GIOVANI 3 PIANO
RECITAL
Alyssa
Kok,
Alexander Ronoyudo
& Jonathan Chua, Piano
Esplanade
Recital Studio
Sunday (5 Jan
2014 )
This review was published by The Straits Times on 7 January 2014 with the title "Prize-winning prodigies show finesse".
The title of the recital was somewhat confusing.
It was not a concert for 3 pianos, but one featuring three young pianists in
solos, with none named Giovani. Getting that out of the way, the event
was a two-hour-long show of how three prize-winning prodigies from Singapore Indonesia
The first half featured short recitals by the
threesome. 11-year-old Singaporean Alyssa Kok was the 1st prize winner
in her age-group at the Ars Nova Piano Competition last year. The level of
maturity she displayed was astounding, possessing natural poise and a crystal
clear understanding of the contrapuntal complexities in Bach’s Toccata in E minor. Her view of Mozart’s
Sonata in B flat major (K.333) was
fluent and limpid, with none of the self-indulgent idiosyncrasies that blighted
Lang Lang’s recent recital.
14-year-old Indonesian Alexander Ronoyudo,
another victor of the Ars Nova, produced a big sound in Bach’s short Fantasia in C minor, one wholly suited
for a grand piano rather than the original harpsichord. In Haydn’s two-movement
Sonata No.18, his crispness of
articulation brought out the music’s inherent humour and guilelessness.
Singaporean Jonathan Chua at 15 already appears
to have his own ideas on how the music should go, which gave an added dimension
to his playing. While the movement from Mozart’s “Hunt” Sonata in D major (K.576) was disciplined and chaste, there
was a hot-blooded passionate response to Granados’s Requiebros (Flatteries)
from Goyescas, and many thrilling
moments in Liszt’s Tarantella.
In the second half, the three pianists took
turns to play shorter encore-like pieces. Kok did a Margaret Leng Tan by
playing the insides of the piano in Turkish pianist-composer Fazil Say’s Black Earth, producing an otherworldly
sonority in this smoky jazz-like number. She brought colour and imagination to
a Debussy prelude and was a model of finesse in Glinka’s Nightingale Variations.
Ronoyudo weathered an error-strewn Liszt Gnomenreigen (Dance of the Gnomes) to score in Chopin’s popular Étude in E major (Op.10 No.3), with
cantabile sitting comfortably alongside virtuosity. A barnstorming account of
Khachaturian’s coruscating Toccata,
which sounds more difficult than it actually is, closed the recital on a high.
If there was a single performance that showed
both superior technical instruction and the individuality of self-expression,
that would have been Chua’s no holds barred performance of Chopin’s First Scherzo. Juxtaposing barely
concealed violence with the comforts of a Polish lullaby, Chua took on its
challenges in a single gulp, and this reviewer is happy to report that it generated
a spontaneous Horowitzian buzz that would be hard to replicate. That is the
essence of live performance for you.
 |
| Alyssa Kok, Jonathan Chua and Alexander Ronoyudo with their teachers So Kim Wie (Indonesia) and Benjamin Loh (Singapore). |
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