YONG SIEW TOH CONSERVATORY CONCERTO COMPETITION: SINGAPORE'S BEST-KEPT SECRET

 

YONG SIEW TOH CONSERVATORY’S 

CONCERTO COMPETITION: 

SINGAPORE’S BEST-KEPT SECRET 

Saturday (15 March 2025), 6 pm

Everybody knows where the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory is, and how its students and faculty regularly serve up top quality performances, yet one of its best-kept secrets is its annual concerto competition. In an institution that consistently produces the soloists who shine in concerts, this annual event is de rigeuer in finding the top soloists of tomorrow. I had the rare opportunity of attending one of this year’s concerto competition evenings and had a real treat. 

Over two evenings, ten young soloists (representing the best in high strings, low strings, piano, woodwinds and brass, and voice) displayed their prowess in ten repertoire works. And it was free to attend. I had missed the first evening (which included Liszt and Brahms piano concertos, a Prokofiev violin concerto, a Scandinavian brass concerto and Samuel Barber's Knoxville, Summer of 1915) so I was determined not to miss the second. And I was not disappointed. 

The audience was small but enthusiastic and attentive, willing to share in whatever that gets served up. How often does one get to hear a rarity as Wolfgang Erich Korngold’s single movement Cello Concerto? It will never get as popular as his Violin Concerto but soloist Chen Pei-Yi (with Liu Jia on piano) does a very good job, lapping up its lyrical lines with relish while negotiating its knotty counterpoint (who doesn’t fancy yet another fugato?) very capably. Hers was a very confident reading and now let’s hear it with orchestra for real the next time around. 

Another rarity for concertgoers is Carl Nielsen’s Clarinet Concert, a more austere work with a really quirky opening theme, almost an earworm. Chua Jay Roon’s performance was arguably even more impressive as she coped very well with its manifold twists and turns, never missing a beat, and making the cadenzas sound like child’s play. Another good reason was to witness pianist Clarisse Teo virtuosically substitute for the orchestral part, and the twosome handled the thorny bits (there were many in its four movements played as one continuous run) with great aplomb. Looking forward to witness the orchestral version sometime soon. 

Did I mention that every soloist performed their parts wholly from memory? That’s the lot of young professional musicians these days – they must know alltheir music by heart, and with no fumbling around with scores. The rest of the concert was on more familiar ground, beginning with Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations, which received a sumptuous if not revelatory reading from cellist Liu You-Yu with Liu Jia on piano. She has a good feel for its Romantic impulses, and ardour was well captured in many lyrical lines, and when it came to the more virtuosic variations, her technique held up and she delivered with aplomb. A very satisfying reading all around. 

The only vocalist this evening was soprano Zhou Wenyue (with pianist Choi Hye-Sion) in Mozart’s popular motet Exsultate Jubilate. The famous part is the Alleluia at its end but the aria and recitative that came before it was well worth hearing too. Her clear articulation of the words was admirable, even if her runs were not always immaculate. There were no extraneous gestures or hand movements, just her voice and no other distractions, and when it came to the final Alleluia, she was confident and made the best case possible. 

After a short intermission, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto was the longest work on show. Over-familiarity has tainted this masterpiece, but Syu Cheng-Yi (with pianist Ge Xiaozhe) tried his best to keep it fresh. His technique had held up for most part, with the particularly treacherous first movement cadenza well handled. The most memorable part was in the Canzonetta in G minor, the slow movement’s melancholic mood very well judged, before leading into the Allegro vivacissimo finale where all stops were pulled, providing a riproaring close to the concert. With a few tweaks here and there, and he will be ready to take part in this year’s National Violin Competition. 

It was an enjoyable show all around judged by a panel of three international jurists, and if compelled to pick a performance I would like to hear again with an orchestra, that would be the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto with Chua Jay Roon doing the honours. Came later this year or next, my wish might just come true.

Encore, please!

KEVIN LOH Guitar Recital & CLARISSE TEO Piano Recital / Review

RAY OF LIGHT

Kevin Loh (Guitar)

CLARISSE TEO IN RECITAL

Clarisse Teo (Piano)

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday & Sunday (17 & 21 August 2022)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 24 August 2022 with the title "Young talents shine in summer concerts".

 

August is the month when music students overseas return home for their summer vacations, presenting concerts that are invariably impressive showcases of their artistic progress. The last week saw two such recitals from some of our brightest sparks. Singapore’s generational talent of the guitar, Kevin Loh, now an undergraduate at Cambridge University, surveyed the history of the classical guitar with varied works from the baroque to the 21st century.

 

Beginning with a transcription of J.S.Bach’s Cello Suite No.6 in D major, he showed that this music sounded just as idiomatic on the guitar as the original instrument. Most notable was his natural, unforced manner with music-making, allied with faultless articulation, which made for a pleasurable experience. Besides being totally in tune with the rhythmic aspects of its antique dance movements, his selection of three of Spaniard Fernando Sor’s Bagatelles also oozed charm and personality.  

 

Young Singaporean composer Lim Kang Ning’s Serenata del Caffe provided much-needed contrasts, its melancholy and introspection resembled an intimate conversation between two friends over coffee. Two of Schubert’s Lieder (art songs) transcribed by Johann Kaspar Mertz were a demonstration of the art of cantabile, not least the famous Serenade from song-cycle Schwanengesang (Swan Song). Outright virtuosity came in two Sonatinas by the Briton Lennox Berkeley and Mexcian Manuel Ponce, which displayed a mastery of myriad styles and techniques. Loh capped these off with a rip-roaring encore in Antonio Carlos Jobim’s Felicidade.   

 

Just as impressive was the solo recital of rarities by pianist Clarisse Teo, presently pursuing a musical doctorate at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. How often has one attended a recital of sonatas by Russian composers Nikolai Medtner and Anatoly Alexandrov? Both were born in the 1880s and lived well into the age of modernity. Bastions of the conservativism, they shunned atonality and avant-gardeism, composing some fourteen piano sonatas each.

 

Medtner’s Sonata-Skazka in C minor combined Romantic era lyricism with surprising whimsicality, the term skazka being the Russian equivalent of fairy tales. Alexandrov’s Fourteenth and Third Sonatas were even more obscure, both receiving their Singapore premieres. Paradoxically, the later 1967 work sounded far more traditional – including a masterly set of variations - than the earlier single-movement piece of 1920. All three sonatas presented thorny technical and interpretive challenges, but Teo delivered with crispness and passionate aplomb.

 

Sandwiched in between these were Englishman Arnold Bax’s Dream In Exile, a ruminative work of nostalgia serving as both a fantasy and lament, reflecting his love for the land of Ireland. More familiar was American Lowell Liebermann’s Gargoyles, four short movements of musical grotesquerie that juxtaposed eerie calm with coruscating violence. Teo’s confidently eclectic tastes extended also into her encores, Dane Rued Langgaard’s impressionistic The Restless Wind from Gitanjali Hymns and Frenchman Francis Poulenc’s rapturous Homage To Edith Piaf. No Chopin or no Rachmaninov in a piano recital? No worries. 

Kevin Loh's recital was presented by Kris Foundation.

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM 2019 / CD Review

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC

AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM

2019 Festival Highlights

Danacord 849 / TT: 75’02”

 

For the first time in its incredible 33-year run, the prestigious Rarities of Piano Music Festival at Schloss vor Husum in Schleswig-Holstein, Northern Germany had to be cancelled this year, all thanks to the global Covid-19 pandemic. However, the annual highlights disc from the 2019 festival, just hot off the press and faithfully issued by the Danish label Danacord, is a consolation worth having.

 

The 2019 festival was special in several ways. First, it featured the most number of pianists – fifteen in total - within its nine-day duration. Secondly, it programmed the most number of young pianists, including five scholarship students and two Young Explorers. No less than five pianists were Asian, with Clarisse Teo being the first ever Singaporean to perform in the festival’s illustrious history.

 

Thirteen pianists were represented in the 2019 highlights, with 18 tracks in total. Dip into any part of the disc, and one will be severely challenged to identify the works or composers.  OK, the only concession is the final track: J.S.Bach’s Ich ruf’ zu dir played by German pianist Markus Becker. However, its not the familiar Busoni transcription, but rather Max Reger’s much less known version. Such is the nature of rarities.

 

Most of the tracks are short, occupied by itsy bitsy pieces (gems and baubles alike) or movements from longer pieces, but there was time for two generous 10-minute selections. Sigismond Thalberg’s Fantasy on Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia was bel canto meets early Romantic notespinning. This could have been a vulgar romp (remember the Thalberg vs Liszt pianistic duel of 1837) but not so from the prodigious British Alkan maven Mark Viner, who amply brought out its barnstorming glories with stunning aplomb. Gustave Samazeuilh’s Nocturne comes from the opposite end of the Romantic spectrum, its dusky and impressionist hues (one thinks of Debussy and Szymanowski) evocatively voiced by Swedish Husum veteran Roland Pöntinen.  

 

And there are lots of dances, songs, romances and transcriptions. A Grand Valse de concert by Bizet (from Kotaro Fukuma), Mazurkas by Chopin student Julian Fontana (Cyprien Katsaris) and Benjamin Godard (Kenji Miura), two Essays on Forgotten Rhythms by Anton Arensky (Marco Rapetti), a charming Ice-Skating Rink Waltz by Balys Dvarionas (Onute Grazinyte), a serene bagatelle and syncopated prelude by Richard Danielpour (Xiayin Wang) just illustrate the sheer eclecticism of the selections.  

 

On a more sober side, Christian Nagel’s reading of Liszt’s Ave Maria (Chanson d’Arcadelt, not the Schubert song) from the festival’s first ever Late Night Recital was a refreshing balm of bell sounds after an exhausting evening of piano fireworks. By contrast, the finale of Anatoly Alexandrov’s Sonata No.4 proved to be the grittiest of all the selections, flying fearlessly from the hands of Singaporean Clarisse Teo (above).

 

If the arcane peripheries and less-trodden byways of the piano repertoire is your cup of tea, look no further. Try something very different!

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM 2019 / Part 2

Saturday 24 August 2019

CLARISSE TEO 

Piano Recital (4.30 pm)

 

Nothing fills me with greater pride than witnessing a first ever-recital by a Singaporean pianist at  Husum. For me, Clarisse Teo’s hour-long recital is a Joseph Schooling moment, an artistic equivalent of Singapore’s first Olympic gold in 2016. This law-graduate turned concert pianist had me near speechless by her confidence and authority in her made-for-Husum programme of music by Xavier Montsalvatge, Vincent D’Indy and Anatoly Alexandrov. Who? Exactly. Even by Husum’s lofty standards, her programme was a rarity.

 

She took a little time to prepare herself at the keyboard, but when she set her fingers down, it was a non-stop roller-coaster ride of hair-raising notes. Montsalvatge’s Sonatina pour Yvette entranced with its quirky rhythms and piquant harmonies, and smiles were raised in the 3^rd movement’s cheeky quotes of Ah, vous dirai-je Maman! Obviously this was written for a child, but there was nothing childlike in its delivery.

 

Then we entered hardcore Husum territory with D’Indy’s Theme varie, Fugue et Chanson, a work far removed from the world of his Symphony on a Mountain Air. No folksy melodies, but a theme which did not sound memorable at first but soon grew with each variation. The fugue was complex enough (every composer had to prove himself with this obligatory exercise) but the final chanson was a happy return home. The ante was upped for the Russian Alexandrov Fourth Sonata, as thorny as any post-Scriabin essay would prove. Even if the ears soon wearied with its litany of dissonances, nothing suggested that Clarisse was tired. Her responses remained hyperacute all through to its climactic close.

 

Her sole encore came like a pleasant after-dinner mint, Carlos Guastavino’s Cantos Popolares No.4, a delightful palate-cleanser to soothe the gall and brimstone that came before. If I sounded somewhat over-enthusiastic, that ought to be the case. I’ll probably never visit the Olympic Games or football World Cup with Singapore to support, but this would be one of Singapore’s proudest musical moments. By the way, I’m also happy to report that the Singaporean population in Husum had increased by by 800% on this weekend!

The Teo family comes to Husum.

Pianophile celeb alert:
Bulgarian pianist Nadezhda Vlaeva,
her husband Farhan Malik and
daughter were spotted at the festival.

 

KOTARO FUKUMA Piano Recital (7.30 pm)

 

The programme offered by the 2003 first prizewinner of the Cleveland International Piano Competition had to be the most eclectic programme I have witnessed in five years of visiting Husum. That’s a far cry from the usual piano competition fodder served up ad nauseum, which means the young Japanese Kotaro Fukuma has progressed beyond the mainstream. His programme began with Minako Tokuyama’s To No Mai, with echoes of Takemitsu and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Next was a melancholic piece from Liszt’s Album dun voyager, the First Nocturne and a Waltz by Bizet (piano music by Carmen’s composer are finally receiving their due), and appropriately a Hommage a Bizet by Theodor Adorno, of all people. This is a surprise by the philosopher and champion of atonalism, and how pleasant and lyrical the three movements sounded, perilously skirting at the edges of tonality.

 

The piece de resistance of Fukuma’s recital had to be the six posthumously-published Charles Trenet songs by Alexis Weissenberg (Mister Nobody in his younger and presumably wilder days) as realised by Marc-André Hamelin. This is heady and highly virtuosic stuff despite the relative simplicity of thematic material, and beautifully played too. One will not view Coin de rue or April in Paris in the same light again. Quite unusually too, he closed with Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Sixth Sonata, which is acerbic, savage and viscerally exciting, as one would expect from a one-time Shostakovich student. One might even discern a hint of jazz at its close, which complimented the earlier goings-on.

 

Fukuma gave three encores, a Clara Schumann nocturne, more Bizet (Heimat) and his own over-the-top version of the familiar waltz-song Je te veux, which is Satie meets Mr Nobody. Naughty but nice! 

YET ANOTHER HUSUM BLOG 2018 / Part 1

YET ANOTHER HUSUM BLOG

It took me almost a year to write this blog diary, having wracked my thought processes, beginning in Germany, later in Hong Kong, and finally back home in Singapore, with just a week to spare before my inevitable return to Husum in 2019. Better late than never, so here it is, my brief diary of the 32^nd edition.

Its my fourth year in succession visiting Husum (Germany), home of the inimitable Rarities of Piano Music at Schloss vor Husum Festival, and there seems to be no tiring of this annual pilgrimage into the far-flung peripheries of the vast and seemingly endless piano repertory. “Husum is like a drug” reads an article in the Hamburger Abendblatt by Elisabeth Richter, and guess who the drug references relate to? 

Yes, and there’s a photo of a certain Singapore blogger attired in a Nationalmannschaft outfit emblazoned just below the headline. Guess I’ve become a legitimate minor celebrity in certain parts of North Germany...

Sunday, 12 August 2018

In truth, my Husum journey started in Singapore when the young 24-year-old Clarisse Teo (above) performed a programme of Mompou, Medtner, D’Indy and Alexandrov in a piano recital at Esplanade Recital Studio. Her programme of all local premieres looked exactly like one of those impossible programmes that appear in Husum every summer in August. And her audience of about 180, very quiet, attentive and respectful, was little different from the cognoscenti who beat down the doors of the 16^th century Schloss before the seaside town on the North Sea coast of Schleswig-Holstein. 

Her upright posture, utter confidence and control, no-nonsense demeanour and unexpected encore (Villa-Lobos) also reminded this listener of a certain M-A.Hamelin. Surely she should someday perform in Husum?

Saturday 18 August 2018

Thanks to British Airways and German Rail (which has of late descended to SMRT standards of normality), everything contrived to make me miss the opening recital at Husum by German pianist Sina Kloke (above). She sounded impressive enough on compact disc, and I was more than happy for her to autograph those albums of music by Enesco and Vaughan Williams.

FABIAN MULLER Piano Recital (7.30 pm)

So my first recital attended was by the young German Fabian Muller, part of the Festival’s Young Explorers programme. The question begged is this, “Does contemporary music that is not often heard qualify to be rarities?” 

This festival has thrived on less-heard Romantic repertoire, but what about late 20^th century music? One hardly hears these in most recitals (other than a handful of Ligeti Etudes or Carl Vine’s Bagatelles or First Sonata), so Gyorgy Kurtag’s aphoristic Splitter (1978) comes as a surprise – comprising short shards of atonal sound with extremes of dynamic changes and occasional playful gestures. Russian Nikolai Obuchow’s Revelation from 1915 is more convincing, with Scriabinesque gestures, Schoenbergian or Bergian dissonances, typical of the Russian avant-garde and sounding something ahead of its time.

The rest of his programme hardly qualifies as rarities. Debussy’s early Ballade (heard in complete Debussy sets), a selection of Brahms Piano Pieces Op.76 (deceptively difficult pieces to play) and Liszt’s Variations on Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen are now more regularly heard these days. He plays these very well, and the violent but dry-like-dust Busoni single-movement Sonatina Seconda, a work with occult and sinister intensions which is as far away as one gets from Bach-Busonian congeniality. That too was enough to demonstrate the presence of a serious and considerable artist.

The Busoni was heard in last year’s Singapore International Piano Festival (from Chiyan Wong) and will be heard in The Joy of Music Festival in Hong Kong come October (from Ivan Krpan). So this work looks like losing rarity status pretty soon, and that is what happens when pieces begin to join the mainstream.

The well-tendered garden of the Schloss,
where a drink in the summer evening is always welcome.

PianoCrazy: my collage of images of
concert attendees from the the 2017 festival 

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC AT SCHLOSS WOOLLERTON ON NATIONAL DAY 2019

How did you spend National Day? Mine was in the company of good friends and music lovers. Here was the opportune moment to unveil my new musical salon at Schloss Woollerton in the company of old fellow music critics (Phan Ming Yen and Kevin Tan) and some of Singapore's finest young musicians. 

The party was not limited to just pianists, and we also included a cellist for good measure. What did we get to hear performed on my "new" Knight piano from Emmanuel & Sons? The evening was dedicated to rarities, much in the hallowed style of the Rarities of Piano Music at Schloss vor Husum festival held every August in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Here was our humble attempt, and hopefully a start of more efforts to come!

Cellist Loke Hoe Kit, fresh from his Singapore premiere
of Saint-Saëns's Second Cello Concerto
opened the evening with
Glazunov's Chant du Menestrel and Bloch's Prayer.

Clarisse Teo, who will make her debut at the actual
Rarities of Piano Music at Schloss vor Husum festival
on 24 August, offered Vincent D'Indy's
Thème Varié, Fugue & Chanson.

A gecko's eye-view of the house concert.

Donald Law performed
Leos Janacek's Sonata I.X.1905
commemorating the death of a worker in Brno.

Clarence Lee forsook Liszt and Rachmaninov
to play Amy Beach's Dreaming, and had
everybody stumped as to who the composer was.

An enthusiastic audience.
Note the national flags flying outside.

Now it was Clarence's turn to accompany Hoe Kit,
in the slow movement of Grieg's Cello Sonata.

Encore time: Clarisse performs
Cantos Populares No.4 by Carlos Guastavino.

After an aborted attempt at Gershwin's An American in Paris,
Clarence and Donald completed Johann Strauss Jr's
On The Beautiful Blue Danube.

Phan Ming Yen and yours truly,
founders of the SSO Piano Marathon,
completed the evening with
Johnn Strauss Sr's Radetzky March.

Cat Fendi sends his National Day greetings to his former hosts,
Katie, Mr & Mrs Tan Kah Tee, Khor Ai Ming and Tamagoh.

Nothing is complete without dinner
at an nearby tzi char establishment!

PIANO RECITALS / See Ning Hui, Yap Sin Yee & Clarisse Teo / Reviews

SOLO PIANO RECITALS by

See Ning Hui (Tuesday, 7 August 2018)

Yap Sin Yee (Wednesday, 8 August 2018)

Clarisse Teo (Sunday, 12 August 2018)

Esplanade Recital Studio

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 15 August 2018 with the title "Different moods from a trio of pianists".

It seems an astonishing fact that all of this summer's solo piano recitals featuring local pianists were given by young women. This should come as no big surprise since some of history's great pianists were from the fairer gender. The names of Clara Schumann, Wanda Landowska, Myra Hess and Martha Argerich all come to mind. The piano playing scene here should be no different.

The two recitals held on Tuesday and Wednesday were part of Allure, a mini-piano festival presented by the Kris Foundation. London-based Singaporean See Ning Hui displayed a mastery of six composers of different eras and styles. She opened with a slick account of Chopin's Second Scherzo, revealing a pearly tone with sharp contours smoothened over. Two Scarlatti Sonatas keenly contrasted staccato with legato playing, polar opposites of sound production and projection.

While her advocacy of living composers, Korean Unsuk Chin (Etude No.6 “Grains”) and Briton Thomas Ades (Darknesse Visible), was spirited and admirable, it was See's juxtaposition of Sonatas by husband-and-wife Robert and Clara Schumann which sealed the deal. Both cast in G minor, Clara's salon-like charm and Robert's blistering passion were the toast of the evening's offerings.

Boston-based Malaysian pianist Yap Sin Yee was the 1^st prizewinner in the 2013 National Piano Competition while at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory. Her programme was entirely Romantic, beginning with Debussy's Etude No.11 as a cystalline icebreaker. Then followed a chronological history of the sonata form.

Beethoven's late Sonata No.30 in E major (Op.109) revelled in abrupt changes in dynamics and mood with the central movement's outburst as a focal point. The Theme and Variations of the final movement were beautifully shaped, with the noble return of its lovely sarabande subject.

Robert Schumann's three-movement Fantasy in C major (Op.17) was a statement of love which received a most passionate response. Bliss turned to orgasmic ecstasy for Scriabin's Fifth Sonata, where wrong and missed notes were a small price to pay for going for broke. Here, Yap's audacity totally trumped timidity.  

Pianists See Ning Hui and Yap Sin Yee
with Kris Tan and project manager Laura Peh.

The answer is: Four
The question was: How many Esplanade staff
does it take to guard a piano?
Elaboration: One to say "Don't come near!"
The second to say "Don't touch the keys!"
and two more to say "No photography!"
No better than automatons, losers all.

Clarisse Teo was a graduate in law before deciding to pursue music full-time at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. Her recital on Sunday consisted wholly of rarities, works unlikely to be heard at a conventional concert. Like Catalan composer Federico Mompou's Variations On A Theme By Chopin, a flight of fantasy on the Pole's famous A major Prelude. Or Russian Nikolai Medtner's Three Pieces Op.31, which included a set of variations, funeral march and fairy tale.

For these, Frenchman Vincent D'Indy's Theme Varie, Fugue Et Chanson and Soviet composer Anatoly Alexandrov's psychedelic Fourth Sonata, she displayed utter confidence and a fearless disregard for their technical complexities, while making this arcane music sound totally fresh and natural. Whoever thought that Singapore's answer to the Canadian Marc-André Hamelin, widely regarded as the world's most prodigious pianist, would be wearing a skirt?