PASCAL ROGE & ELENA FONT WITH RE:SOUND / Review

 

PASCAL ROGE & ELENA FONT

WITH RE:SOUND

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (23 October 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 October 2026 with the title "Chamber orchestra re:Sound in fine spirited form with pianist duo Pascal Rogé and Elena Font".

Forty years ago to the month, French pianist Pascal Rogé made his first appearance in Singapore playing Camille Saint-Saens’ Fifth Piano Concerto with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. He has since graced our stages on multiple occasions through the years. Celebrating his 75th birthday this year, he and his Spanish pianist wife Elena Font made their debut with re:Sound on two pianos.

Opening the concert was an old favourite, Saint-Saens’ The Carnival of the Animals, backed by an ensemble of just ten players. This zoological fantasy in fourteen movements included witty rhyming verses by Ogden Nash narrated by Natalie Ng, who had also supplied the very well-written programme notes.

It was perhaps nerves which affected the piano duo as some of the earlier movements, such as Royal March of the Lion and Wild Donkeys, were not immaculately synchronised, but it soon got much better. In the infamous case of the movement titled Pianists, the uncoordination was deliberate, an in-joke that would-be virtuosos practising scales badly should be locked up.

This performance also gave orchestral players solo opportunities to shine, including double-bassist Julian Li in The Elephant, violinists Wilford Goh and Kim Kyu Ri in Personages with Long Ears (more donkeys, actually music critics), offstage clarinettist Lee Wai Teng in Cuckoo in the Woods, and cellist Lin Juan in the most famous movement of all, The Swan.

The Singapore premiere of Concerto for Piano Duet and Strings (Op.32) the British composer Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006) was completely left-of-field and a brilliant choice. Rogé and Font were now cramped onto a single keyboard and backed by a larger body of strings, but the excellent overall balance allowed them to stand out.

This unusual work combined mild dissonances including passages of polytonality with outright lyricism that was hard to dislike. The highly syncopated Vivace finale was extremely tricky but all on deck navigated its swelling waves with great aplomb for an uproarious close.

Its inclusion was was strategic, as this was an opportunity for virtuoso strings expertly led by Yang Shuxiang to work with piano virtuosos. The Rogés completed the coup with a lovely encore, The Fairy Garden from Maurice Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite.

The evening concluded with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No.31 in D major (K.297), also known as his “Paris Symphony”. In this short-winded symphony of three compact movements, the ensemble produced a sound much bigger than its size suggested. Ten woodwind and brass players (pairs of flutes, oboes, bassoons, French horns and trumpets) did the job by creating a spirited and celebratory air.

Its grandeur was meant to impress its 1778 listeners, yet it was the graceful dance in its central slow movement which had an equally big impact. The finale’s prestidigitation and fugal passages, so skilfully and passionately negotiated, were sufficient evidence that the clearly enthused audience was witnessing yet another prime performance from Singapore’s finest chamber orchestra.

All photographs by Jack Yam.