PRESIDENT'S YOUNG PERFORMERS CONCERT / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

PRESIDENT’S YOUNG 

PERFORMERS CONCERT

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Saturday (12 September 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 September 2026 with the title "Singaporean classical talents shine in President's Young Performers Concert".

The annual President’s Young Performers Concert by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra is the ultimate platform for Singaporean classical soloists under the age of 25. This year’s edition, conducted by Jason Lai, had several interesting and pleasant surprises. For the first time, each concertante work was preceded and complemented by a rarely-played purely orchestral work.

English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Wasps Overture (1909), with its buzzing strings and rousing pentatonic melodies, was the prelude to Swedish composer and orthopaedic practitioner Franz Berwald’s Konzertstuck (Concert Piece, 1827) for bassoon and orchestra.

Typical of early-Romantic showpieces, its mix of bel canto lyricism and technical pyrotechnics also included a set of florid variations on Henry Bishop’s Home, Sweet Home. Its myriad complexities were superbly articulated by Shi Jia Ao, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory alumnus presently pursuing his masters degree in Mannheim, Germany.

Frenchman Andre Caplet’s lush 1911 orchestration of Claude Debussy’s popular Clair de lune heralded an even more sensuous work, Maurice Ravel’s song cycle Sheherazade (1903). The titular character from the Arabian Nights does not appear here, instead its intimations of exoticism and eroticism are explicit in the French texts by Tristan Klingsor, nom-de-plume of Leon Leclere.

Soprano Natasha Da Costa lived every word from the moment she sultrily voiced “Asie, Asie, Asie”, an invitation to dream and escape into the allure of Asia. Her perfect French and strong characterisations continued into La flute enchantee (The Enchanted Flute), a love song with Evgueni Brokmiller’s sinuous flute solo as protagonist, and L’indifferent (The Indifferent One) where beauty is unattainable and desire unfulfilled.

Another English work, George Butterworth’s The Banks of Green Willow (1913), opened the concert’s second half. SSO’s fabled strings were evocative of an English pastoral scene, filled with nostalgia and capturing the loss of innocence. Poignantly, this became Butterworth’s masterpiece before he was killed on the Somme during the First World War.

Photo: Clive Choo

Far more cheerful was Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto (1947), one of the most-performed 20th century violin concertos. Famously premiered by Lithuanian-American violinist Jascha Heifetz, it received a suitably extroverted performance from Kaelyn Soh, who is double majoring in Music and Chemistry / Molecular Physics in London.

Kaelyn Soh in 2014,
when she won the Mediacorp
Symphony 92.4 Young Talents Competition.

Its three movements drew from four Hollywood movies scored by Korngold - Another Dawn, Juarez, Anthony Adverse and The Prince and the Pauper. Totally comfortable with its blend of arch-lyricism and virtuosic diablerie, Soh commanded the stage with bold authority and stunning aplomb.

The audience was moved to applaud between every movement, however inappropriately, but accorded her a rare standing ovation on the concerto’s conclusion. Attended by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Jane Ittogi, this concert shone for its eclecticism and excellence of execution. Verdict: the kids are getting better and better.

President Tharman Shanmugaratnam
and Jane Ittogi meet with music
philanthropists Kris Tan and Lim Kang Ning.

ECHOES BEYOND / Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute / Reflections by PHAN MING YEN

ECHOES BEYOND

Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute

Conservatory Concert Hall

Saturday 5 September 2026

This reflection was written by PHAN MING YEN, personal friend of the Tans, in memory of the late Mr Tan Kah Tee.

On the evening of 5th September, a concert honouring the memory of the late Tan Kah Tee was held at the Concert Hall of the Yong Siew Toh (YST) Conservatory of Music. Titled Echoes Beyond, the event was presented by the YST Orchestral Institute under its “Ones to Watch” Series. The institute’s publicity marketed the programme as one of “searching, transformation and renewal, reflecting on the enduring impact of a life well lived.” 

Photo: Faezah Zulkifli

In the first half, audiences heard the YST Orchestra under principal conductor Jason Lai in Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question and Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration. The second half began with YST Head of Piano Studies Albert Tiu and Cello Faculty member Qin Li-Wei in Harry Sdraulig’s Fantasia on Waltzing Matilda and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Spring Waters before YST Concerto Competition 2026 Prizewinner Jiang Qifan took center stage with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.3.

Photo: Faezah Zulkifli

The titles of the works in themselves may already echo the programme, although Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.3 was more of a practical calling card to seek opportunities than one bearing any visionary message. This was the work with which the composer wrote specially for his debut in the USA, where he eventually settled — perhaps more out of necessity than choice, as he always longed for the Russia he once knew.

Photo: Sean Chew

At a pre-concert reception, YST Dean Peter Tornquist paid tribute to Tan Kah Tee’s legacy for the conservatory — a donation of three concert grand pianos and the Tan Eng Chin Scholarship. 

Alborada del coq,
inspiration for improvisation.
Photo: Mrs Catherine Tan

Photo: Sean Chew

This preceded a sharing by Tan’s widow, Mrs Catherine Tan, that was memorable for an anecdote which illustrated the depth to which music resonated in his life. One morning, when Tan was already stricken by the illness that would take his life, he still found strength to improvise on the piano, accompanying the crowing of a rooster that had wandered into their house compound. Tan, from all those who remembered him, was always there in the audience at YST concerts.

Charles Ives and Richard Strauss

As for the concert itself, a thought flashed by during the climactic moments of Death and Transfiguration and stuck in the mind for the whole evening — reinforced by the orchestra’s support in the Rachmaninoff. The YST Orchestra reminded me of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at their best in the mid-1990s: performances delivered with raw conviction and power. It was the kind of conviction that made you want to revisit music you once knew or made you curious about music you were hearing for the first time.

Photo: Toh Yan Ee

The wistful mood set by Tiu and Qin in the two cello-piano duos after intermission set the stage for the epic that is Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto — famously once described as a work of quicksilver mood shifts that ran the gamut of all human emotions.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Photo: Toh Yan Ee

Jiang Qifan’s high-spirited drive through of the third movement of the Rachmaninoff and his encore of Rachmaninoff’s Polka de W.R was enthusiastically received by the audience comprising guests and the public. The concert was part of the conservatory’s “Ones to Watch” Series, and the evening certainly piqued one’s curiosity about who to listen out for next.

The concerto was performed on the
Fazioli grand piano donated by Tan Kah Tee.
Photo: Toh Yan Ee

Photo: Phan Ming Yen

The writer wishes to thank Dr Kevin YL Tan for valuable suggestions.

Post concert photos:

Photo: Toh Yan Ee

Photo: Toh Yan Ee

CROSS-CURRENTS / Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute

CROSS CURRENTS

Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute

Conservatory Concert Hall

Saturday (14 February 2026), 7.30 pm

It seems that the Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute led by Jason Lai has perfected the art of crafting the short concert, one that tells a story by uniting the themes into a complete and coherent whole. All within the space of an hour, music is delivered in digestible doses, fulfilling the credo of quality not quantity.

The evening opened with the haunting sound of the solo flute, Debussy's Syrinx (1913) heard from high up in the dress circle by the Conservatory's new head of winds, brass and percussion, Eric Lamb. Its ambiguous and fluid tonality makes it sound mysterious, and the purity of the sonority a close to unforgettable impression.

Lasting all but three minutes, it segued into the third movement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony, an ode to nature. Opening quietly, the strings crafted an oasis of inner peace, living up to its direction of Ruhevoll (calm, literally full of rest), which gently rose in temperature and volume in a most subtle of crescendos as the other instruments joined in. A passionate climax later, it returned to the solace it opened with.

Night turned to day with strokes of a tam tam leading to the opening pages of Debussy's La mer (The Sea), in a most riveting performance yet to be heard from these young players. From Dawn to Noon on the Sea, the balance of sound came close to perfect, particularly vivid were the low strings whipping up the tension of undercurrents, and it was easy to be swept away by the fantastical musical imagery conjured. To quote another composer (was it Stravinsky?), I particularly liked the part at about quarter-to-ten. Or was it quarter-past-ten?

The Play of the Waves intrigued and titillated the senses, while the final Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea whipped up a storm which seemed perilous at the time. Sureness and safety were key as the voyagers securely navigated the squall as the work blew to a frenzied but impressive close. I can conclude that this young orchestra is already playing at a higher level than the nation's first professional orchestra during its early years, and that cannot be a bad thing.

Jason Lai has every reason to feel proud.

Eric Lamb and his flute get the applause,
and so does the orchestra.

HEALING ARTS SINGAPORE OPENING CONCERT / Photographs

This was the Opening Concert (Monday, 8 December 2025) of the 5-day symposium (8-12 December 2025) organised by Healing Arts Singapore in conjunction with the Centre of Music and Health based in Yong Siew Toh Conservatory. There was lots of music performed, and here are some of the photos from a colourfully varied concert.

Opening the evening were excerpts from
Chen Zhangyi's opera Lily, a probing work
about the ravages of dementia.

Soprano Wong Su Sun played the role of Lily,
a singing teacher alongside her son,
sung by tenor Jonathan Charles Tay.

Singapore's only hearing-impaired concert pianist
Azariah Tan related how his performance of
Beethoven roused a patient with dementia.

Here Azariah Tan performed the first movement
from Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.5 "Emperor".

It was a reading of true grandeur,
which he mastered in a matter of a few weeks!

Applause alongside YST Orchestral Institute
conductor Jason Lai.

Seeding The Floor - 
performing mindfulness of everyday
by Arts Fission

Movement and plants.

Finding beauty in the mundane.

The pastoral setting was telling:
country folks are happier people.

Musicians from Beautiful Mind Charity and
YST Orchestral Institute perform popular tunes.

Teng Ensemble joins the fray.
Young Artist Award recipient Syafiqah Sallehin
plays the accordion in Chow Junyi's Journey
with Geylang Sipaku Geylang and Rasa Sayang.

Phoon Yu's contrapuntal
Transi For The Common Man.

Western and traditional Chinese instruments
are highlighted in these works.

A rousing end to the concert
with Chow Junyi's Little White Boat.