32ND SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO FESTIVAL / Review

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

PIANO FESTIVAL 2026

Victoria Concert Hall / The Arts House

Thursday to Sunday (2-5 July 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 July 2026 with the title "Jazz and pop spice up Singapore International Piano Festival under Albert Tiu's direction".

Piano recitals are dime a dozen these days, showcasing a bewildering choice of international and local artists. The Singapore International Piano Festival (SIPF), now in its 32nd edition, remains the nation’s marquee event, distinguished by unity yet diversity, and strong artist and repertoire-based curation. With fifth artistic director Albert Tiu (head of piano in Yong Siew Toh Conservatory) at the helm, the festival has made changes. There were six recitals for the first time, with the uncommon theme of concert pianist as composer, transcriber and improviser.

Photo: LG Lim

Conrad Tao (United States of America) last appeared here as a teenage prodigy at the 2009 Singapore Sun Festival. His recital Emigres and Friends on 2 July comprised 15 short works reflecting his homeland as a melting pot of cultures, where jazz, popular music and atonality found healthy parity.

With George Gershwin songs (The Man I Love, Clap Yo’ Hands, I Got Rhythm) performed alongside Arnold Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic miniatures, variations from Sergei Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody as viewed through the lenses of Tao and Art Tatum, Maurice Ravel’s Sonatine sandwiching Billy Strayhorn’s Chelsea Bridge, something special and liberating was taking place. Firing on all cylinders in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, with forearm clusters flashing through its cadenza, one could be forgiven for imagining a full jazz band backing him to the hilt.

Hyung-ki Joo (United Kingdom) was the keyboard half of the musical comedy duo Igudesman and Joo (I&J). Dreams and Nightmares on 3 July saw an exploration of childhood, with pieces Lina’s Waltz and Lullaby for Leo written for his children. Their simplicity and innocence were complemented by seven delightful pieces from Childhood, reliving his early years quite similar to Robert Schumann’s reflections in Kinderszenen.

Photo: LG Lim

The improvisatory segment saw jazzy asides to Debussy’s The Little Shepherd and Golliwogg’s Cakewalk from Children’s Corner Suite as conceived by Gwilym Simcock and Leszek Mozdzer’s anarchical treatment of Frederic Chopin shorts. Whiplash-inducing accounts of the Scarbo from Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit and La Valse closed each half in a state of intoxication. His encores were a throwback to I&J schtick, with singing, whistling and plucking piano strings to Bach’s Air on G String, and getting director Tiu and Sunday’s pianist “Jackie” Parker to participate in his foot-stomping Funk Yeah!

Photo: LG Lim

Sean Chen (USA) was bronze medallist at the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In Music and Magic on 5 July afternoon, the world premiere of his exuberant Daydream No.2: Flight was kinetically charged, combining jazz harmonies and rhythms with late Romantic influences. Crispness of phrasing in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s pieces, in original baroque writing and as transcribed by Leopold Godowsky, was a pleasure to behold.

Photo: LG Lim

His own transcription of Paul Dukas’ Sorceror’s Apprentice was so convincingly Lisztian as to simulate a one-man-orchestra. Preceding that with Gyorgy Ligeti’s pointillistic Der Zauberlehrling was a touch of genius. His traversal of the entire Italian Book of Liszt’s Years of Pilgrimage – seven works in all – was breathtaking, uniting lyricism of Three Petrarch Sonnets with hell-fire barnstorming in the Dante Sonata.

Photo: LG Lim

Jon Kimura Parker (Canada), winner of the 1984 Leeds International Piano Competition, last performed here in the late 1980s with the Singapore and Toronto Symphony Orchestras. Structure and Spontaneity on 5 July evening opened with sonatas by Mozart (K.311) and Beethoven (the Appassionata). By improvising passages leading into Mozart, he relived the lost art of preluding. With added ornaments, he also made one listen to old works anew.

Photo: LG Lim

Even more freedom was displayed in the second half, which included Ravel’s impressionistic Jeux d’eau, Chinese-Canadian composer Alexina Louie’s Memories in an Ancient Garden – a hazy opium-induced trance - and minimalist musings of John Adams’ China Gates. For their faith, the entranced audience also received doses of Chick Corea (Got A Match?) and Oscar Peterson (Blues Etude) and to bring down the house, his riotous take on Elton John’s Bennie and The Jets.

Two Singaporean pianists performed one-hour late night (10 pm) recitals at the Play Den of The Arts House. Churen Li’s recital Echoes and Reflections on 2 July could be described as a dream. Opening with Claude Debussy’s Clair de lune, the theme of night saw motifs and fragments recurring like an idee fixe.

Original compositions were improvised from melodies by Robert Schumann, Wolfgang Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn and others, using altered harmonies and later going off tangent to nether reaches. Good Night, after Leos Janacek’s On the Overgrown Path, was hauntingly beautiful, while Dream of the Panthere boldly quoted from Rachmaninov’s Second Sonata. By the final piece Burning Moon, Clair de lune had been transformed to the glorious light of day.

Photo: LG Lim

Restless Natures exactly describes Jonathan Shin, whose recital on 3 July matched Parker’s for sheer eclecticism. His night incantation provided an illusion of a smoky nightclub, followed by Mozart’s quasi-improvisatory Fantasy in D minor (K.397), notoriously unfinished, but duly completed by Shin. The House Sings involved the audience, from choosing a theme (Promenade from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition) and recorded segments being aired from their handphones.

Cervantes Dreams Recurrent Dreams of Consumerism was a fantasy on what the Spaniard might have thought of the Japanese naming a discount store after his literary anti-hero. Works by Lili Boulanger, Bobby Ge, Nico Muhly, Takashi Yoshimatsu and Timo Andres were thrown into the mix before closing with Nathaniel Parks’ From A Great Distance, mixing electronics and recorded voice fragments to recount the Covid pandemic.

The refreshing changes taken by this festival under Tiu’s inspired direction constituted a brave new world. More is needed and “Vive la difference”!

The Singapore International Piano Festival was presented by the Singapore Symphony Group.