DUOS / More Than Music / Review

 

DUOS

More Than Music

Esplanade Recital Studio

Friday (11 September 2026)

This More Than Music concert was special because it united four of Singapore’s most prodigious musical talents born in the 1980s and early 1990s. Founding members violinist Loh Jun Hong and pianist Abigail Sin were joined for the first time by violinist Min Lee (Lee Huei Min) and composer-pianist Jonathan Shin. Min Lee, now a highly sought-after pedagogue will be remembered as a student of Erick Friedman (Jascha Heifetz’s student) and having performed under the batons of Vladimir Ashkenazy, Charles Dutoit and Benjamin Zander.

The evening opened with Jean-Chin Non-Saens’s The Other Swan for violin and piano, performed by Jun Hong and Jonathan. This miniature essentially presents an inversion of the melody of Saint-Saens’ Le Cygne from Carnival of the Animals. According to the composer, the Coriolis effect in Singapore means the swan swims in the opposite direction as it would in France. With the harmonies in the accompaniment also altered, the music begins to sound like something by Ravel. Well, there is news for Non-Saens that is not nonsense: Singapore is in the same northern hemisphere as France. He might have mistaken Tasmania for Singapore. A lovely work, nonetheless.

Next came Sergei Prokofiev’s marvelous Sonata for two violins (Op.56) in four movements. Jun Hong and Min fitted like hand and glove in the music’s intertwined parts and tightly woven counterpoint. Typical of the Russian composer, dissonance was established in the opening movement, which gradually gave way to a sinuous lyricism. Strong rhythmic impulses dominated the second movement which blazed with swift strokes and rapier-like thrusts. Another slow movement, with the melodic charm of his ballets (Romeo and Juliet / Cinderella come to mind) ushered in a rondo finale which displayed a more playful side for a close. One will scarcely find a better performance than this.

Both pianists, Abigail and Jon, were united in Maurice Ravel’s La Valse, a heady reminiscence of 1850s Viennese ballrooms but with apocalyptic visions of the looming Great War decades ahead. The fatal end to an era was well captured by the duo, whose technical security was never in doubt. Sometimes one wishes for a sense of danger, like the risk of faltering or ensemble coming apart at the seams, for the sheer heck of it, but that never came, which also spoke volumes.

Pablo Sarasate’s Navarra for two violins and piano (Abigail) reveled in vigorous Spanish rhythms and catchy melodies, including those to be found in Chabrier’s Espana. Short but virtuosic summed up both work and performance.

More song and dance rhythms came in Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story arranged for two pianos by John Musto. This is familiar music brought to life by Abigail and Jon’s acute awareness of razor-sharp rhythmic quirks, sly syncopations, multitudes of notes and the requisite executions. Finger snaps were included but not the police whistle or shouts of mambo! (probably not written in the score anyway), all making for an eventful cycle of movements before culminating quietly with Somewhere, the musical’s most moving music.

The evening concluded with the world premiere of Jonathan Shin’s Some Telemetry of Love (2026) for two violins and two pianos, possibly the first ever work with this quartet scoring, essentially a double violin and piano duo (or duo duo). Hearing for the first and only time, it resonated like a virile dance with sparks flying galore, a Singaporean cousin to Astor Piazzolla’s La Muerte del Angel, a tango on Ann Siang Hill perhaps? A repeat performance will be highly anticipated.