SIBBI BERNHARDSSON Violin Recital / Review

 

SIBBI BERNHARDSSON Violin Recital

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Tuesday (13 January 2026)

Imagine a concert of works by composers whom I had never heard of. That was the first half of a solo violin recital by Icelandic violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson. He was for 17 years the second violinist of the USA-based Pacifica Quartet, well-known for its recordings of 20th century and contemporary string quartet repertoire. He is now a faculty member of Oberlin Conservatory, Ohio where he was an alumnus.

Sibbi Bernhardsson spoke briefly
about all the works.

A very attentive audience caught all of his notes.

His recital was centred on works by Icelandic composers and American composers based in Ohio. For a small but privileged Singaporean audience, there were even two world premiere performances. The first was Finnur Karlsson’s Dalalæða (translating loosely as "light"), a four-movement suite performed without break. On A Gravel Road was minimalist and gritty, built on an ostinato of repeated notes. The influence of folk music may be discerned, and there was lyricism in Waltz, while in Valley Mist, double-stopping and hints of haunting melody wafted in and out, before A Merchant Alone closed quietly and ethereally.

The other world premiere was Una Sveinbjarnardottir’s Kaer which involved outtakes of breath at the beginning and end, as well as strategic places in the score for dramatic effect. The music operated in the highest registers of the violin and also explored harmonics, besides in engaging in Paganinian exercises. This work was dedicated to Bernhardsson’s mother.

Extended techniques were heavily involved in this recital, of which Bernhardsson proved to be a true master as well as persuasive advocate. Tryggvi Baldvinsson’s And the Silence – in memory of a poet involved silent bowings which later coalesced into diminutive sounds. Absolute quiet from the audience had to be exercised to catch these moments. There was an element of call and response, where utterances provoked a reply of some sort. I am reminded somewhat of Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question, the replies gradually building up to something epic and full-blooded, before receding into silence. Bernhardsson described this work as a requiem.

The fourth Icelander, Þorkell Sigurbjornsson (1938-2013), a prolific and pioneer of contemporary Icelandic music, happens to be Bernhardsson’s uncle. His More Steps alternated opening pizzicatos with fast virtuosic etude-like passages, the sort virtuoso violinists are wont to practise and overcome. Maybe he had foretold high hopes of a nephew reaching Parnassus by becoming such an instrumentalist.

The two American composers featured were Jeffrey Mumford and Stephen Hartke. Mumford’s an expanding distance of multiple voices comprised five continuous movements, opening with Estatico e molto appassionato, with descriptions matching to a tee what was actually being played. Emotionally charged, the music scaled peaks and pored troughs before closing with Maestoso, and a series of pizzicatos. Hartke’s Caoine comes from the Irish word for cry, and channels folk fiddling from the Emerald Isle with a folk melody yearning to come out.

The shorter second half of Bernhardsson’s recital featured one very familiar name, Johannes Brahms. Make that two, as Singaporean pianist Lim Yan was his partner in Brahms’s Violin Sonata No.2 in A major (Op.100). This music sang and soared through its three lyrical movements, and let it not be said that a specialist in contemporary music cannot also thrive in traditional and mainstream classical music. As much as the first half was a discovery of new sounds, the second half was a reunion of old friends. That is, simply, the joy of chamber music at its purest.

SUTD LUNCHTIME PERFORMANCES: PIANO FIESTA November 2025 Edition

The Lang Lang grand piano, gifted to 50 public institutions in 2015 as part of the SG50 celebrations, has been particularly busy at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). It is an omnipresent fixture at SUTD's Lunchtime Performances, which takes places on Wednesday afternoons during term time. Piano Fiesta is the mini-piano festival organised by Professor Lim Seh Chun featuring faculty performers as well as guest players. This month's edition on 19 November 2025 was graced by two former artistic directors of the Singapore International Piano Festival, no less. Here are the photos of another hour of piano classics.

Professor Lim Seh Chun introduces the
lunchtime performance series.

Lim Yan performed three Rachmaninov Preludes,
Op.23 Nos.1,3 & 5.

SUTD lecturer Jer-Ming Chen
explains his performance.

Arvo Part's Fur Alina followed by
Jer-Ming own response and improvisation.

There are two Scriabin Etudes being performed
this afternoon, and I'm playing the easier one.

Scriabin's Etude Op.2 No.1 followed by
Mozart's Fantasy in D minor K.397.

SUTD Lecturer Melissa Tu
waxes lyrical about Chopin's Ballades.

The other Scriabin Etude
in C sharp minor, Op.42 No.5

Chopin's Ballade No.2 in F major Op.38

We get to take home some fine tea.

Kee Kirk Chin makes up the original TBM
(Three Bald Men), soon to make their debut.

Now its FBM or 3 and 1/2 BM.
Lim Yan, you'll soon get there!

31ST SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO FESTIVAL: KATE LIU Piano Recital / Review

 

31ST SINGAPORE 

INTERNATIONAL PIANO FESTIVAL:

KATE LIU IN RECITAL

Victoria Concert Hall

Thursday (26 June 2025)

This year marks Lim Yan’s final year as Artistic Director of the Singapore International Piano Festival. The Singaporean concert pianist’s tenure began in 2019 but was disrupted by Covid in 2020. Performances resumed in 2021 with an all-local cast of pianists, before the return of international travel led to the festival as we know it. The passing of long-time piano technician Walter Haass in 2024 was a shock, and his 29-year run as resident piano wizard is unlikely to be surpassed. The baton (or keys to the Steinway) has been passed to Albert Tiu and his roster of pianists for 2026 have been named (go check the festival booklet!).

The 31st festival’s curtain-raiser was Singapore-born American pianist Kate Liu, 3rd prizewinner at the 2015 Chopin International Piano Competition. Opening her recital with proper Sturm und Drang was Mozart’s Sonata in A minor (K.310), one of two sonatas in the minor key. She injected an urgency to its stormy first movement without sacrificing beauty of sound. Pedaling was exemplary with no textures being smudged, and this continued well into the elegant slow movement. The finale’s Presto sizzled and caught fire without its fast pacing blurring the lines.

Some may not favour Mozart with a Romantic outlook but Liu’s view of Brahms’ Four Ballades (Op.10) might well be unimpeachable. Beauty of sound was prized, especially the voicing of its intriguing harmonies. Whether these essays were inspired by literary sources is immaterial, but their A-B-A form were opportunities for stark contrasts which she exploited to the fullest. 

Photo: Clive Choo

The opening D minor “Edward” ballade matched sobriety with violence, for example, and when the music returned to each A section, a transformation of sorts would have taken place. Nothing is ever the same again. Liu’s keen musicianship makes you listen to these details and marvel. The final and longest B major ballade, had an extended close, bringing the half to a satisfying end.

Like the late great Fou Ts’ong in 1955, Liu was the winner of the Mazurka Prize in Warsaw sixty years later, and it is not a big surprise. Her inimitable way with Chopin’s Four Mazurkas (Op.30), a poignant combo of melancholy and exultation, steady pacing and rubato, made these Polish dances the evening’s true highlight. Schumann referred to these nationalistic miniatures as “cannons and flowers”, and Liu understood every bit of that ethos.

Chopin Sonata No.2 in B flat minor (Op.35), the Funeral March Sonata, came on without break from the last Mazurka, and Liu reaped the whirlwind. Schumann, again, called it “Chopin’s four most unruly children housed under the same roof”. The opening movement was passionate and full-blooded, and she observed the exposition repeat including the declamatory opening four bars marked Grave. The Scherzo was no less trenchant, with impetuosity balanced with sheer lyricism in the Trio section. The eponymous Marche funebre took an epic turn, its rumbling procession building up to a head of steam before easing to lilting beauty in D flat major. The brief finale came like a shock, the proverbial cold wind over a graveyard sweeping through under two minutes, the marvel being Liu’s unwavering evenness on both hands.

Strange as it may seem, this is a comparatively rare performance of the Funeral March Sonata in 31 years of the piano festival, the Third Sonata (Op.58) being performed many more times. Liu’s sole encore was simplicity and purity wrapped up in two minutes, the first piece (Im ruhigen Tempo) from Schumann’s Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn, Op.133). Just sublime.

KAM-HARWOOD-LIM TRIO / Review

KAM-HARWOOD-LIM TRIO

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Friday (6 October 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 October 2023 with the title "From death to sunshine in a night".

 

Lovers of chamber music have never had it so good. In recent months, they were treated to excellent concerts by the T’ang and Concordia Quartets, More Than Music duo and Yong Siew Toh Conservatory’s “million dollar” piano quintet. Now meet the piano trio formed by London-based Singaporean violinist Kam Ning, British cellist Richard Harwood and Britain-trained Singaporean pianist Lim Yan in a programme that traced the history of the piano trio medium.

 

Joseph Haydn was the “father of the piano trio”, having composed as many as 45 piano trios. Of these, only one is performed with any frequency, his Piano Trio in G major (Hob.XV:25) published in 1795. Opening the concert, a more congenial work would be hard to find, one oozing salon charm from every pore. As with such early trios, the keyboardist was the acknowledged leader, with string players providing the accompaniment.  

 

While Kam’s violin had some pretty melodies to mull over, spare a thought for Harwood’s cello, whose role was to play the perfect sidekick to his partners. Even in the Rondo all’Ongarese, popularly known as the Gypsy Rondo, it was Lim’s piano which dominated, overseeing the abrupt shifts in tempos and modes which made for an enjoyable ride.

 

All this was turned upon its head in Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No.2 in E minor (Op.67), where Harwood was obliged to open with harmonics, effecting tinnitus in excruciating high registers. This wartime work, premiered in 1944, made for uneasy listening because of its grim countenance. Grating dissonances, bare octaves and insistently hammering rhythms were par for the course, the aural equivalent of treading barefooted on broken glass.

Photo: Michael Huang

 

The piano was now an instrument of percussion, content with issuing beats over which strings ran riot, culminating in the second movement’s demented fast waltz. The slow third movement was typical Shostakovich, a passacaglia with long-held piano chords establishing a funereal and plodding pace for short variations to unfold.

Photo: Michael Huang

 

This led into the finale’s infamous “dance of death”, centered on a Jewish tune which once heard, would be an earworm for the ages. A vision of the Holocaust, with Jews led to their graves by a village band, is the chilling and abiding memory evoked by this music.

 

The trio gave a take-no-prisoners performance, and the audience held its breath for a few moments after its subdued close before erupting in loud applause. They had been compelled to understand what the music meant.

 

As dark and sobering as the first half closed, the second half was lit by the sunshine of Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No.1 in D minor (Op.49), likely the most performed of piano trios in Singapore. Its sheer likeability has to do with the Biedermeier years of 1839, where a cult of beauty was prized over mundane reality.

 

The Kam-Harwood-Lim trio made every movement a veritable song without words, besides letting rip with the early Romantic era’s trademarked prestidigitation. This chamber concert with marked contrasts had to close on a cheerful and optimistic note.  

It is chilling to think that just one day after this concert, the Jews of Israel were subject to a second Holocaust by the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas. Hundreds of innocents attending a peace concert in Israel were marched to their deaths and slaughtered, and many others murdered in their homes. It appears that "people who forget the past are doomed to repeat it" (George Santayana).

RIPPLES / Mervyn Lee Piano Recital / Joey Lau Violin Recital / Review

RIPPLES

MERVYN LEE, Piano Recital

JOEY LAU, Violin Recital

with Lim Yan, Piano

Esplanade Recital Studio

Friday & Saturday 

(11 & 12 August 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 August 2023 with the title "Thought-provoking recitals by musical talent".

 

The Kris Foundation, founded by local philanthropist and music-lover Kris Tan, has been presenting concerts showcasing young Singaporean and Singapore-based musical talents since 2009. The roster of artists in its annual series of solo and chamber recitals now reads like a Who’s Who of the classical music scene, including violinists Alan Choo, Loh Jun Hong and Yang Shuxiang, pianists Abigail Sin and Azariah Tan, and harpist Laura Peh.

 

Pianist Mervyn Lee, who also performs harpsichord, viola da gamba and guitar in Red Dot Baroque, looks set to join this pantheon. His intellectually satisfying and demanding solo recital was the perfect showcase of breadth and depth. The two major works included Beethoven’s late Piano Sonata No.28 in A major (Op.101), which was Romantically inflected in his voicing of the opening movement’s main theme. Contrasts were sharply drawn for the second movement’s brisk march, before culminating with the finale’s triumphant play of counterpoint.   

 

Equally trenchant was Bartok’s Out Of Doors, a five-movement suite juxtaposing raw percussive violence with unusually lyrical asides. Most strikingly, its fourth movement entitled The Night’s Music was a inimitable study of silence punctuated by sounds of twittering insects and a nightingale’s call. All this tied in poetically with two selections from Spanish composer Enrique Granados’ Goyescas, displaying yearning in The Maiden and the Nightingale and rhythmic vigour in Fandango by Moonlight. The dance element was also mirrored in two swift Scarlatti Sonatas (K.396 & 427), which were dispatched with mercurial wit and panache.

 

Receiving its world premiere was young Singaporean composer Lim Kang Ning’s All The Bells At Once, a dreamily sonorous work that played on lingering single notes and varied intervals with  intendant resonances and echoes. One was reminded of piano pieces by two late great composers, the Hungarian Gyorgy Ligeti and Australian Peter Sculthorpe, the latter well-known for Asian and Aboriginal influences in his music.

 

On the following evening, Lim’s Memories Of A Daffodil for solo violin was premiered by violinist Joey Lau, who is presently pursuing post-graduate studies in Chicago. A shorter work, it opened with a long lyrical line, possibly of Chinese idiom, later roused into animation before being abruptly cut short. This might be a reflection on the transience of life, later echoed in the recital’s final work.

 

Her other solo was Eugene Ysaye’s Sonata (Op.27 No.3) or Ballade, encompassing a formidable arsenal of technical tricks and thrills which she duly delivered. Lau's acute sense of singing lines, by contrast, found just the right response in Prokofiev's Five Melodies (Op.35bis), originally written for wordless high voice, now partnered with pianist Lim Yan.

 

Both violinist and pianist were taxed to the max in two substantial sonatas. Beethoven’s early Sonata in E flat major (Op.12 No.3) offered an imperious show of virtuosity in its outer movements. In between, serenity and equanamity reigned in the slow movement. This sequence was repeated in Frenchman Francis Poulenc’s Violin Sonata, where seemingly whimsical and uproarious melodies belied something more sombre. Humour and wit were in long supply, but its finale turned to elegiac tones before closing on a total downer.

 

Read the well-written notes (by Lau herself), and one learns that the sonata was dedicated to the memory of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, murdered by fascists in the prime of his life. Whether musing on swooning nightingales or dying daffodils, these thought-provoking recitals show three young musical talents - pianist Mervyn Lee, violinist Joey Lau and composer Lim Kang Ning - to be prime prospects for Singapore’s musical future.  

For the record, the encores performed on both evenings were as follows:

11 August 2023 (Mervyn Lee)

TELEMANN Fantasy in G minor

SCRIABIN Poem in F sharp major, Op.32 No.1

12 August 2023 (Joey Lau and Lim Yan)

FAURE Apres un reve

DRIGO-HEIFETZ Valse Bluette