pianomania: SEAN GAN Piano Recital / HELP SEAN FULFILL HIS JUILLIARD DREAM!

SEAN GAN Piano Recital

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory

Steven Baxter Recital Studio

Monday (29 May 2023)

Getting accepted to study at New York City’s Juilliard School of Music is a rare honour, and just a handful or so of Singapore / Malaysian musicians have had that privilege. Pianists Margaret Leng Tan, Nicholas Ong, Nellie Seng and Tengku Irfan, organist Phoon Yu, violinist Loh Jun Hong, conductor Joshua Tan and composer Koh Cheng Jin are among them, a goodly bunch spread over some decades. The opportunity, however, entails a financial burden so onerous that scholarships barely cover, thus crowd-funding becomes necessary. For the talented young Malaysian pianist Sean Gan, native of Seremban (Negri Sembilan), dreams become a reality only when bills are paid.

A joint 1^st prize winner of the Artist Category of the National Piano & Violin Competition in 2019, Sean’s unusually adventurous recital opened with Nikolai Medtner’s rarely performed Sonata-Skazka in C minor (Op.25 No.1). Medtner’s music does not reveal its secrets as readily as his contemporaries Rachmaninov or Scriabin, but Sean did well to bring out its themes, typically an elusive melody that gradually reveals itself on the left hand, accompanied by right hand filigree. Syncopations and triplet figurations, especially in the first and third movements, often complicate manners but he mastered these well, as with the slow central movement’s lush lyricism leading to its rapturous climax. More importantly, the fantastic and whimsical spirit of skazki (fairy tales or legends) was upheld through its absorbing ten minutes-or-so.

Here is a video of an earlier performance of the Medtner:

(1) Nikolai Medtner - Sonata-Skazka, Op. 25 No. 1 in C Minor - YouTube

Completely different was Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Second Sonata (1970) which carried the evocative title Fire Sermon. Seldom has coruscating violence (Bartok and Ginastera come to mind) and reassuring calm been so convincingly juxtaposed, and Sean revelled in its long-held resonances with well-placed chords and splashy tone clusters, where palms and forearms gratuitously obliged. Very good control of the sustaining pedal ensured the music shifted seamlessly between these extremes.

Completing the recital was Chopin’s Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante (Op.22), the only familiar work on the programme. Fortunately, familiarity did not usher in contempt, as the nocturne-like opening basked in lovely cantabile, and the concluding Polish dance of nobility romped home with authority and digital brilliance. Also from the Romantic era was Sean’s encore of Liszt’s Transcendental Etude No.12, or Chasse-Neige (Snow Flurries). Going beyond mere notes, this performance showed what the music was about, world weariness foretelling a tragedy to come.