VICTOR KHOR PLAYS CHOPIN AND NIER / Review

VICTOR KHOR PLAYS CHOPIN AND NIER

Victor Khor, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (27 June 2026)

It takes some guts and chutzpah to make a comeback piano recital at the age of 60, but Victor Khor is not an ordinary pianist. His programmes have been unusual and different, and this one was par for the course. Opening with Fryderyk Chopin, his view is not the hyper-accurate and gladiatorial variety to be found in Warsaw competitions, but one so personal as to be almost haram.

The very deliberate pacing in Ballade No.4 in F minor (Op.52) is rubato pulled to its extremes, with accents so placed as to be the opposite of subtle. He wants the melody to be heard in expense of everything else, and elsewhere he wants inner voices to be brought out. Whatever it is, he makes you listen intently. At his languorous tempi, his technique also held up and there was no moment of doubt or that of losing control. The struggles of the ferocious coda were well-captured, with all caution thrown into the wind for a tumultuous finish.

In the Barcarolle in F sharp major (Op.60), one wished for a greater variety of colour and tone. Hidden voices were brought out, and his epic view incorporated that of a rather aggressive gondolier plying overused Venetian canals. Growing into confidence, Ballade No.3 in A flat major (Op.47) followed the course of its successor by combining lyricism with dogged vehemence. Victor’s Chopin is in-your-face and certainly not for everyone. This Moscow Conservatory-schooled pianist might just be Singapore’s solution to Ivo Pogorelich, not the 1980 version but his 21st century iteration.

Over the years, Victor has been most successful playing the music of Radiohead, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Joe Hisaishi. Now his attention is turned to the videogame music of NieR: Automata. This is not to be confused with Nie Er, the composer of China’s March of the Volunteers, but by a collective of Japanese composers formed by Keiichiro Okabe, Keigo Hoashi and Kuniyuki Takahashi. His suite of six selections, arranged for piano, was very well chosen to showcase the music’s acute introspective qualities and sentimentality.

Most of all, these pieces suited Victor’s temperament to a tee. City Ruins (Okabe, arranged by Yo Suzuki) possessed rich harmonies, sometimes even sounding symphonically conceived. Peaceful Sleep (Okabe, arr. Yasumasa Kumagai) is a slow and leisurely trawl in cool jazz sensibilities. The lushness of Voice of No Return (Okabe, arr. Suzuki) needed no special pleading, neither did it outstay its welcome.

The Tower (Okabe, arr. Kumagai) was perhaps the most reflective piece in the collection, and Victor was ever sensitive to its plaints. Its pulsing heartbeat was carried on in Vague Hope (Hoashi), which was very sentimental but not to the point of being cloying. Ending with Weight of the World (Okabe, arr. Dai Sakakibara), its upbeat vibe, excitably generated, provided an optimistic close to the recital proper. I have heard these on YouTube, all of which pale in comparison to Victor’s live readings, where he adds notes of his own, and where passion is worn on the sleeve, expressed to the fullest possibilities.

I will be happy to hear these again in a heartbeat, but only with Victor as the guide. As an encore, Victor offered an improvisation, the rapid figurations of Vavilovskaya (titled after a new Moscow underground station) inform this to be a short and flashy railway piece. Simply brilliant.

VICTOR KHOR was presented by VIRTUOMUSIC.