WORLD PIANO TEACHERS ASSOCIATION (WPTA) SINGAPORE COMPETITION GALA CONCERT

WORLD PIANO TEACHERS ASSOCIATION
(WPTA) SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION 2025 

GALA CONCERT
Recital Studio @

Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre

Friday (29 August 2025)

Missing out on Mikhail Pletnev and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra has its compensations. Getting to hear talented young pianists perform is one of them. The 7th edition of the World Piano Teachers Association Singapore International Piano Competition has unearthed more new talent from different age groups and nations - children and adults - for an encouraging and enjoyable show at its annual gala concert.

A small list of piano teachers' names was read out to represent the pianists on show this evening, and it was staggering. Christopher Elton, Armen Babakhanian, Iryna & Kseniia Vokhmianina were among them, and just imagine how much talent that meant. The youngest ones were beginners but showing immense promise, while the oldest ones were performing repertoire to be heard in major international piano competitions. All were rewarded Gold or Platinum awards for their efforts. Some of them had also travelled long distances to perform here.

The pianists and performances were as follows:

Jexin Zion Lin crossed his hands many times
in Gillock's impressionistic Fountain in the Rain

   

Luke Warren Winardi (Indonesia) was the
littlest pianist but created a gospel vibe in
Hartsell's Sunsets in Savannah

Charlotte Olivia Mantiri (Australia)
gave a spirited account of the 1st movement
from Kuhlau's Sonatina in C major

Liang Ziyang displayed some rubato in
Chopin's Mazurka in A minor (Op.17 No.4)

Amelie Chloe Mantiri (Australia) gave a
fluent account of Miriam Hyde's Woodland Sketch

Sophie Chua Ming Rui was measured in tempi for
Liszt's Eclogue from Annees de pelerinage (Suisse)

Foo Ming En was confident and
technically secure in the 1st movement from
Beethoven's Sonata in D major (Op.10 No.3)

Lin You Ming brought out the melancholy of
Chopin's Nocturne in B flat minor (Op.9 No.1)

Hillary O'Sullivan worked the
2nd movement from Grieg's Sonata in E minor
to a suitably rousing climax.

Christine Chuah displayed the blues of
Gershwin's The Man I Love & I Got Rhythm

Adjudicator Olena Bulatova (Ukraine)
playing New Zealander Yuri Serikov's
Chopinesque Revelation Fantasia.

Cherry Wei Ge displayed vast contrasts in a
selection of Beethoven's Bagatelles Op.119 and
Rachmaninov's Etude-tableaux Op.39 No.1

Taeksu Oh (South Korea) fully realised the 
Romantic impulses in the 1st movement
from Beethoven's Sonata Op.109 and
romped through the pentatonic fantasy that
is the Finale from Bartok's Sonata.

Taeksu Oh received his awards from
Ukrainian pianist Kseniia Vokhmianina.

Cherry Wei Ge won the Best Classical Award
from Iryna Vokhmianina.

All the major prizewinners and performers.

WPTA Singapore President Kseniia Vokhmianina
with the Artist Award winners
Taeksu Oh & Cherry Wei Ge.

A well-deserved supper
at MakanSutra Gluttons Bay after
Pletnev & Co had long gone home.

A PIANO RECITAL NOT TO MISS: AN EVENING WITH RAVEL on 26 April 2025

 

AN EVENING WITH RAVEL 

If you love piano music, here is a super piano recital not to miss, showcasing the complete piano works of French composer MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937). No less than 22 pianists in Singapore – young virtuosos as well as concert veterans – will take part in this 150th anniversary commemoration of Ravel’s birth. This marathon event takes place at Victoria Concert Hall on Saturday 26 April 2025, starting at 7 pm (Please note the earlier timing!) 

Although Ravel was no piano virtuoso,
he wrote some of the greatest piano music ever.

Ravel’s virtuosic showpieces, like Gaspard de la nuit and Valses nobles et sentimentales, sit alongside his Impressionist scores – Jeux d’eau and Miroirs – and neoclassical favourites, such as the Sonatine, Pavane for the Dead Infanta and La tombeau de Couperin. Here is also a rare chance to hear his miniatures and excerpts from the ballets Mother Goose and Daphnis and Chloe as well. Two of Singapore’s well-known piano pedagogues Rena Cheung and Nicholas Ong also unite for a grand performance of La Valse. 

All the pianists (in alphabetical order): Isabelle Agethen, Libby Chan, Rena Cheung, Max Choo, Elizabeth Michelle Heryawan, Nicholas Ho, Samuel King, Dorotheus Koh, Lukas Franklin Lai, Enzio Lim, Lim Wei Xuan, Liu Xiao Miao, Ng Xin Yee, Nguyen Phuc Bao Tien, Luther Ong, Nicholas Ong, Ong Weng Yee, Michelle Purnomo, Kevina Tenggara, Teo Wei Syuen, Rebekah Too & Kseniia Vokhmianina 

Saturday, 26 April 2025 

Victoria Concert Hall, 7 pm 

Tickets available at: 

https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/an-evening-with-ravel-tickets-1207461272169 

Now watch these great videos: 

Ivo Pogorelich 

playing Gaspard de la nuit: 

Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire 

playing La Valse:

FRENCH CINEMATIC ICONS: BOLLING AND BEYOND / Roberto Alvarez & Friends / Review

 

FRENCH CINEMATIC ICONS: 

BOLLING AND BEYOND 

Roberto Alvarez & Friends 

Alliance Francaise 

Sunday (10 November 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 12 November 2024 with the title "Music from movies showcases magical power of sound".

Music in movies have the capacity to touch and move, and very often the melodies are better remembered than the films themselves. As a prelude to the French Film Festival, Singapore Symphony Orchestra flautist Roberto Alvarez and his friends crafted a very attractive programme as a reminder of the magical power of sound. 

Does anybody remember the star-studded California Suite, for which the late Maggie Smith won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress? Arguably more memorable was French jazz composer and pianist Claude Bolling’s score, with its highly syncopated and catchy Main Title, with pianist Kseniia Vokhmianina obliged to jump through many hoops accompanying Alvarez’s silvery lines. 

Together with bassist Julian Li and percussionist Ramu Thiruyanam, this cosmopolitan quartet followed up with movements from Bolling’s Suite for Flute and Jazz Trio, his most often-heard work. The formally-trained Bolling was so adept in merging jazz and classical idioms that his fusion pieces are equally beloved by artists across the stylistic divide. 

Sentimentale is already an established classic, the flute’s legato passages well contrasted with the movement’s groovily rhythmic central section. The jig-like bantering of Fugace was in the form of a fugue, the tricky counterpoint of which J.S.Bach would have been proud. The easy swing of Irlandaise (Irish) would soon give way to frenetic pulse of Veloce, which closed the concert’s first half with stunning aplomb. 

While this music sounds easy to the ear, it is very difficult to pull off convincingly. The quartet was not just on top of their game, but also having great fun. 

The oldest piece on show was Camille Saint-Saens’s shimmering Aquarium from Carnival of the Animals, which made an appearance in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. 

Far more recent was the music of Yann Tiersen, whose La valse d’Amelie and Comptine dun autre ete, l’apres-midi in The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain had little to do with Ravel or Debussy, but more the drolleries of Erik Satie married with minimalism. 

Roberto played the piccolo in this piece.

From Ludovic Bource, George Valentin and Waltz for Peppy from The Artist had ragtime and dancehall influences, sounding as elegant and insouciant as French music could possibly be. Ramu tapping on wood blocks was a sight to behold. The ubiquitous Michel Legrand had to feature sometime, his bittersweet minor key melodies of Windmills of Your Mind (The Thomas Crown Affair) and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg being greeted with knowing approval. 

Photo: Chris P. Lim

A suite of movie melodies were thus paraded, from Alexandre Desplat’s Elisa’s Theme from The Shape of Water (a waltz of touching simplicity), Francis Lai’s A Man and A Woman (a swinger known only to people of a certain vintage) to Carlos D’Alessio’s End Credits to Delicatessen (appropriately cheerful for a black humour horror pic about cannibalism). 

Photo: Chris P. Lim

It was, however, back to Bolling that the fab four returned for an encore, the Love Theme from California Suite. That was simply charming.

Kseniia's daughter Aurelia joins
the quartet on stage for the final bows.

Photographs from PIANO EXTRAVAGANZA 2023

 

PIANO EXTRAVAGANZA 2023

Victoria Concert Hall

Saturday (22 April 2023)

So it finally happened! Piano Extravaganza 2023 took place at Victoria Concert Hall last Saturday and proved to be a feast of piano music, graced by the five of Singapore's finest young pianistic talents. Here are the photographs from that historic evening, proving that the global Covid pandemic could not stop good music, but merely delayed it. The event was dedicated to the memory of Vincent Chong, founder of MW School of Music, who presented the first Piano Extravaganza (2019) and the Young Virtuoso Recital Series before that.

Ukraine-born Kseniia Vokhmianina 
opened the evening with music by her
compatriots Kosenko and Skoryk, and Chopin.

B-L Piano Duo (Bertram Wee & Lynette Yeo)
give the Singapore premiere of
Nancarrow's Study No.7
as arranged by Thomas Ades.

Cherie Khor performed 
Quilter-Hough Now Sleeps The Crimson Petal
and Liszt's Dante Sonata.

Donald Law opened the second half
with Janacek's Sonata 1.X.1905
and Debussy's La plus que lente.

Two sides of V.Gryaznov's transcription of
Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe Suite No.2:
Lynette Yeo and...

... Bertram Wee.

Kseniia, Donald and Cherie
lap up 6-hands works by Rachmaninov:
the Romance and Waltz.
Note that Kseniia is now
dressed in Ukrainian colours!

Husband and wife play together for once!

Kelly Tang's Symphonic Suite
on a Set of Local Tunes
as arranged for 10-hands by Bertram Wee
received its World Premiere.

Young virtuosos, take a bow!

The pianists with H.E Ms Kateryna Zelenko,
ambassador of Ukraine to Singapore (seated).

A busy meet-and-greet
concluded the evening's event.

Two reviews of this concert 

can be found here:

pianomania: PIANO EXTRAVAGANZA 2023: Two Reviews from Singapore's Youngest Music Critics (pianofortephilia.blogspot.com)