pianomania: KHANH NHI LUONG PIANO RECITAL / Review

KHANH NHI LUONG Piano Recital

Conservatory Concert Hall

Tuesday (1 April 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 April 2025 with the title "Yong Siew Toh Conservatory alumnus Khanh Nhi Luong shows prize-winning chops".

A little history was made in September last year when Vietnamese pianist Khanh Nhi Luong became the first alumnus of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory to make the grand finals of a major international piano competition. The former student of Thomas Hecht, presently pursuing doctoral studies in Michigan, was awarded third prize at the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition.

She pleased the audience by
regarding Singapore as her second home.

Returning to Singapore for the first time since her graduation in 2019, she performed a hour-long recital elegantly dressed in a bright pink ao dai, the long traditional costume of her homeland. Opening the evening was Franz Schubert’s Sonata in A major (D.664), known as his “little” sonata in three movements as opposed to the monumental D.959 in four movements, also in the same key.

Photo: Faezah Zulkifli

Straight off, she showed exactly why she had been so highly regarded by the competition jury. The sheer lyricism of the opening movement, likened to the freshness of a spring morning, came through most eloquently.

She took a more expansive approach to its Allegro moderato, and without playing repeats, did not come across as short-winded. The simplicity of the central slow movement belied some inner tension and darkness, often redolent in the Austrian composer’s music. It was the finale where virtuoso chops were called for, and she delivered with free-flowing panache.

Photo: Faezah Zulkifli

Next came what was likely the first Singapore performance of Bunches of Flowers of Vietnam by veteran Vietnamese composer Dang Huu Phuc (born 1953). This five-movement suite based on Vietnamese folk tunes freely used the pentatonic scale and often in imitation of traditional instruments. As with Claude Debussy’s Preludes, its titles were placed at the end of each piece.

Multiple grace-notes littered the lively pages of Spring, meant to sound like the tinh tau, a plucked stringed instrument. Raindrop was a study in staccato, its gentle pitter-patter a test of rapid repeated note technique. Luong regarded Loving Look and Butterfly and Flower as love songs while the concluding Drums, expressing the joy of a harvest season, relived the percussive beats of Western composers like Bela Bartok and Alberto Ginastera, but with Oriental accents.

Photo: Faezah Zulkifli

The evening’s tour de force came in 20th century French composer Henri Dutilleux’s Sonata (Op.1) from 1948, with which she had earlier impressed her audience in Leeds. The first movement had a jazzy rhythmic vibe which she positively reveled in, with curious blues harmonies placed when one least expected them.

The second movement’s Lied held the solemnity of a slow march, one borne of grief which was interrupted by a brief central interlude conjuring up some mysterious dream-like state. The resumption of the procession was shattered by the finale’s mighty Choral et Variations, also the most performed movement of the sonata.

Photo: Faezah Zulkifli

Luong let rip on the keyboard with stentorian chords and octaves, followed by four variations which will have suggested that Dutilleux might have been a great jazzman had he chosen that path. Her kaleidoscopic handling of its myriad shades and nuances, topped with a spectacularly splashy end, made this a performance – and recital - to remember.