DENNIS LEE: IN MEMORIAM
BY PHAN MING YEN
For a whole generation of us who grew up in the Malaysia of the 1980s loving music and the piano and who had dreams of a career in piano playing, Dennis Lee shaped our world.
I like to think that I probably heard most (if not all) of the times Dennis played in Kuala Lumpur in the mid-1980s at the former British Council Auditorium in Bukit Aman. I was fortunate enough to have parents who brought me to his concerts each time he was in town.
From memory and from a glance of old concert programmes dating from 1980 till about 1984, Dennis brought to us music - in the days long before music was as accessible as it is now online - that ran the spectrum from past to present. There was anything and everything from Mozart through Brahms via Debussy to Christopher Headington (1930 – 1996).
I distinctly remember Beethoven’s Moonlight and Pathetique Sonatas and the Chopin Funeral March Sonata in one concert and my introduction to Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit was through Dennis having programmed that work in a first half that opened with Prokofiev’s Sonata No.2 and with a second half the comprised Brahms’s Sonata No.3. The concerts were well attended and possibly every music student in town was present. At that time, he was like a beacon, showing that a career as a solo pianist was possible for Malaysians. As a piano student, you kind of grow up wanting to be like him.
The last time I heard Dennis in a solo recital was here in Singapore, at the former DBS Auditorium (1990 or 1991) and for whatever reason a Liszt Funerailles from that evening still remains in my mind.
My second piano teacher was a friend of Dennis and his wife Toh Chee Hung and I think that was how I first introduced myself to Dennis over a telephone call back in 1991 when I started work here. I cannot remember how or why the conversation came about but what I remember was that it was a long, and for the most of the time, it was hilarious and an absolute joy. I recall laughing a lot. All this given that I was a little nervous and apprehensive at first to speak with a pianist whom we all looked up to when we were students.
I did not speak with Dennis again until many years later in the mid-2010s at a lunch and after that, because of work, I got to know Chee Hung better. Strangely though it was during the pandemic (2020–2021) that I got to speak with Dennis again more (via WhatsApp) when he launched his CD of the Debussy Preludes. He had also sent me, a copy of his much praised (and deservedly so) CD of Szymanowski piano music and an accompanying note. I was very moved by the gesture and the CD - which for whatever reason I never owned - made me revisit Szymanowski.
Above all however, it was something Dennis said in a masterclass which he gave to the late Malaysian pianist Pauline Kung (1970-2015) that shaped the way I look at life today. There was a piano or pianissimo passage and Dennis said something that remains with me. It went something like this, in reference to how one controls piano tone when playing softly, “When you don’t have a lot, you treasure it more.”
One could say the same about life.
Dennis Lee was more than just a musician and pianist who showed what was possible for Malaysians: from the few times I interacted with him and from all the advice I heard him give in masterclasses or whenever he spoke about a work, Dennis was a generous and wonderful human being.
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| Photo courtesy of Singapore Symphony Orchestra |
All photographs of Dennis Lee concert programmes come from the Phan Ming Yen collection.
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