CONCERTO WITHOUT ORCHESTRA / ALBERT TIU Piano Recital / Review

 

CONCERTO WITHOUT ORCHESTRA 

ALBERT TIU Piano Recital 

Conservatory Concert Hall 

Tuesday (4 February 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 February 2025 with the title "Albert Tiu turns grand piano into a one-man-band".

Trust Philippines-born pianist Albert Tiu, head of piano studies at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, to come up with the most intriguing recital programmes. His latest project entitled “Concerto Without Orchestra” highlighted the 88 keys of a grand piano as a one-man-band, the perfect instrument for musical multi-tasking. 

The concerto is an Italian invention, a work that showcases solo instruments backed by a larger ensemble. Thus, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto in the Italian Style (popularly known as his Italian Concerto) which opened his recital was a tautology in name. 

Photo: Ong Shu Chen

In its three-movement fast-slow-fast form, there are no solo instruments except for Tiu’s nimble right hand imitating the sound of strings and winds, supported by left hand accompaniment. It was the central slow movement where the solo was that of a soprano voice, or what the ornately gilded aria-like passages would have listeners imagine. Then it was virtuoso mode all the way for the Presto finale, for which Italian instrumentalists were deservedly celebrated. 

This was followed by a rare performance of Robert Schumann’s Third Sonata in F minor (Op.14), four movements which carried the designation Concerto Without Orchestra. Given its profusion of thematic and textural ideas, it was more like a symphony without orchestra. Tiu tore into its dense thickets like a man possessed, and how he rarely missed a note was itself remarkable. 

Photo: Ong Shu Chen

The second movement’s Scherzo was the trickiest in negotiating rhythms, while the Finale marked Prestissimo possibile (As fast as possible) was the ultimate roller-coaster ride. The slow third movement, variations on an Andantino theme by his beloved wife Clara Wieck and sometimes heard on its own, found Tiu at his most poetic. This reading, likely a Singapore premiere, will however be remembered for its fearless bravado. 

Sergei Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto in C minor (Op.18) is a favourite of concert pianists. How they must have pined for the brooding opening theme all to themselves, instead of just playing accompanying arpeggios while orchestral strings wallowed in gushing melody. 

Not so in Tiu’s nifty transcription where both piano and orchestra shared the spoils over two extremely busy hands. Much as he tried to cover every note written for the piano, some details had to give way to the dense orchestral part headily mixed in between. Despite that, there were many moments to bask in the music’s lyrical beauty, and he was not to be denied. 

Photo: Ong Shu Chen

In the slow movement, famously lifted by Eric Carmen for his best-selling song All By Myself, Tiu was literally living out that credo. As the music wound to an orgasmic climax, a thunderous cadenza and subsequent detumescence completed what has to be classical music’s most rapturous love music. 

The finale with its even more memorable hit tune (Full Moon and Empty Arms, covered by Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and others), impossibly congested fugal episode and grand apotheosis also found glorious fruition in Tiu’s singular vision. Thrill and entertain he did, and the encore of the Adagio assai slow movement from Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, delicately balancing piano and woodwind parts, was totally sublime.