VITALY PISARENKO Piano Recital / Review

 

VITALY PISARENKO Piano Recital

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (16 January 2026)

I must have been living in a parallel universe to learnt that this is London-based Ukrainian-Russian pianist Vitaly Pisarenko’s third recital in Singapore. How did I miss his first two, held in 2022 and 2023? Perhaps it was the haze of Covid-19 lifting, but am I grateful to have finally caught the 1st prizewinner of the 2008 Utrecht Liszt International Piano Competition, who also got the 3rd prize at the Leeds in 2015. I was even in Leeds that year, caught the eventual winner Anna Tsybuleva but had missed Vitaly completely.

Presented by Finger Waltz Music Productions, Pisarenko replicated the tandem of Schubert and Liszt of his 2022 recital. Opening with Schubert’s Four Impromptus (D.935 or Op.142), he showed the breadth and depth of his musicality. A singing tone was established from the first number in F minor, which opens with the exact same chordal notes as Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, and there was never a moment this extended essay felt like an exercise. The poetry continued in the “easier” A flat major Impromptu. Many students play this for their ABRSM exams, but how many actually capture its essence?

Photo: Finger Waltz

The variations of the B flat major piece were handled so musically that one forgot how technically difficult this actually is. The minor key variation was sonorous and poignant, and the prestidigitation that followed would have influenced the young Chopin and Schumann. The Hungarian-flavoured F minor final Impromptu, aided and abetted by Pisarenko’s mastery of scales closed the set on a high. One just wished the audience had not applauded between every single impromptu as this had disrupted the flow of the music.

Photo: Finger Waltz

The recital’s second half showed exactly why Pisarenko was awarded the coveted Liszt prize. Hyphenated Liszt was represented here by two kinds of transcriptions – one a literal note-for-note arrangement (more a conflation actually) and the other a free fantasy on operatic themes, sometimes called a paraphrase.

The orchestra’s glorious sonorities were captured in Liszt’s direct transcription of Wagner’s Tannhauser Overture. “Too many notes,” one might argue but that was exactly Liszt’s remit and Pisarenko’s thunderous account captured all of its glory. Beginning quietly with the Pilgrim’s Chorus, this soon built in volume and intensity, and then escalated to the freewheeling and carnal realms of Venusberg, before returning to reality with the biggest of bangs. 

Photo: Finger Waltz

This is hardly ever heard in Singapore (although one fondly remembers Kenneth Hamilton’s feverish account in 2007), simply because its too darned difficult to pull off. The only other time I had that “lump in the throat” was in Leeds, by another prizewinner Sung-Hoon Kim in 2006.

How poetic it was for Liszt to title his free fantasies or paraphrases on operatic themes as reminiscences, a recalling of popular melodies and moments from popular or obscure operas. Perhaps The best known is his totally vulgar Reminiscences de Don Juan (after Mozart), also called the Don Juan Fantasy. Reminiscences de Norma after Bellini’s bel canto opera is a far better piece, more subtle but no less virtuosic, revealing a more sophisticated kind of musician. 

Photo: Finger Waltz

Pisarenko is that kind of artist, for whom no technical challenge, however thorny or fiendish, ever fazes. More importantly, his art is not about banging out the notes but bringing out the music, and he did so without fear or apology. By the way, the programme notes mentions the aria Casta Diva, but nowhere in this reminiscence does this appear.

Photo: Finger Waltz

Pisarenko’s sole encore married both halves of the recital in a most poetic way possible, with the Schubert-Liszt Standchen (Serenade) from Schwanengesang. So beautiful, so refined and so sublime. One cannot wait for Pisarenko’s fourth recital in Singapore.

KHANH NHI LUONG PIANO RECITAL / Review

 

KHANH NHI LUONG Piano Recital 

Conservatory Concert Hall 

Tuesday (1 April 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 April 2025 with the title "Yong Siew Toh Conservatory alumnus Khanh Nhi Luong shows prize-winning chops".

A little history was made in September last year when Vietnamese pianist Khanh Nhi Luong became the first alumnus of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory to make the grand finals of a major international piano competition. The former student of Thomas Hecht, presently pursuing doctoral studies in Michigan, was awarded third prize at the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition. 

She pleased the audience by 
regarding Singapore as her second home.

Returning to Singapore for the first time since her graduation in 2019, she performed a hour-long recital elegantly dressed in a bright pink ao dai, the long traditional costume of her homeland. Opening the evening was Franz Schubert’s Sonata in A major (D.664), known as his “little” sonata in three movements as opposed to the monumental D.959 in four movements, also in the same key. 

Photo: Faezah Zulkifli

Straight off, she showed exactly why she had been so highly regarded by the competition jury. The sheer lyricism of the opening movement, likened to the freshness of a spring morning, came through most eloquently. 

She took a more expansive approach to its Allegro moderato, and without playing repeats, did not come across as short-winded. The simplicity of the central slow movement belied some inner tension and darkness, often redolent in the Austrian composer’s music. It was the finale where virtuoso chops were called for, and she delivered with free-flowing panache. 

Photo: Faezah Zulkifli

Next came what was likely the first Singapore performance of Bunches of Flowers of Vietnam by veteran Vietnamese composer Dang Huu Phuc (born 1953). This five-movement suite based on Vietnamese folk tunes freely used the pentatonic scale and often in imitation of traditional instruments. As with Claude Debussy’s Preludes, its titles were placed at the end of each piece. 

Multiple grace-notes littered the lively pages of Spring, meant to sound like the tinh tau, a plucked stringed instrument. Raindrop was a study in staccato, its gentle pitter-patter a test of rapid repeated note technique. Luong regarded Loving Look and Butterfly and Flower as love songs while the concluding Drums, expressing the joy of a harvest season, relived the percussive beats of Western composers like Bela Bartok and Alberto Ginastera, but with Oriental accents. 

Photo: Faezah Zulkifli

The evening’s tour de force came in 20th century French composer Henri Dutilleux’s Sonata (Op.1) from 1948, with which she had earlier impressed her audience in Leeds. The first movement had a jazzy rhythmic vibe which she positively reveled in, with curious blues harmonies placed when one least expected them. 

The second movement’s Lied held the solemnity of a slow march, one borne of grief which was interrupted by a brief central interlude conjuring up some mysterious dream-like state. The resumption of the procession was shattered by the finale’s mighty Choral et Variations, also the most performed movement of the sonata. 

Photo: Faezah Zulkifli

Luong let rip on the keyboard with stentorian chords and octaves, followed by four variations which will have suggested that Dutilleux might have been a great jazzman had he chosen that path. Her kaleidoscopic handling of its myriad shades and nuances, topped with a spectacularly splashy end, made this a performance – and recital - to remember.

Nhi meets with Albert Tiu and Ning An,
piano dons of the conservatory.

With the score of Dutilleux's Sonate.

MUSICAL MAGIC / ALIM BEISEMBAYEV Piano Recital / Review

 

MUSICAL MAGIC 

ALIM BEISEMBAYEV Piano Recital 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Friday (21 June 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 24 June 2024 with the title "Pianist Alim Beisembayev plays with sparkle and musicality".

International piano competitions churn out first prize-winners by the bucket-load every year, and it takes a rather special young musician to stand out from the crowd. The most recent first prize-winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition, 26-year-old Alim Beisembayev from Kazakhstan who won in 2021 has exactly that X-factor. 

The Impromptus of Franz Schubert are often played to death by bored students in exams, but in Beisembayev’s hands, they sparkled like gems. He chose the more demanding set of four from Op.142, and one was immediately struck by an innate sense of poetry and luscious layered sound. 

Exercises they are not, he reminded the listener time and again. The hymn-like Impromptu No.2 with its contrasted flowing central section, and the theme with tricky variations of Impromptu No.3 were all sensitively shaped. In the more technical Hungarian-flavoured Impromptu No.4, its vital element of rhythmic dance came to the fore. 

For Claude Debussy’s Second Book of Images, which is less often heard, Beisembayev’s deft use of pedalling ensured that the bell sonorities of Cloches a travers les feuilles (Bells Through The Leaves) rang with utmost clarity amid accompanying background rustles. 

In Et la lune descend sur temple le qui fut (And the Moon Sets Over the Temple That Was), the spectral mysteries of the Orient were vividly evoked. Poissons d’or (Gold Fish) may have been inspired by Japanese prints, but the shimmering hues were not seen through indoor fishbowls but the vastness of an ocean with high surging waves. 

The height of disrespect.
Some boomer uncle checking his social media.
The very definition of pearls before swine.

And who was not waiting for Frederic Chopin’s 12 Etudes from Op.25? Any disappointment caused by these delicious finger-twisters being expunged from Korean pianist Yunchan Lim’s recital on 28 June was more than made up by Beisembayev’s memorable account. 

For him, these studies were no longer technical exercises calculated to excite and thrill, but rather exquisite miniature tone poems. There is not a single unmusical bone in his body. When faced with his interpretations, one does not exclaim “how difficult this is” but rather “how beautiful it all sounds”. 

The wind-caressed arpeggios in A flat major (Etude No.1), rapid syncopations in A minor (No.3), treacherous thirds in G sharp minor (No.6) and stampeding octaves in B minor (No.10) all become mere means to a musical end. Through these, mellifluous voices emerge, not least in the lyrical central section of the “Wrong Note” Etude No.5 in E minor. 

The tempestuous “Winter Wind” (No.11) and storm-tossed “Ocean” (No.12) were impressive in generating volume, but most heartrending of all was the simple cello-like melody of the C sharp Etude (No.7) being transformed into a tragedy of epic proportions. 

Beisembayev’s superb encores of Serge Rachmaninov’s Prelude in G major (Op.32 No.5) and Franz Liszt’s Transcendental Etude No.10 in F minor were in the same spirit: an ultimate triumph of musicality over facility.

CD Review (The Straits Times, June 2019)

BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No.4

CHOPIN Sonata No.2 / Ballade No.4

ERIC LU, Piano

Hallé Orchestra / Edward Gardner

Warner Classics 0190295552152 / ****1/2

When 20-year-old Eric Lu was awarded 1^st prize at the 2018 Leeds International Piano Competition, he became the first-ever ethnic Chinese pianist to do so, and the first American to win the Leeds since Murray Perahia in 1972. Lu’s debut CD recording, a useful calling card, comprises  performances from the heat of competition. While without the absolute perfection of recording studio sessions, these are very good live readings of popular works that can fully withstand repeated listens. 

Chopin’s Fourth Ballade builds up majestically to an impassioned climax, and unwinds with a fiery coda which simply sizzles. Equally trenchant is Lu’s view of Chopin’s Second Sonata, also known as the “Funeral March” Sonata. He never lets the tension sag, even in the eponymous slow movement, where true pathos comes out poignantly.  

One cannot imagine Lu to have performed Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto in G major many times prior to this, but he already sounds like a seasoned veteran alongside the Hallé Orchestra. The piano’s opening solo chords are taken deliberately but with a clear sense of purpose, and the barnstorming outer movements are robustly held together. The conversation with orchestral strings in the “Orpheus taming the Furies” episode of the slow movement is rapt, little wonder he was voted to win the Orchestra Prize outright.  

Eric Lu replaces an indisposed Martha Argerich at the Singapore Symphony Orchestra concert at Esplanade on Friday evening (7 June 2019), performing Chopin’s First Piano Concerto. Try not to miss this.

People Watching at the LEEDS INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION 2018 in SINGAPORE

Official programme for the
First Round of The Leeds

The roster of 11 pianists
performing in Singapore.

A segment of the audience attending the piano competition.
The indefatigable Mr Chua (who attends every concert
there is to attend in Singapore) sits near the front.

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory's
ever-busy piano technician Eddie Ho at work.
The Steinway grand piano sounded
wonderful throughout. 

Kseniia Vokhmianina with her
long-time teacher at NAFA, Boris Kraljevic 

Yoh Hao Zi plays big sister to
the 5-year-old daughter of
Nicholas Ong & Kim Bo Kyung.

Clarence Lee with his last teacher
at YST Conservatory, Albert Tiu.

Clarence Lee with his teacher from childhood,
Winnie Tay (right) with Angelena Aw.

Clarence Lee meets with his young fans.

Without them, there would be no functional pianos:
Eddie Ho with Thomas Hubsch, who is on
the Leeds competition piano jury.

Meeting two giants of the piano,
jury members Noriko Ogawa and Ilana Vered.
In 1981, Vered played Brahms' Piano Concerto No.2
with the SSO, my first ever "live" experience of the work.
Noriko Ogawa as also one of the first pianists I
interviewed as Editor of the SSO newsletter,
and performed at the Singapore International
Piano Festival when I was Artistic Director.

LUNCH WITH DAME FANNY WATERMAN, Founder of the Leeds International Piano Competition

LUNCH WITH DAME FANNY WATERMAN

This Sunday (8 April 2018), the Leeds International Piano Competition comes to Singapore! More specifically, part of the First Round of one of the world's most prestigious piano musicians is being held right at our doorstep in the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music. 

For the first time in its 55-year history, the competition has decentralised its opening round, with 68 young pianists performing a 25 to 30-minute programme in three cities, Berlin Singapore and New York City. 24 of them will be selected by a travelling jury to compete in the Second Round in September, in Leeds itself.

With this in mind, I fondly recollect a very pleasant lunch and afternoon spent in the presence of the founder of “The Leeds”, DAME FANNY WATERMAN, at her home in August 2015. The last competition (won by Anna Tsybuleva) had completed its First Round, and on its rest day, members of the jury and assorted foreign visitors to “The Leeds” were invited to Chez Fanny's for lunch. Forgoing original plans to visit Harewood House, this was an invitation too hard to resist. Together with Helen Lee, the pianist wife of jury member Tong Il Han, we made it by taxi to Dame Fanny Waterman's house in a posh district in north Leeds.  

Much like the way the competition is run, Dame Fanny was a host unlike any other. We were met at the door by a butler, and ushered into the presence of the Dame herself. She gave a warm welcome and had us put our bric-a-brac (mostly umbrellas, as it had been raining) in the smallest room on the ground floor. 

That must have been the most interesting washroom I had ever stepped into, with framed historic photographs, personal effects and newspaper articles lining the walls, a veritable history of Dame Fanny's illustrious musical career and the competition itself. Directly above the WC was an article entitled “Lifting the lid on the Leeds”. One wondered if that wry bit of humour was intentional. Before long, we had to leave as French pianist and jury member Anne Queffélec discreetly requested the use of the facility.

Next, the room everybody remembers is the spacious and comfortable living room with the two grand pianos, and enough furniture to house a party. There are more framed photographs of family, friends and pianists including Radu Lupu (winner of The Leeds in 1969) and Lang Lang (Ambassador of the competition). Placed strategically on a small coffee table was Dame Fanny's recently published autobiography “My Life In Music”(published by Faber Music) which was having its official launch in a few days' time. By now a small crowd had gathered. There were introductions aplenty and much small talk before lunch was announced.

Anne Queffélec with Eleanor Wong,
and a visitor from Los Angeles in between.

All then adjourned to the dining room where a small but sumptuous spread awaited. Dame Fanny made sure everybody had their share before helping herself. Butlers were on hand to serve the spirits, mineral water and of course that most British of institutions, tea. 

Tête a tête between
Anne Queffélec and Robert McDonald.

Lunch was consumed informally back in the living room where the 95-year-old but sprightly Dame became the centre of attention. She brought out her book, from which excerpts and anecdotes were read. American pianist and jury member Robert McDonald, he of Juilliard and with a most distinguished baritone voice, volunteered to read from the chapter of the Dame's collected jokes.

Robert McDonald aloud reads a sample of
Dame Fanny's collected anecdotes.

The biography is a surprisingly thin volume despite Dame Fanny's many, many years of experience of teaching, judging and organising competitions since 1963, the first edition of The Leeds. If brevity and being succinct were virtues, she would be guilty of these, by far better than tomes that ramble on and on (the late Earl Wild comes to mind). Nonetheless, it made one want to rush out and buy a copy.

Visitors then took their turns to pay tribute, starting with Korean pianist and juror Tong Il Han who thanked her for giving the world “The Leeds” and for making it a great institution. Russian pianist and juror Nikolai Demidenko spoke about musical personalities in his lifetime, and described Maria Yudina as having a “personality the size of a planet”. Needless to say, Dame Fanny was in similarly exalted company. 

Both of them also took turns to play on her Steinway grand. Han tinkled on variations on Happy Birthday while Helen turned the pages. Demidenko gave a mini-recital with a selection of Chopin Mazurkas, Schubert and a most intriguing cadenza for the 1^st movement of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto. “Do you know it?”, he asked before replying, “Its by Medtner, and you can find it in the Petrucci online score library!?

I had my turn to sit with the Dame, and asked what her plans were after stepping down from the helm of the competition. This was to be her last competition, and Paul Lewis and Adam Gatehouse had been named as her successors as Chairpersons for the 2018 competition. I had asked her a similar question in 2006 (when I was last in Leeds), and her blunt reply then was, “I have plans, but I'm not telling you!” 

This time, she revealed that her long-term mission was to bring more young people to attend concerts. “We are fighting a battle for the future of classical music,” she said with a missionary zeal, hinting that was to become more of a religious crusade. Noting the number of silver-haired people attending the competition (I was among the youngest), I could not help but agree.

At the announcement of the First Round result the day before, she had profusely thanked the participating pianists for “choosing to come to The Leeds”. Many years ago, it would have been a dream and privilege of all pianists to be chosen by the Leeds to perform. The statement alone suggested a perceived decline in stature of the competition, and that was borne out by the fact that only 59 of the chosen 80 or so pianists had bothered to show up to perform in 2015. Absenteeism accounted for a quarter of the pianists invited. Tough times loomed ahead for the competition.

She was deep in thought, and could be excused for her candour when letting out that things were not going too smoothly in the organisation either. She spoke of less-than-polite e-mail exchanges and wistfully lamented, “We used to be such a happy family...” She was probably remembering her old team of Marion Thorpe, her late husband Dr Geoffrey de Keyser, Lord Boyle and others whom she had long outlived.

It was already late in the afternoon and all but one of the visitors had left. I was the very last one, but Dame Fanny Waterman was still up and about. I was reminded to sign her visitors' book, and a few pages before my entry was that of a certain Lang Lang (above) which read, “You are the best!”. At no point did she excuse herself to retire. An ever-attentive host, with long-serving personal assistant Karin Pfautsch by her side, she stayed till the very end, seeing me to the door with a friendly wave when my taxi eventually arrived. It was dusk and the air was damp, but my memory of that afternoon will never leave me. As they say, “There is nothing like a dame”.