CHIAROSCURO / JESSIE M. Piano Recital / Review

 

CHIAROSCURO

JESSIE M. Piano Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday (1 July 2026)

In a farewell piano recital before she embarks for undergraduate musical studies at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Young Steinway Artist Jessie M. (Jessie Meng YiRuiXue) gave a very well-conceived programme of mostly late-Romantic works inspired by classic works of art. Winner of multiple prizes including the 2021 National Piano Competition (Intermediate), the 19-year-old displayed a daunting technique that would be the envy of concert pianists double or triple her age.

She began with Enrique Granados’ The Maiden and the Nightingale, the fourth piece from Goyescas (a suite of six pieces inspired by Francisco de Goya’s paintings). Jessie might have opened a little too loud, as the build-up to the climax did not get the gradual work-up of passion it needed. Nevertheless, full-blooded heart-on-sleeve emotions were on show, before enthralling with the nightingale trills in its closing cadenza. An excellent start.

Debussy’s L’isle Joyeuse, after Antoine Watteau’s La Embarquement pour Cythere, seemed like a breeze for Jessie. The play of the waves and outbursts of ecstatic emotions coming to bear before the big payout and a splash to the bottom of the keyboard. She is on a roll, and the audience reciprocating accordingly, witholding applause after the Granados but letting loose on Debussy.

The lyrical lines of Liszt’s La Sposalizio from the Italian Book of Annees de pelerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), inspired by Raphael’s painting The Betrothal, were gorgeously brought out, contrasted with big left hand octaves and celebratory chords. Rachmaninov’s darkly passionate Prelude in B minor (Op.32 No.10) followed. Its inspiration was The Return by Swiss painter Arnold Bocklin (he of Isle of the Dead infamy), with a “sigh” motif of descending notes depicting nostalgia and regret, one that would return with a vengeance in the second half.

Opening the second half was Liszt’s Ricordanza, the ninth and longest of his 12 Transcendental Etudes. Here Jessie generates playing of much warmth, its remembrances likened to a “bundle of faded love letters”. Her arpeggio technique holds up seamlessly well, as do the dizzying cadenzas, this performance of mostly slow music a clear sign of astonishing maturity.

To close the recital, Rachmaninov’s Sonata No.2 in B flat minor (Op.36) in its earlier 1913 edition was a very brave choice. This version has at least five minutes of extra music, which Rachmaninov thought to be excessively discursive, making many excisions for its better-known 1931 iteration. Jessie launches into the music with fearless abandon, later feeding on its adrenaline from first to last. The descending “sigh” motif returned but more fully fleshed-out, indeed all three movements of the sonata were built around it or some variation of it.

The brooding was palpable but this was still a young person’s vision, and more power to Jessie as she made the slow central movement sing before erupting in that “mother” of orgasmic cadenzas. There might have been a little loss of control in the tumultuous finale, but that meant little in the grand scheme of things, as it was a grandstanding performance all the way to its ecstatic end. With a little tweaking, this was a show to win further piano competitions in the long road ahead.

As encore, Jessie offered Prokofiev’s Toccata (Op.11), a dream performance of a mechanistic nightmare, and Chopin’s final Prelude in D minor (Op.28 No.24), concluding with its fatal three low Ds. Since we are in the key of D minor, will Rachmaninov’s First Sonata and Third Piano Concerto be next?

Jessie M. was presented by Songs Without Words Piano Studio

7TH STEINWAY YOUTH PIANO COMPETITION / Review

7TH STEINWAY YOUTH 

PIANO COMPETITION

GRAND FINALS

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Saturday (7 June 2025), 7 pm

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 June 2025 with the title "Mixed bag of performances by young talents in 7th Steinway Youth Piano Competition".

Alongside the National Piano & Violin Competition, the Steinway Youth Piano Competition is the most important mine for young local pianistic talent. Established in 2012 and now in its seventh edition, this biennial competition has identified winners like See Ning Hui, Hao Jia and Jessie Meng, all of whom have gone on to impress audiences home and abroad.

This year’s competition attracted 131 competitors from the ages of 4 to 51, in both Amateur and Professional classes. 15 pianists in three age categories of the Professional class vied for the Grand Prize, and a chance to represent Singapore in the regional finals to be held in Bangkok in August.

All of these young pianists are winners.

Several past Grand Prize winners were trotted back to perform in the award ceremony and concert, but these were unfortunately not in piano solos. Meng (2018 winner) accompanied award-winning 9-year-old violinist Travis Wong in a movement from Summer from Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Over-amplification of his violin resulted in a ghastly acoustic where the piano was drowned out. His violin’s voice should have been allowed to be heard without this garish boost.

The five finalists of Category 3
of the Professional Class
with piano judge Mary Wu.

Luther Ong (2022 winner) accompanied singer-songwriter Owen Li in Mariah Carey’s Hero, which was pleasant enough but seemed out of place for a mostly classical event. A Lied by Franz Schubert or Robert Schumann (with a different singer) would have been the more appropriate choice.

The first prize winners of the Professional Class got to play but were limited in short solos. Despite that, this was still the concert’s best part. Category 1 winner 11-year-old Zhao Ziwen impressed in Ren Guang’s Silver Clouds Chasing The Moon in the well-known arrangement by Wang Jianzhong. His mastery of its guzheng-like arpeggios, colours and shades made it stand out.

13-year-old Newman Tong Kai Han, winner in Category 2, barnstormed through Dmitri Kabalevsky’s Rondo in A minor, the commissioned set-piece for the 1958 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition. Its virtuoso prestidigitation and big gestures seemed like child’s play for him. Just listen to Van Cliburn’s live recording from Moscow, and one will find Tong’s effort very much up to the mark.

Speaking of comparisons, 15-year-old Edward Fang Yanli (Category 3 winner) would have done Argentine virtuosa Martha Argerich proud with his no-holds-barred take of Alberto Ginastera’s Argentinian Dance No.3. He has been well taught, not just in technique but interpretive idioms as well. 

With everything said and done, the 7th Steinway Grand Prize was awarded to the diminutive Tong, whose confidence and pluck punched far above his weight.

In an attempt to be inclusive, the concert closed with the Disney song Part of Your World (from The Little Mermaid) sung by Li, young vocalist Czarina Oswald-Lim and Shalom Ng (2022 Amateur class winner), accompanied on piano four hands by Meng and Will Oswald. This was just unfortunate, being embarrassingly off-key in parts.

The winners and the piano jury, comprising
Boris Kraljevic, Ning An, Pascal Nemirovski,
Peter Takacs & Mary Wu.

Without trying to sound snobbish, Steinway is an exclusive maker of high end pianos, and should stick to what it does best. That is to showcase its masterpieces in the best light with the best kind of music possible.

Grand Prize winner Newman Tong
with his teacher Winnie Tay.

DARK STORIES - THE DEBUT RECITAL / PRODIGIOUS: TROUT QUINTET & FOUR SEASONS / Jessie M. Piano Recital / re:Sound Collective / Review

DARK STORIES – 

THE DEBUT RECITAL 

Jessie M. Piano Recital 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Tuesday (19 March 2024) 

PRODIGIOUS: 

THE TROUT & FOUR SEASONS 

re:Sound Collective 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Wednesday (20 March 2024) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 21 March 2024 with the title "Young Singapore talents rule at two recitals".

Fact: there are more young musical virtuosos in Singapore now than any other time in history. Two consecutive concerts at Victoria Concert Hall were all the proof one needed. 

Jessie M. sounds like one of the Spice Girls, but is the stage name of 17-year-old Jessie Meng YiRuiXue, Singapore’s latest and youngest Young Steinway Artist. Winner of multiple age-group piano competitions, her debut recital showed what the fuss was about. 

In two Transcendental Etudes by Franz Liszt, she demonstrated an astonishing adroitness coupled with nuanced responses to technically demanding music. Fast, furious octaves and outsized chords in Wilde Jagd (Wild Hunt), and stampeding runs of Mazeppa seemed like child’s play. Poetry and lyricism were never in short supply, evident in the “simple” measures of Liszt’s Consolation No.2 and melancholic Russian song of Mily Balakirev’s highly-filigreed transcription of Mikhail Glinka’s The Lark. 

Two modern American composers provided more display of her versatility. William Bolcom’s ragtime novelties showcased graceful insouciance in Last Rag and terminal velocity in The Serpent’s Kiss, the latter including foot stomps, knuckles rapping on the piano’s fallboard, tongue-clicking and even a spot of whistling. For two of Lowell Liebermann’s Gargoyles, she delighted in haunting music-box effects and relentless percussiveness. 

Best of all was M’s hair-raising account of Maurice Ravel’s La Valse, an intoxicating celebration of the Viennese waltz built upon seemingly unending waves of vertiginous whirling. Here was high stakes risk-taking with a true sense of danger courted at every turn. Cataclysm being averted, there could only be final triumph, which the encore of Jack Fina’s Bumble Boogie – in her own edition with multitudes of added notes – duly confirmed. 

Jessie M. with her parents, teacher
Winnie Tay and Steinway Gallery's Celine Goh

@Joelcaptures / re:Sound

Some 16 years older but still young is Berlin-based Shaun Choo who joined members of the Concordia Quartet – violinist Edward Tan, violist Martin Peh, cellist Lin Juan – with bassist Julian Li in a sparkling performance of Franz Schubert’s Piano Quintet in A major, popularly known as the Trout Quintet. 

@Joelcaptures / re:Sound

This is Hausmusik, music for domestic consumption, usually shared by close friends over hearty meals and imbibed spirits. The camaraderie developed by the players all through its five movements was infectious, best exemplified in the fourth movement’s variations on the song Die Forelle (The Trout, hence its nickname). It was just fun to see the ever-busy Choo slaving away on the keyboard while his string partners took turns to luxuriate in the melody. 

All this congeniality scarcely prepared one for Antonio Vivaldi’s perennial favourite The Four Seasons performed by re:Sound featuring mere children as soloists. One wondered whether child labour laws applied when youngsters do adults’ work with equal authority and conviction. 

Spring was the domain of Yuto Lim (12 years old), whose confident demeanour suggested he was the boss, but he blended perfectly with leader Yang Shuxiang and Kim Kyu Ri’s violins for the birdcalls. Sophia Fang (11) was a little self-conscious in the opening of Summer, but once the Allegro got underway, she became a total natural. Helming the music’s portrayal of a pelting rainstorm, she mastered arguably the most demanding season of all. 

@Joelcaptures / re:Sound

Autumn saw the most mature soloist in Jacob Cheng (15), who physically towered over the others. His was the most personal of performances, showing individuality but worked very well with cellist Lin. The most diminutive performer was Mark Chia (11), who gave the edgiest performance of all in Winter, contrasting an icy chill with the warmth of a fireplace. 

@Joelcaptures / re:Sound

Shut your eyes, and one imagined both concerts being helmed by performing adults. That mere babes accomplished the same was just a frightening thought.

@Joelcaptures / re:Sound

MOVING HANDS, OVERFLOWING HEARTS / The Inspiring Trio / Review

MOVING HANDS, 

OVERFLOWING HEARTS

The Inspiring Trio

Esplanade Recital Studio

Friday (5 January 2018)

If you wish to get a glimpse of the future of piano playing in Singapore, you could do worse than to attend a concert by students of Singapore’s most effective and inspiring piano teachers. The School of Young Talents at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts is an obvious start-point, but The Musique Loft (an alliance of music teachers based in Singapore’s east coast district founded by Winnie Tay and Angelyn Aw) has much to offer as well.  If one considers that the likes of Azariah Tan and Clarence Lee (Winnie’s former prodigies) and Serene Koh (Angelyn’s star pupil) arose from their respective studios, performance of their current students will need to be taken seriously.

This concert by The Inspiring Trio – Chen Jing, Toby Tan and Jessie Meng - three students of Winnie Tay, in support of The Business Times Budding Artist Fund may have important implications for the future. Dr Andrew Freris, President of the Chopin Society of Hong Kong, once referred to child prodigies as “real artists who happen to be really young”. Hence there is evidence that something serious and exciting is going on in those studios.

Chen Jing (8 years old) was the first to perform. Close your eyes, and you would not imagine Brahms’ Intermezzo in A major (Op.118 No.2), late Brahms to be certain, being played by someone this young. Her warm, cushioned sound was a balm to the ears, and she was also able to bring out the inner voice of the swifter central section. In two of Chopin’s waltzes (Op.64 No.2 and Op.18), an innate feel of rubato was evident, allied by a silken touch and limpid fingerwork. This was an excellent opener to the recital.

Toby Tan (9 years old, but almost a head shorter) put his prodigious fingers to work in Debussy’s Arabesque No.1, Chopin’s posthumous Nocturne in C sharp minor and Schubert’s vertiginous Impromptu in E flat major (Op.90 No.2). The repetitive nature of the last seemed a tad unrelenting, and the reading could do with more charm. However there were no reservations in Toby’s original composition Sorrow of Love, a pop and New Age influenced piece which showed development of ideas, culminating with a stormy central interlude with a short cadenza to boot.

Jessie Meng (10 years old) was recently awarded 1^st prize at the Singapore National Piano & Violin Competition (Intermediate category), and her performances showed exactly why. I cannot imagine Balakirev’s transcription of Glinka’s The Lark being played any better. Her shaping of its melancholic melody, colouring of the accompaniment, capped by virtuosic ornamentations made this a dream performance. Her view of Chopin’s Scherzo No.2, a new work for her, was less formed. There were wrong and missed notes for sure, but there was no denying her passion.

And that was only the first half (entitled The Affectionate). The second half programme, The Exhilaration, saw changes in outfits for all three pianists. Chen Jing emerged to have a heartfelt account of the 1^st movement Mozart’s Sonata in F major (K.332). At once, the realisation that she does not play to the metronome but breathes the music with all its myriad dynamic changes showed she is a thinking artist. What was there not to like in a selection from Shostakovich Dances of the Dolls (innocence, irony and droll humour are not alien to her) and the note-spinning of Wang Yu Shi’s Sunflower? 

Toby Tan, now attired in a three-piece suit and spiffy hat, looks the born entertainer in his playing of Astor Piazzolla’s Street Tango, Gershwin’s Prelude No.1 and I Got Rhythm. In all of these, he displays an assurance, swing and pizzazz which adults would be envious of. This was topped by Fazil Say’s Alla Turca Jazz, a ragtime version of Mozart’s popular rondo, which was a charmer through and through.

Jessie Meng returned with the meat of her programme, which began with the 1^st movement of Mozart’s Sonata in C major (K.330). This was a very assured reading, and it got even better with the 1^st movement of Dmitri Kabalevsky’s Sonata No.3, a work once championed by Vladimir Horowitz. She took its alternating dissonances and lyricism in her stride, which all but suggests that she is ready to tackle the early Prokofiev sonatas. The barnstorming ended with the tempestuous final movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.  

The Inspiring Trio, as the threesome is called, gave an encore composed by Toby Tan called Magical Music Box. It was not so much a tinkling musical box miniature but more of a rumbling and punchy barn dance with musical boxing along the way – very entertaining and a surefire way to close the concert proper.

This concert was in aid of The Business Times Budding Arts Fund, and one of its previous beneficiaries, a vocal group called Harmonix formed by four rather self-conscious teenagers, performed two pop songs Don’t Stop Believing and You Raise Me Up. They were more of an incidental side show in an evening dominated by three quite incredible children.