HANS GRAF & CHUREN LI
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Friday (19 December 2025)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 December 2025 with the title "Quintessentially Singaporean piano concerto by Jonathan Shin".
Singaporean piano concertos are a rarity, and can be counted on one hand. Three by Kelly Tang and one each from Leong Yoon Pin and Bernard Tan are all there is, and besides Tang’s Montage being championed by local jazzman Jeremy Monteiro, how often do the others get heard? The world premiere of Jonathan Shin’s piano concerto, newly commissioned by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, was therefore big news indeed.
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| Jonathan Shin & Churen Li |
Titled child of the shore, Shin brought a Singapore perspective to his music without having to quote local melodies or Asian influences. Written to showcase the flamboyant pianism of soloist Churen Li, its showy and exuberant solo part worked the upper registers of the keyboard to the max.
The opening movement, Gerygone, recalling the song of the golden-bellied gerygone in its scintillating writing incorporated mild dissonance but was never atonal. This piquant mix of lyricism and brilliance of piano concertos by Briton Michael Tippett (1955) and Australian Carl Vine (1997) were being relived.
as she looks out to sea, the central slow movement, quoting the novel The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng, referenced Xinyao and was unafraid of being sentimental. At moments, the music almost seemed to lapse into Dick Lee’s Bunga Sayang but resisted the temptation.
Li’s solo opened the busy and jazzy finale, Peripheral Joys, which recounted the exhilaration of a morning commute (presumably without the MRT breaking down), went full toccata mode before closing in unfettered joie de vivre.
Shin has written the quintessentially Singaporean piano concerto which loves and celebrates life. A repeat performance cannot be soon enough. Li’s own jazz-inflected improvisation on Dick Lee’s Home as encore put the icing on the cake.
The balance of the concert was Russian, with Mikhail Glinka’s Valse-fantasie being the opening piece. Leagues away from wearing his nationalist hat, the music channeled Central Europe, and looked forward to the ballets of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Alexander Glazunov and Dmitri Shostakovich.
Shostakovich’s bitter Tenth Symphony in E minor (Op.93) occupied the concert’s second half. Composed after the wake of the Second World War and the midst of totalitarian terror, it had to be suppressed until after Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s death. In a short preamble, SSO music director Hans Graf very eloquently elucidated its main themes, and it all became very clear.
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| The way we were, back in 1989. |
Even in the darkest recesses of its murky opening, there was a ringing clarity that was to permeate the entire performance. SSO has lived with this masterpiece since 1982, which was the centrepiece of its 10th anniversary CD recording led by first music director Choo Hoey. Now under its third director, the orchestra has progressed immeasurably besides coming full circle.
The movement’s chaotic development and the second movement’s relentless portrait of sheer malevolence could not have been better voiced. As if with a flick of a switch, the composer’s personality and his coded messages took over the final two anarchic movements. Closing with barely disguised mirth, Shostakovich proclaimed “the monster is dead”, and it was time for the self and artist to come to the fore.
This review is dedicated to the memory of Choo Hoey (1934-2025) whose contributions to classical music in Singapore can never be over-emphasised.
The review of the same concert
on Bachtrack.com:
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