RON MAXIM Piano Recital / Review

RON MAXIM Piano Recital

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (29 May 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 June 2026 with the title "Prize-winning pianist Ron Maxim Huang's deep takes on Chopin and Brahms betray an old soul".

By presenting young German pianist Ron Maxim Huang in recital, Bechstein Music World cast its C.Bechstein concert grands in best possible light. Huang, of Chinese and Russian parentage, is a prizewinner of multiple international piano competitions (including Ettlingen and Xiamen) and possesses a casual charisma and disarming stage presence that is hard to dislike.

Opening with music by Fryderyk Chopin, his view of the Third Ballade in A flat major (Op.47) was distinguished by a clarity of articulation and judicious pacing. There was never a cause for extreme rubato or stretching of tempos for its own sake, and the music’s narrative unfolded as naturally as breathing.

It got even better in the Third Sonata in B minor (Op.58), a highly personal account so darkly shaded one might expect from an artist much older than his 25 years. For him, the music represented tragedy, its martial opening bars starkly differentiated from the lyrical second subject. The development was thrilling as he was leading the listener into some kind of personal nightmare.

While the Scherzo flew like one of Chopin’s early Etudes, the slow movement mirrored the first movement’s high drama. Instead of the nocturnal serenity of most other readings, this became a well of sorrows, the depth of which would only be realised by the triumphant finale. Here was a redemption arc the listener was looking for, and Huang delivered with a devastating finality.

Johannes Brahms’ Six Pieces (Op.118) come from his autumnal years. Huang’s response was one of a younger person getting to grips with ageing. The opening C major Intermezzo yielded a rich and beefy tone contrasted with the serenity of the second A major Intermezzo. While the stormy Ballade in G minor had a few dropped notes, the agitato element in the F minor Intermezzo was perfectly captured.

The calming effect of the Romance in F major was brought into sharp focus by the final Intermezzo in E flat minor, a portrait of doom and despair, where a last glimmering ray of hope is extinguished before the descent into a deep abyss. Huang is indeed an old soul in the young body.

Without allowing the audience to applaud, he continued directly into Franz Liszt’s Totentanz (Dance of Death), virtuoso variations on the Dies Irae theme, where gloves came off for a final onslaught. Better known in the version for piano and orchestra, Huang’s very busy role combined both parts in a no-holds-barred battle which lifted the roof of the hall. Absolutely gripping stuff.

With the formal part of the recital over, young German pianist-composer Levi Schechtmann’s Intermezzo for the Moon was a laid-back bluesy prelude to two of Nikolai Kapustin’s more frenetic Etudes from his Op.40 set. The Pastoral and Prelude exulted in jazzy high jinks which brought out the cheers.

Huang’s encore saw him going back to his Chinese roots with Wang Jianzhong’s idiomatic transcription of Ren Guang’s Cai Yun Zhui Yue (Colourful Clouds Chasing The Moon). Just lovely, and cue the longest line for a meet and greet since Lang Lang’s concert in 2010.

Concert photography by Guan Ziwen, 

by courtesy of Bechstein Music World

HANS SUH Piano Recital / Bechstein Music World / Review

 

HANS SUH Piano Recital

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (8 March 2026), 7.30 pm

Bechstein Music World’s piano recital series for 2026 opened with the recital by young South Korean pianist Hans Suh. Winner of the International Telekom Beethoven Competition Bonn in 2021, he brought to the table a wide palette of pianistic contrasts in an interested and varied programme.

Beginning with Brahms’ Three Intermezzi (Op.117), his measured tempo in the hymn-like E flat major first piece yielded a gorgeous sonority from the Bechstein grand. The paced quickened for the darker edged B flat minor number, which treaded with a smouldering unease. The unison voices in the final intermezzo provided a release of sorts, seeing the light of day in these “lullabies of grief”. The autumnal quality of Brahms’ last years was vividly captured in Suh’s hands.

Some might quibble at the relatively fast opening which Suh took for Beethoven’s Sonata in C sharp minor (Op.27 No.2), the so-called Moonlight Sonata. Adagio sostenuto sounded more like Allegretto here, but this was not to be some faux profound or sentimental wallow which some pianists maintain. Just the right amount of pedal ensured there was no swimminess, and the ensuing Allegretto was exactly that, a country dance with requisite drones. All this was swept away by the tempestuous and suitably violent finale, where Suh maintained a single-minded doggedness all the way to the brilliant end.

Of particular interest was Suh’s original composition, a four-movement suite Der Fliegende Koreaner (The Flying Korean), its title a wordplay on Richard Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman). Four very different cities featured in this travelogue, which a composer like Samuel Barber might have called Excursions. 

The first was New York: Broadway, a quasi-minimalist rhythmic dance which took on a Ginastera-like intensity and percussiveness but its inspiration was America from Bernstein’s West Side Story, revealed with a quote at its end. Helsinki: Töölönlahti Bay was more abstract and impressionist, suggestive of an icy landscape. Köln / Bonn: Kölner Dom was a tribute to the Germany of Brahms and Bach, almost becoming a full-blown Chaconne in D minor but stopping short. Finally, Seoul: Squid Game channeled the energetic vibes of movie and videogame music. Never saw the Netflix series, but one just about got the idea.

Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition occupied the second half of the recital. No pianist has taken the opening Promenade as vehemently driven as this, bringing to mind the young Lan Shui’s blistering debut with the Singapore Symphony with Ravel’s orchestration way back in 1993. This was going to be very personal account, and Suh gave notice with every ensuing movement bring sharply characterised. He did not need to add to its many notes, instead highlighted the numerous opportunities for heightening contours.

Gnomus had a malevolent edge, while The Old Castle’s troubadour sang forlornly, and Tuileries came alive with the bickering of children and nannies. Bydlo opened very loudly in its rumbling journey, while emphasis to the bass notes gave Schmuyle (the second of Two Polish Jews) an added layer of pathos. 

The Ballet of Unhatched Chicks and Marketplace in Limoges were brilliantly delivered. Even Catacombs and In the Language of the Dead, which usually sound routine or bored had the glow of sinister which elude many others. Finally Baba Yaga’s Hut and The Great Gate of Kiev, with the clangour of carillons, brought this museum guide to a truly thunderous close.

Suh elected to play a simple encore, a delectably tender reading of Debussy’s Clair de lune, then followed with the finale from Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata (Op.57). That almost careened off the tracks for a moment, but Suh steered it like a grand prix driver victoriously past the checkered flag.

All photographs courtesy of 

Bechstein Music World.

EMPATHY IN A FRACTURED WORLD / ODYSSEY / Piano Recitals by CHERRY GE & JEFFERSON DARMAWAN / Review

 

EMPATHY IN A FRACTURED WORLD

CHERRY GE Piano Recital

Bechstein Music World

Saturday (13 December 2025), 1.30 pm

ODYSSEY

JEFFERSON DARMAWAN Piano Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (13 December 2025), 7.30 pm

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 December 2025 with the title "Pianists Cherry Ge and Jefferson Darmawan offer nuanced musical stories in two recitals".

This has been a bumper year for piano recitals in Singapore, with legendary pianists (Eliso Virsaladze, Kun-Woo Paik and Robert Levin) and competition winners (Eric Lu, Seong-Jin Cho and Vadym Kholodenko) all making appearances here to critical acclaim. Singaporean and locally-based pianists should however not be ignored for their contributions, including two marathon concerts of Maurice Ravel’s piano music and these two recitals held within the same day.

Photo: Eminey Lee

Singaporean pianist Cherry Ge, presently a Masters student at London’s Royal Academy of Music, gave an hour-long lecture recital presented by Bechstein Music World. Opening with Canadian super-virtuoso pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin’s Toccata on l’Homme Arme, she displayed fleet fingering and lightness of touch in the fantasy on a popular Middle Ages song (The Armed Man), after she had sung it in French.

This was followed by Czech composer Leos Janacek’s Sonata I.X.1905, also entitled On The Street, a sobering and touching requiem to a student stabbed to death during a demonstration in Brno. She displayed a keen sense of musical story-telling, from nervous anticipation in the first movement (Presentiment), to an angst-ridden build-up and fatal climax (Death), before a denouement of quiet resignation.

The longest work, at almost half-an-hour, was Robert Schumann’s multi-movement Humoreske (Op.20). This was no light Dvorakian trifle, but a study of contrasting and rapidly shifting emotions, where outright humour played just a small part. Ge alternated lyricism with whimsicality, yearning and outright virtuosity, before closing with no little pomp. Her encore of Frederic Chopin’s melancholic Mazurka in A minor (Op.17 No.4) summed up what her recital was about – empathy.

Photo: Carissa Chan

Just as diverse but almost double the length was the recital by Indonesia-born Jefferson Darmawan, now permanent resident and scientist in A*Star (Agency for Science, Technology and Research). Paying tribute to his homeland, he opened with Part Three of Polish pianist-composer Leopold Godowsky’s Java Suite.

It comprised three stylised pentatonic dances, followed by the perfumed Gardens of Buitenzorg, immersed in impressionist colour before concluding with the bustling and lively Streets of Old Batavia. Described as phonoramas or tonal journeys, these highly descriptive essays could scarcely be better or more sensitively played.

By contrast, Franz Liszt’s Dante Sonata from his Italian book of Years of Pilgrimage, received the most polite reading thought possible, where hellfire and brimstone of the Inferno need no longer be feared. Its unlikely congeniality was far better suited for Chopin’s Barcarolle, where lilting lyricism and filigreed finery found a happy equal.

Photo: Carissa Chan

The recital’s tour de force was the Singapore premiere of Russian composer Nikolai Medtner’s Second Improvisation (Op.47), comprising 15 variations on the sinuous and elusive Song of the Water Nymph. Its half-hour of thorny chromaticism and fantastical imagery was met with a most trenchant response. With every detail carefully and lovingly attended to, its musical narrative unfolded and progressed with a definitive air of inexorability and finality. The Medtner cult – one that is steadily growing in Singapore - could not have a more sympathetic interpreter.

Darmawan completed his exhaustive showing with two generous encores, Maurice Ravel’s impressionist Jeux d’eau (Fountains) commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Frenchman’s birth, and a rare performance of Claude Debussy’s Ballade. Pianophiles here have been well served in these two exceptional recitals.

Post-concert photographs

Cherry Ge meets See Ning Hui.
Both pianists studied in London.

More piano virtuosos meet:
Clarisse Teo, Jefferson Darmawan & Cherry Ge.

ELISO VIRSALADZE Piano Recital / Review

 

ELISO VIRSALADZE Piano Recital

Victoria Concert Hall

Tuesday (18 November 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 November 2025 with the title "Legendary pianist Elisa Virsaladze plays Chopin with heart and ebullience".

All thanks to the buzz created by the Frederic Chopin International Piano Competition which concluded in Warsaw about a month ago, music lovers are still debating what constitutes ideal Chopin playing versus what actually wins competitions. Reality lies somewhere in between, no better illustrated by the 83-year-old Georgian pianist Eliso Virsaladze.

Belonging to the venerable generation of pianists that includes Martha Argerich (who no longer performs solo recitals), Vladimir Ashkenazy (now retired) and Daniel Barenboim (diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease), Virsaladze appears unimpeded by age. Belying a slow walk from wing to keyboard, she unleashed torrents of sound and passion on the C.Bechstein grand once she got started.

Photo: Tang Yaoyu

Opening an all-Chopin recital with the Polonaise-Fantasy in A flat major (Op.61) was a most daunting task. There was virtually no warm up, with its declamatory opening statement setting the tone for the evening. Her swift and unsentimental take, eschewing rubato for its own sake, meant there was to be no posturing or virtue-signalling with this music.

She played it straight, and once she had the throbbing polonaise rhythm (based on dances of nobility) going, the constant pulse never flagged. All the accompanying filigree was just that, merely the means to an end as the fantasy elements gradually took over, all the way to the work’s ambiguously heroic and tragic end.

Photo: Tang Yaoyu

Also from Chopin’s late period was his Third Sonata in B minor (Op.58), for which pacing through its four movements was paramount. Virsaladze got it right by not including the first movement’s exposition repeat, instead going headlong into the development’s conflict between martial ideas and pure lyricism.

The mercurial Scherzo was well contrasted with the Largo slow movement’s languorous musings, before the strident octaves and exertions of the imperious Finale. Here, Virsaladze could have momentarily come undone but she held on tenaciously for a heady build-up and thrilling close.

Photo: Tang Yaoyu

Chopin, the creator of exquisite miniatures, occupied the recital’s second half. The pair of Nocturnes (Op.27) are in harmonically related keys of C sharp minor and D flat major respectively. This gave her a chance to showcase the pieces’ varied moods, the former’s smouldering with tension before rapturous release and the latter’s unbroken cantabile spell.

Beautiful as the nocturnes were, a well-selected suite of six Mazurkas (from Op.30, 33 and 59) displaying Chopin’s patriotism and aching nostalgia also showcased Virsaladze’s disarming empathy with this idiom. Poles and Georgians shared similar struggles and tribulations in their centuries-long histories. The trio of late Mazurkas from Op.59 was particularly poignant.

Photo: Tang Yaoyu

The enthralling recital closed with two vastly contrasting Waltzes, the diminutive but graceful G flat major (Op.70 No.1) and the vertiginously swirling A flat major (Op.42) which brought down the house. Virsaladze’s encores were a loving reprise of the earlier dance tandem, the melancholic Mazurka in A minor (Op.68 No.2) followed by the brilliant Waltz in A flat major (Op.34 No.1). Performed with heart, warmth and an ebullience unafraid to take risks, that was what Chopin was all about.

Photo: Tang Yaoyu

TO FATE WITH HOPE / NIU NIU Piano Recital / Review

 

TO FATE WITH HOPE

NIU NIU Piano Recital

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (31 August 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 September 2025 with the title "Pianist Niu Niu finds poetry in Beethoven's stormy Fifth".

For an audience bred on piano performances by the likes of Lang Lang, Li Yundi and Yuja Wang, it was a matter of time when the former child prodigy Niu Niu (牛牛) from China made his Singapore debut. His actual name is Zhang Shengliang (張勝量) but got his bovine stage name by virtue of being born in 1997, the year of the ox in the Chinese zodiac.

Niu Niu's debut album,
released in 2000.

When he was 12, he became the youngest pianist ever to record the complete Etudes of Frederic Chopin. Now at a grand old age of 28, and pursuing a very busy concert career, he clearly still possesses the chops to handle some of classical piano’s most demanding repertoire.

What Niu Niu looks like today,
in his latest album.

Beginning the recital with Felix Mendelssohn’s Rondo Capriccioso (Op.14), beloved by highly skilled youngsters, his was a totally polished reading. Its slow introduction was distinguished by genuine cantabile, later flitting off with feathery light wings in the mercurial round dance for a scintillating conclusion.

This was merely the prelude for the storms to come in Franz Liszt’s transcription of Ludwig van Beethoven’s mighty Fifth Symphony in C minor (Op.67). This is famous for its recurring da-da-da-dum four-note motif which opens its first movement. As expected, its defiant fist-shaking sequence of heavy octaves and chords ruled. Niu Niu’s view, however, was not just into voluminous pounding, but a nuanced one which also luxuriated in its myriad lights and shades.

On a C.Bechstein grand piano, he found poetry in the slow movement’s variations, and then traipsed gingerly into the Scherzo where the earlier four-note motif took the form of martial goose-stepping. The ensuing fugue with left hand octaves was tossed off with complete ease, before the finale’s grand apotheosis in C major romped home with all guns blazing. Notice how he did not ignore the diminutive piccolo’s shrill report towards the end – in sharply executed scales – showing a care for seemingly little but vital details.

Photo: Guan Ziwen

Mirroring the first half, the second opened with an amuse-bouche in Johannes Brahms’ retiring Intermezzo in A major (Op.118 No.2). Its melting lyricism and revealed inner voices silenced the audience into not applauding, instead anticipating the first notes of Franz Liszt’s monumental Sonata in B minor.

The technical prowess witnessed in the Beethoven symphony transcription was replicated in this work, the acme of perfection for piano writing in sonata form. Its four themes were clearly delineated and Niu Niu became the ideal guide in how these interacted with each other as the half-hour work unfolded. Its many digital difficulties seemed like putty in his hands as he crafted a totally coherent and convincing performance which brought out loud and prolonged applause.

As if compensate for the earlier seriousness, his encores were deliberately light-hearted. The first was his original composition Sunny Day, an upbeat and jazzy number in samba rhythm which may be described as Antonio Carlos Jobim meets Nikolai Kapustin. The second was an uproarious improvised medley mashing together nine of classical music’s most famous melodies, which brought down the house.

For the record, the nine melodies in Niu Niu’s medley were:

1. Beethoven Symphony No.5 – first movement

2. Rimsky-Korsakov Flight of the Bumble Bee (Gyorgy Cziffra version)

3. Mozart Rondo alla Turca

4. Brahms Hungarian Dance No.5

5. Chopin Polonaise Op.53

6. Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 – first movement

7. Paganini-Liszt La Campanella

8. Ren Guang Cai Yun Zhui Yue (彩云追月, Colourful Clouds Chasing The Moon)

9. Puccini Nessun Dorma from Turandot

Post-concert photos:

Niu Niu meets with
Singaporean composer Tan Chan Boon
and pianist Cherry Wei Ge

The score of the Beethoven-Liszt
Symphony No.5.