SINGAPORE'S VINTAGE EATING PLACES: BOLLYWOOD FARMS @ NEO TIEW ROAD (KRANJI)

Imagine having a meal on a farm, in Singapore. Just the mere thought of that does not sound real, but that was exactly what we experienced at the well-known Bollywood Farms located in Kranji. Founded in 2000, the restaurant and surroundings look as if they have been around forever. Here is a piece of Singapore that used to exist but is surely becoming extinct when urbanisation takes over. Even the Lim Chu Kang Road that leads to Neo Tiew Road is new, just opened in mid-June.

Haolian = Arrogant
(a Hokkien term)

The eatery is called Poison Ivy, named after its founder, the social justice warrior Ivy Singh Lim, but everybody knows it as Bollywood Veggies. Its idyllic setting and unpretentious vibe are the perfect place for a healthy meal at modest (for restaurants in Singapore) prices. No pork or beef is served here, and the portions are hearty. Here are the pictures from our simple lunch here, and the lovely greenery that surrounds us. Thanks go to Ming Yen and Amy for introducing to us this bit of paradise in Singapore. 

How could anyone not love this place?

A simple canteen-like atmosphere.

Janet had the nasi lemak, while I
tucked into the Warrior Platter.

The Warrior Platter with chicken curry,
fried fish, French bean curry, dhal, mushroom fritters
and Moringa & Mushroom Tempura

Another view of the Warrior Platter,
a hearty and healthy meal at $10++

The once ubiquitous
Papaya and Banana trees

An attempt at padi-farming.

A car park lined with Heliconias
and Banana trees.

It is said that the days of Bollywood Farms may be numbered, as the Singapore Land Authority intends to re-claim the land for development. Soon we may lose this all-too-rare plot of Singapore countryside. Thus, it is best to cherish this heritage of ours before it is gone soon.

Bollywood Farms

100 Neo Tiew Road

Singapore 719026

https://bollywoodfarms.com

Home - Bollywood Farms

CODA - THE FINAL NIGHTMARE MUSIC / Igudesman & Joo / Review

 

CODA – THE FINAL NIGHTMARE MUSIC

Igudesman & Joo

Victoria Concert Hall

Tuesday (10 June 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 12 June 2025 with the title "Music comedy duo call it a day".

After entertaining concertgoers for some 21 years, the British musical comedy act of Igudesman & Joo has decided to call it a day. The Singapore leg of its farewell tour by Russia-born violinist Aleksey Igudesman and British-Korean pianist Hyung-ki Joo was a two-hour show without intermission. It, however, felt much shorter than that.

Photo: Julia Wesely

The duo reminisced about how they met as 12-year-olds at the Yehudi Menuhin School, where they gave the premiere of Igudesman’s First Violin Sonata, after both had too much to drink. They recreated that scene with a rave and nightmare, probably laying the inspiration for their famous A Little Nightmare Music show.

I&J’s modus operandi is taking the mickey out of all-too-serious classical music. This requires sound knowledge of history, traditions, repertoire and performing styles to parody dead composers and slaughter sacred cows. All this with a knowing and irreverent mix of popular culture.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a particularly susceptible victim. Whoever thought of conflating the opening theme of his Symphony No.40 in G minor with Monty Norman’s bass-heavy James Bond Theme? What about playing the Turkish Rondo in A major (the original is in A minor) and making it sound even more Oriental? That takes technique and not a little virtuosity.

The dour Russian Sergei Rachmaninov was also ripe for ribbing. Fritz Kreisler’s Preghiera (Prayer) is a transcription of the slow movement from Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, which was ripped off in Eric Carmen’s All By Myself. This morph from Rach to Carmen was kind of predictable but not Joo’s singing which turned it into a total weep fest. Breaking up is hard to do.

Photo: Leslie Theseira

The advent of YouTube saw I&J’s Rachmaninov Had Big Hands turn into a huge viral hit. The final two chord-laden pages of his Prelude in C sharp minor (Op.3 No.2) were played with an armful of wooden blocks fitted with hammers at the right intervals. This routine never gets tired.

Charles Gounod’s had already turned Johann Sebastian Bach’s Prelude in C major (The Well Tempered-Clavier) into an Ave Maria with a melodic line. To watch this duo transform that into Astor Piazzolla’s Libertango takes another level of genius.

Photo: Leslie Theseira

The concert had to end sometime, and the epic piece to close was I&J’s “original” and extended version of Beethoven’s Fur Elise, a set of variations which quoted more Beethoven (sonatas and symphonies non-exempt), Mozart, Brahms, Franck, Wieniawski and melodies from The Godfather, Addams Family, Pirates of the Caribbean, Titanic, X-Files and Johann Pachelbel’s Canon sung with audience participation.

Their encore was an indication of music’s future, a play on Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive, with smart selections from Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, Michel Legrand’s I Will Wait For You, Joseph Kosma’s Autumn Leaves, Charles Fox’s Killing Me Softly and most poignantly, When I Am Laid In Earth from Henry Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas.

Their final witticism was, “Mozart died a poor man, but look at me,” sung to the Beatles’ Let It Be. A standing ovation was the only plausible outcome.

Always mugging for the camera.
Did Igudesman do something to his hair?
Must try that sometime myself!

VADYM KHOLODENKO Piano Recital / Review

 

VADYM KHOLODENKO Piano Recital

Victoria Concert Hall

Thursday (12 June 2025)

This review was first published in Bachtrack.com on 16 January 2025 with the title "Vadym Kholodenko mesmerises and thrills in Singapore recital".

Interesting factoid: No non-Asian pianist has been awarded gold at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition since Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko’s triumph in 2013. In artistic climates that regularly prizes consensus and conformity, Kholodenko strikes out as an original, being neither a stereotypical prizewinner nor common garden Russian-schooled virtuoso. He is an artist of broad and catholic tastes with the requisite technique to match this vision, reflected by unusual recital programming choices.

Whoever imagined opening a recital with music by the Elizabethan composer William Byrd (1540-1623)? Pianos did not exist in the day, with keyboardists plying their art on virginals, the delicate forerunner of harpsichords. On a modern grand piano, works like Byrd’s First Pavan and Galliard are no longer limited by restricting registers, instead finding new voices of ringing resonance. In John Come Kiss Me Now, its 16 variations gradually built up from simple ornamentations to thrilling runs on both hands, sonorous effects not encountered during the Renaissance.

Travelling ahead 400 years in time, sepia tones diverged into the spectral colours of recently-departed Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s 6-minute long Ballade, written in 2005 for Emanuel Ax. Whether the work is tonal or atonal became immaterial, instead its myriad shades were laid out rainbow-like over a steady unerring pulse in a post-Scriabin fantasy soundscape. An upward sweep, and a glissando down the keyboard completed its bracing journey.

Beethoven’s Sonata in G major (Op.31 No.1) is not as celebrated as its nicknamed partners from the same Opus, the Tempest (No.2) and the Hunt (No.3). It ought to be better known, with Kholodenko’s account tapping into a wellspring of humour. The opening movement’s deliberate desynchronisation of chords by both hands gave the effect of repeated hiccoughing, which he ploughed into with tongue firmly in cheek. 

In the central Adagio grazioso, an aria was sung over a simple left hand triplet accompaniment, with each hand getting more florid and seemingly improvisatory by the minute. The Rondo relived the previous sonata’s (Op.28, the Pastoral) rustic drones, almost going overboard with its freewheeling runs before a knowing reprise of the first movement’s offbeat chords. Maybe this should be called the Hiccup Sonata.

The recital’s second half was devoted wholly to Franz Liszt. Kholodenko the consummate Lisztian was revealed at the Cliburn, programming eleven of the Transcendental Etudes in his semifinal recital some nine years before Yunchan Lim’s much feted feat. Kholodenko was there first. In Three Concert Etudes (S.144), technical sleight-of-hand took a backseat to poetic sensibilities, as Il lamento began to sound like an operatic aria, while the right hand runs in La leggierezza were as smooth as silk. The best-known number, Un sospiro, was simply breathtaking.

How often does one hear the three companions to the First Valse oubliée? Befitting Liszt’s late music from the 1880s, the music gets increasingly skittish, chromatic and ambiguous in tonality. Kholodenko was the perfect guide into this sinister salon, regarding surface charm and cloaked malice as equals, before arriving at the final “forgotten” waltz’s unresolved cadence. Without waiting for applause, he segued into the earlier and more innocent Valse-Impromptu, which was all glitter and gaiety. The recital proper closed with the terrifying Scherzo und Marsch, with Liszt in true Mephistophelean form, and Kholodenko reliving Horowitz’s inexorable electrifying voltage.

Returning to the ballroom his first encore was Poulenc’s L’embarquement pour Cythère (Valse-Musette, originally for two pianos) in Kholodenko’s very busy and dizzying insouciant transcription on two hands. Schumann’s long-breathed Der Dichter spricht (The Poet Speaks) from Kinderszenen made for the perfect coda.

The review as published on Bachtrack.com:

Vadym Kholodenko mesmerises and thrills in Singapore recital | Bachtrack

Photo: Pianomaniac

                              Star Rating: *****

Photography by Ung Ruey Loon

VADYM KHOLODENKO 

was presented by

Altenburg Arts

Post-concert photos:

With the folks at Altenburg Arts.

With fellow concert pianist Natalie Ng.

Reminiscences of Fort Worth, TX 2013.

SEONG-JIN CHO IN RECITAL / Review

SEONG-JIN CHO IN RECITAL

Esplanade Concert Hall

Monday (9 June 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 June 2025 with the title "Chopin competition winner dazzles with mastery of tonal shades".

The young South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho became an instant celebrity when he was awarded first prize at the 2015 Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw. Not to be typecast as merely a Frederic Chopin interpreter, his most recent piano recital here contained not a single note of the Polish pianist-composer’s music.

Photo: AlvieAlive

The first half of his programme was built on a theme of nature and countryside. Out stepped a most severe and serious-looking presence, one who ambled slowly and took short unsmiling bows, but it all changed the moment he touched the keys.

Photo: AlvieAlive

The pristine and crystalline sonority he coaxed from Franz Liszt’s Les jeux d’eaux a la Villa d’Este (The Fountains of Villa d’Este) from the Third Book of Years of Pilgrimage had to be experienced to be believed. Seldom has the waterworks of Tivoli sounded this pearly or luminescent, from mere trickles to full gushing spouts, with the spiritual qualities of its inspiration fully realised.

Photo: AlvieAlive

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata No.15 in D major (Op.28), also known as his Pastoral Sonata, came next. Cho’s account opted for the most clean-cut and sanitary approach possible, with not a single leaf or feather out of place. The drones of the hurdy-gurdy and country bagpipes were heard, coming not from some weather-worn peasant but a high-flown, spiffily-attired aristocrat.

Photo: AlvieAlive

If rusticity or earthiness were wanting in Beethoven, all restrains broke free with Bela Bartok’s Out of Doors, the Hungarian nationalist’s 1926 suite in five movements. Bare-knuckled fists and hammers rained on its highly percussive opening movement, With Drums and Pipes. Bartok at his noisiest then segued into a silky smooth Barcarolla and the quirkily rhythmic Musettes, where folk instruments where simulated.

Photo: AlvieAlive

The Night’s Music probed the mysteries of the dark, with secret sounds of insects, birds and assorted creepy crawlies, and here Cho’s mastery of tonal shades and silences falling in between was supreme. The Chase, which breathlessly closed the half, was taken just took quickly, with many fine details obscured in a blur of terminal velocity.

Photo: AlvieAlive

Cho’s second half was devoted to a single work, Johannes Brahms’ early and monumental Sonata No.3 in F minor (Op.5). This was the young German master at his brashest and most blustery. Yet behind its torrents of massive chords and aggressive octaves lay a tender and vulnerable soft centre. By superbly marshalling its stark contrasts, Cho found a way to the heart of this music.

Photo: AlvieAlive

The opening movement’s bold statements were balanced by the slow movement’s sheer lyricism, with the latter’s theme returning in the short and mysterious fourth movement, titled Ruckblick or “backward gaze”. In between was a vigorous and almost vulgar waltz, one impossible to dance to. The busy finale could have gone off on a tangent, but Cho kept the fires stoking, making for an impressively heroic close.

Photo: AlvieAlive

Responding to overwhelming applause, his encore of Mozart’s Variations on Ah vous dirai-je maman (Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star) was crisply turned and simply delightful. The accolades drew from Cho a smidgen of a smile, a wave of the hand, and then he was gone.

Seong-Jin Cho in Recital

was presented by Credia Arts & Media