JONATHAN YEO IN RECITAL
Esplanade Recital Studio
Wednesday (28 October 2026)
And the piano music continues. As if an entire weekend of piano performances were not enough, here was another excellent recital to add to the fray. Singaporean pianist Jonathan Yeo originally graduated in mechanical engineering, then completed post-graduate studies in piano in Scotland and is now an adjunct lecturer at Singapore Raffles Music College. His highly demanding solo recital was a refreshing mix of the arcane and the familiar.
The first half showcased two Romantic composers who deserve to be better known. How much of Frenchman Gabriel Fauré’s piano music do we actually get to hear? Other than his popular Dolly Suite (for four hands), not much. Yeo’s choice to programme three contrasting Barcarolles (there are 13 in total, not a single one is populist repertoire) was an excellent one.
Opening with No.2 in G major (Op.41), he brought out the music’s lyricism, backed by the gentle lilt typical of gondolier boat songs. Rising to series of climaxes was the work’s ultimate pay off. No.4 in A flat major (Op.44) is a shorter work, technically easier but no less sublime. No.6 in E flat major (Op.70) is much in the same vein and just as lovely. Yeo’s sympathetic view and fine technique are always in service of the music, and there is nothing to dislike in these revelatory readings. Fauré’s harmonic language is an embarrassment of riches and variety, often begging the question: why don’t we hear more of this?
The American Edward MacDowell is known here for only two works – the miniature To a Wild Rose from Woodland Sketches and his Second Piano Concerto. Forget about the four sonatas, of which the Third Sonata in D minor (Op.57) or “Norse”, was likely given its Singapore premiere by Yeo. The music is dark and smouldering, chordal in most part, and armed with an epic severity associated with legends and sagas of the north (hence its nickname), and there are similarities with Rachmaninov’s First Sonata (in the same key) and Sibelius / Arnold Bax tone poems.
Yeo’s vision was not to shy from its vast and broad vistas but to embrace them whole-heartedly. The intellectual and technical vigour invested in its three heroic movements, admirably played from memory (of course), was rewarded with a performance that was worthy of its conception. Do not expect to hear it again any time soon.
Claude Debussy is so popular in Singapore that his Preludes Book 1 (the more familiar of two volumes) might seem like old hat. However, Yeo’s traversal of the full set, with emphasis on colour, light and shade, achieved with judicious pedaling, thus providing maximal contrasts. The opening Danseuses de delphes (Dances of Delphi) immediately set the mood, its chords coloured with excellent sostenuto pedalling, then contrasted by the airy lightness of Voiles (Sails) and Le vent dans la plaine (The Wind on the Plain).
It took a feat of concentration to master these, yet be completely unfazed by the audience applauding inappropriately between preludes, a total of 10 times. The only one they missed was after Pas sur la neige (Footsteps in the Snow) probably because they did not know it had ended, and so Yeo merrily went on to gulp down Ce q’ua vu le vent d’Ouest (What the West Wind Saw) with its violent flailings, without interruption. One could go down the rabbit hole with each and every prelude, but suffice to say, Yeo’s performance was an invigorating one. Care and love were lavished on all the pieces, all through to the final dances of Puck and the black-and-white Minstrels.
His encore of Scorpion Fire or Sasoribi (Anti-Ares) by Jun Wakita (whose presudonym is Virkato Wakhmaninov) comes from anime / videogame music. This is popular with young people these days, and who could not blame them after it is filled with all the tropes and cliches from the Romantic era piano music which oldies love, like Rachmaninov. Wakhmaninov? Go figure.
