgan, recently recorded by Chloe Chua and SSO (on Pentatone, recorded in 2023) as a fillup to her Butterfly Lovers. How the decades have passed. Unashamedly virtuosic, this is Central Asia’s rhapsodic answer to Ravel’s Tzigane.

Autographed by both Choo Hoey
& Takako Nishizaki

The balance of the album contains shorter works, Ge Yan’s The Horse Cart (performed at the official opening of Victoria Concert Hall in October 1980), Gin Yong Cheng’s The Happy Grassland, Ma Ke’s Shanbei Suite (which also features an uncredited gaohu soloist) and Fu Geng Cheng’s Celebration Dance. All very engaging music based on Chinese folk music, and some with a Socialist Realist agenda that Chinese composers during the 1950s and 60s were no inferior to their Soviet comrades and counterparts. 

Choo Hoey was SSO's founding maestro

The SSO under founding music director Choo Hoey give more than creditable performances in more than adequate sound, and it should be noted that today’s SSO no longer performs this repertoire other than the ubiquitous Butterfly Lovers. In short, a worthy blast from the past.

Another iteration of the same album,
now part of the Chinese Music Series.

The final edition, now under the umbrella
of Popular Chinese Orchestral Music.
Obviously, somebody must be
listening to these recordings.

SUKA MAKAN: STIRLING STEAKS @ THE CAPITOL

How much steak can one eat at one sitting? We put this to the test at Stirling Steaks at The Capitol. Not just at some random dinner but on our 27th wedding anniversary. So we've got our son Shan Ming along as well in a rare appearance in Suka Makan. This new branch of Stirling Steaks (the other is at Joo Chiat) is very well located at Basement Two of The Capitol, easily reachable by MRT. 

One can order ala carte or have the all-you-can-eat steak buffet which is a rather reasonable $45++ at dinner, to be completed within one hour or thereabouts. We did not rush, instead took our time savouring three different cuts of Black Angus and other dishes including chicken, dory, beef shabu, pork shabu, salad and French fries. We did not feel rushed as service was prompt and friendly. 

No leftovers, clean as a whistle!

After sampling the basic buffet, we can conclude that Sirlion was the tastiest and juiciest of the three cuts, and that is what we should target the next time we came. As the photos show, nothing was left on the platter and we felt sated without being overstuffed. I would recommend this place for future meetings of the Kent Ridge Fine Music and Steak Appreciation Club (No Vegans Admitted) or the Gathering of the Gouws.

STIRLING STEAKS CAPITOL

13 Stamford Road, 

The Capitol #B2-53

Singapore 178905

Tel: 8083-8659

Stirling Steaks Menu (Buffet & Dine-in) 

CHOPIN VS AI / CHUREN LI PIANO RECITAL / Review

 

CHOPIN VS AI

Churen Li Piano Recital

Chamber @ The Arts House

Sunday (19 April 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 21 April 2026 with the title "Recital proves that AI will replace mediocrity but not true inspiration". 

Organised by the Embassy of Poland in Singapore as part of its PolandShiok! Festival, this unusual hour-long recital by Singaporean pianist-composer Churen Li pitted the composition skills of Poland’s national composer Fryderyk Chopin against the modern marvels of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The premise was simple. Li performs on the Yamaha grand and the audience is asked to vote as to whether each piece was by Chopin or AI. A big question was being asked: can human composers be replaced by AI? This experiment was both thought-provoking and interesting.

Li’s opening piece was silky and nocturne-like, with a gentle legato melodic line accompanied by G major arpeggios on the left hand. There were also discrete ornamentations that dressed up the invention. Those in the know would recognise Chopin’s serene Andante Spianato in G major (Op.22), played without the Polonaise.

Next came another elegant nocturne, this time in A minor, but with regularly shifting tonalities. There were Chopinesque touches for sure, but some uncharacteristic ones as well. Li explained that AI generated sound files, which she needed to transcribe and edit into a score that was playable.

The key of C sharp minor figured prominently in the next segment, beginning dark and smouldering but gradually morphing from night to brightness of day at its climax. Following that was a very familiar number, with a scintillating opening contrasted with a D flat major big tune at its centre. Nobody was fooled as that was clearly Fantaisie-Impromptu (Op.66), but the preceding number was also by Chopin, his less familiar Nocturne in C sharp minor (Op.27 No.1).

The next two pieces in A minor were dances in three-quarter time, either the waltz or mazurka. The first included some dissonances which jarred somewhat but had some Chopinisms heard elsewhere. The second sounded quite like Japanese anime music trying to imitate the inimitable Pole. These flights of fancy were very pleasant but hardly authentic. AI, for certain.

Then came the Waltz in C sharp minor (Op.64 No.2), simplicity personified, and the recital closed with the longest work on show, Chopin’s Ballade No.4 in F minor (Op.52). One of his greatest single-movement utterances, a short introduction was followed by variations building up to a stirring climax, prompting premature applause at a strategic pause. Closing with a thunderous coda, this was a work of true genius not to be randomly cooked up by some app. At least not yet.

Li’s marvelous encore was her own improvisation on Chopin’s Prelude in E minor (Op.28 No.4), which skillfully played on its two pivotal notes, before gloriously reliving the original in full. In this musical duel, Chopin won handsomely simply because of his blindingly obvious genius. If Chopin’s teenaged and unformed Polonaises or his many Mazurkas were put to the test, the result might have been less one-sided.

On the other hand, had Austrian composer / pianist / teacher Carl Czerny’s 861 eminently forgettable works been scrutinised, AI has at least a fighting chance. In short, AI can and will replace mediocrity, but not true inspiration.

LEGENDARY RUSSIAN PIANISTS / BRILLIANT CLASSICS / Review Part 1

 

LEGENDARY 

RUSSIAN PIANISTS

Brilliant Classics 9014 (25 CDs)

Despite the globalisation of piano playing in the 21st century, the hallowed Russian piano school is invariably referred to with a sense of awe and an aura of mystery. Its great tradition began with the Rubinstein brothers, Anton and Nicholas, who founded conservatories in Moscow and St Petersburg, where musical instruction founded on strong foundations, interpretive rigour and technical prowess held sway. The rest is history.

This impressive box-set of Russian pianism, expertly curated by Anglo-Turkish writer, critic and record producer Ates Orga for Brilliant Classics, encompasses 29 pianists with recordings – famous and obscure – which represent a mere tip of the iceberg. Arranged in chronological order from Konstantin Igumnov to Nikolai Lugansky, there will be many Russian / Ukrainian / Soviet era pianists whose names who could have been included and one thinks of Sergei Rachmaninov, Nikolai Medtner, Alexander Goldenweiser, Vladimir Krainev, Grigory Sokolov, Elizo Virsaladze, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Dmitri Alexeev, Nikolai Petrov, Yuri Egorov and more like them. However, this collection was never meant to be exhaustive, but merely a sampling which will hopefully whet the appetite for more.

The oldest recording dates from 1935, with Konstatin Igumnov (1873-1948) performing Chopin and Scriabin. He was an exact contemporary of Rachmaninov and premiered his First Sonata and later the Paganini Rhapsody in the Soviet Union. His virtuosity is evident in the 1941 recording of Schumann’s Kreisleriana, and his Russianness displayed in all twelve of Tchaikovsky’s Seasons, recorded in 1947.

Despite deserving at least a disc each, Grigori Ginzburg (1904-1961), Samuil Feinberg (1894-1962) and Heinrich Neuhaus (1888-1964) are cramped into one single album, performing concertante works. Ginzburg draws the short straw with Liszt’s brilliantly inconsequential Fantasia on Beethoven’s The Ruins of Athens. Feinberg gives an idiomatic performance of Scriabin’s only Piano Concerto (Op.20) while Neuhaus is excellent in a thankfully uncut performance of Chopin’s First Piano Concerto. Neuhaus’ son Stanislav and grandson Stanislav Bunin are not represented in this set.

Lev Oborin (1907-1974) is often remembered as piano partner of David Oistrakh, and also the very first winner of the 1st Chopin International Piano Competition in 1928. His solid musicianship is on show in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor (K.466) and Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, where virtuosity is allied to musical ends. Much less well-known is Rudolf Kerer (1923-1913) whose view of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No.1, with the March from The Love for Three Oranges as tag-on, has much to recommend.

Maria Yudina (1899-1970) is now much better recognised, thanks to the movie The Death of Stalin, where she is portrayed (by Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko) as the Soviet dictator’s fatal adversary. Known as an authority on Bach, she is represented by the Bach-Busoni Prelude & Fugue in A minor (BWV.543), Liszt’s Variations on Bach’s Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, and two Beethoven C minor sonatas, the early Op.10 No.1 and the final Op.111. One will not find more redoubtable performances than these.

Although he had a wide repertoire, Vladimir Sofronitzky (1901-1961) is limited to two discs of Scriabin in this box. He was Scriabin’s son-in-law, having married his daughter Elena in 1920, five years after the composer’s death. Nobody plays better Scriabin than Sofronitzky and here is the evidence: over two hours of Preludes, Etudes, Poemes, various short pieces and several extended works such as the Polonaise (Op.21), Waltz (Op.38) and four Sonatas (Nos.2, 3, 9 and 10), all randomly assorted in no particular order. Still an absorbing listen.

Continued in Part 2:

pianomania: LEGENDARY RUSSIAN PIANISTS / BRILLIANT CLASSICS / Review Part 2