SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION 2025: GRAND FINAL / Review

 

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

PIANO COMPETITION 2025 

GRAND FINAL 

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall 

Sunday (19 January 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 January 2025 with the title "Singapore International Piano Competition levels up with stellar global competitors".

It is a strange but true fact that there has not been a major international piano competition in Singapore since the Rolex International Piano Competition in 1989. The Singapore International Piano Competition, now in its fifth edition, has been operating under the radar for the past few years, organised by the China-based Global International Musicians Association (GIMA) which has otherwise no imprint here. 

Jury members included
Xiaohan Wang (Artistic Director), Danwen Wei,
Adam Gatehouse, Piers Lane, Gesa Luecker,
Noriko Ogawa, Katarzyna Popova-Zydron
& Albert Tiu.

The competition, however, took a massive leap this year by attracting an international cast of young pianists, judged over multiple rounds by an august international jury (comprising well-known concert pianists and pedagogues) and culminating in a final concerto round with a full symphony orchestra. Judging by the playing in earlier rounds, the standard has never been higher, with 20 pianists from ten Asian and European nations whittled down to just three for the final showdown. 

The Metropolitan Festival Orchestra conducted by Chan Tze Law did the accompanying and the final outcome was nothing less than satisfactory. For someone as young as Leyu Xu from China, at 16 and the most junior competitor, it must have been a daunting task. 

Her nerves mostly served her well in Sergei Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, where she matched the orchestra blow-for-blow. Overcoming the most technically difficult variations with relative ease, the chordal climax of the famous 18th Variation became the glorious pinnacle of her performance. Momentary desynchronisations with the orchestra near the final hurdle threatened to derail the proceedings but she held up well to the end. 

Quite unusually, there were two performances of Sergei Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto in G minor (Op.16). This is regularly essayed in high level piano competitions but not often heard in concert because of its ferocious technical demands. That competition warhorses, Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s First and Rachmaninov’s Second and Third Concertos, had been expunged from the prescribed repertoire might have also explained this anomaly. 

Already a seasoned soloist, 26-year-old Russian Philipp Lynov provided the requisite Slavic brooding for the opening slow movement. The gigantic cadenza which entered most surreptitiously was gradually built up with ever-escalating intensity to its monstrous climax of sweeping arpeggios and crashing chords. 

The machine-gun rattling in the Scherzo and myriad grotesqueries of the Intermezzo were very well negotiated before the finale’s tempestuous onslaught of percussive violence. 

This would have been the winning performance if not for 20-year-old Tianyou Li from China replicating the same heroics but in a more nuanced reading which better contrasted darkness and the light of day. 

While Lynov focused fully on the unremitting tragedy, Li’s performance was one that provided glimmers of hope amid a cataclysm. It was this hope that made the difference. And it also helped that the orchestra was performing the concerto for a second time in the evening, hence a better-oiled outing. 

The jury voted to award third place to Xu, second to Lynov and the crowning first to Li, who also won the prize for the best performance of J.S.Bach. A very bright musical future beckons.

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION 2025 TAKES PLACE THIS WEEK!

 

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

PIANO COMPETITION 2025 

Believe it or not, the first significant international piano competition in Singapore since the Rolex Piano Competition in 1989 is finally taking place. 

The little-publicised Singapore International Piano Competiton, organised by China-based Global International Musicians Association (GIMA) and now in its 6th edition, takes place this week. 

Wang Xiao Han, a Cliburn laureate
is the Artistic Director of the competition.

Featuring an international cast of competitors and international jury, this is the first edition which involves a professional symphony orchestra accompanying three finalists in complete concerto performances, which makes it rather special. 

Xu Leyu, who is now 16,
is one of 20 participants.
(Picture taken in 2019)

The 20 selected participants come from China (6), South Korea (4), Taiwan (2), Poland (2) and one each from Japan, Russia, Ukraine, Israel/USA, Hungary and Italy. The top prize is USD 30,000 and includes a concert tour in Asia.

The Preliminary and Semi-Final rounds take place at the School of the Arts (SOTA) Concert Hall from 14 to 17 January while the Grand Final on Sunday at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory on Sunday 19 January. 

Preliminaries on Tuesday (14 January), Wednesday (15 January) at SOTA Concert Hall featuring solo repertoire up to 45 minutes 

Entry for the Preliminary round is FREE 

by registration at SISTIC:

https://www.sistic.com.sg/events/lite_2025sipcpreliminary 

Semi-Finals on Thursday (16 January) 

and Friday (17 January) at SOTA Concert Hall 

featuring solo repertoire up to 60 minutes and a major violin sonata (choice of Brahms Op.108, Cesar Franck and Richard Strauss) and encore (choice of Paganini, Elgar or Kreisler) with Chinese violinist Ning Feng 

Tickets for the Semi-finals ($30) 

available at SISTIC:

https://www.sistic.com.sg/events/lite_2025sipcsemifinal 

The Metropolitan Festival Orchestra
led by Chan Tze Law
partners the three finalists.

Grand Final on Sunday (19 January) 

at Yong Siew Toh Concert Hall 

with the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra 

conducted by Chan Tze Law 

featuring a major piano concerto by Mozart (Nos.20, 22 & 25), Beethoven (Nos.4 & 5), Chopin Nos.1 & 2), Schumann (A minor), Brahms (Nos.1 & 2), Rachmaninov (Nos.1, 4 & Paganini Rhapsody), Ravel (G major) and Prokofiev (No.2). 

Tickets for the Final ($30) 

available at SISTIC:

https://www.sistic.com.sg/events/lite_2025sipcfinal 

Do not miss this rare and special event!

MOVEMENTS IN TIME: ARTWORKS FROM THE NATIONAL GALLERY / Metropolitan Festival Orchestra / Review

MOVEMENTS IN TIME
ARTWORKS FROM
THE NATIONAL GALLERY
Metropolitan Festival Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Saturday (24 June 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 June 2023 with the title "Kelly Tang's new work lights up classical scene".

It is a well-known fact that Singaporean composers do not often get commissions to write substantial works of music. Other than the Singapore Chinese Orchestra which has an ongoing composer-in-residence programme, no major musical organisations here commissions major new works with any regularity. Token gestures just will not do.  

The Music Commissioning Series
was the brainchild of Michael Tay.

 

This is set to change with the new Music Commissioning Series initiated by the Foundation for The Arts and Social Enterprise founded by Michael Tay, Singapore’s former ambassador to the Russian Federation. The Foundation’s first commission was Movements In Time: Artworks From The National Gallery by Cultural Medallion recipient Kelly Tang. Delayed by the pandemic and hindered by the composer’s debilitating stroke, the work finally received its world premiere by the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra conducted by Chan Tze Law.

Conceived as an orchestral suite of seven movements, the 35-minute work was inspired by artworks including paintings, prints and a sculpture by five Singaporean visual artists. Similarities to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition were minimal, as Tang’s pieces were more substantial, some of which may be performed as separate works on their own.

 

With the brief opening Fanfare, dominated by brass, Tang crafted something akin to a film theme, quasi-heroic while nailing his colours to the mast. His idiom was highly accessible, slickly crafted but without leaving his comfort zone. The first artwork, The Idealist, was based on Chua Mia Tee’s famous Epic Poem of Malaya (1955), depicting a standing speaker and his rabble-rousing oration. There was a Socialist-Realist feel, predictably patriotic in character about it.

 

Quite different was Mystery, inspired by Simryn Gill’s Standing Still #28 (2000-2003), a chromatogenic print depicting dereliction and urban decay. Its cautiously traipsing steps suggested something sinister afoot, possessing a similar unease as Mahler’s single-movement Piano Quartet. Following a short Interlude was Contemplation, an oasis for strings which reflected upon Eng Tow’s Bowls (1979). This eminently repeatable movement also included a slightly agitated central fugal section before closing with solo trumpet and solace in G major.

 

The most dissonant movement was Enigma, after Han Sai Por’s Extinction Series 12 (2009), with its tension ratcheted to a martial high before a haunting balm with solo flute and harp to conclude. The final Dance, inspired by Voices of the Soul (undated) in batik by Tzee (Sakarsi Said), celebrated with ethnic clapping rhythms which provided for a suitably festive ending. The ensuing ovation also saw its last pages encored by the orchestra.

 

Over the next ten years, it is hoped that the Series sees that rarest of Singapore’s musical entities – the symphony – be further explored. Tan Chan Boon’s six symphonies await to be premiered, while the late Leong Yoon Pin’s two symphonies are ripe for re-assessments. The splendid Metropolitan Festival Orchestra under conductor Chan are just the people to do it.

 

The concert opened with the first recipient of the Foundation’s Prodigy Fund, 11-year-old Mikkel Myer Lee performing a short Chopin programme including the Third Ballade and a selection of Preludes (Op.28). He was excellent. 

This was followed by a documentary film about the recording of Russian composer Vladimir Martynov’s Utopia Symphony (formerly titled Singapore: A Geopolitical Utopia), commissioned by Tay in 2004, by the London Philharmonic Orchestra at London’s Abbey Road Studios in 2019. The classical music scene in Singapore has received the biggest boost in years, and long may this continue

Conductor Chan Tze Law
holds aloft the score of Kelly Tang's
Movements in Time.

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS / Metropolitan Festival Orchestra / Review

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: A MUSICAL AFFAIR

Metropolitan Festival Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (3 September 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 September 2017 with the title "Brief but fruitful musical encounter".

The title of this concert was probably derived from the David Lean-directed black-and-white movie Brief Encounter of 1945 where Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto featured prominently in its soundtrack. It however accurately describes the musical collaboration between musicians from Singapore and Austria in this concert, organised by local non-profit organisation Global Cultural Alliance.

Its first half featured the popular Rachmaninov concerto with young Singaporean pianist Li Churen in the demanding solo role. From the intent and demeanour of its opening chords on the Bösendorfer Imperial Grand, one could tell the confident and self-assured Li was going to put her personal stamp on the old warhorse. And it was not to be a self-indulgent spiel, but a totally musical affair where the music came first.

She comfortably surmounted its striding arpeggios, heavy octaves and tricky fingerwork, ably abetted by the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra conducted by Chan Tze Law. It was towards the slow movement's close, with just strings accompanied her passionate chords, which provided the concerto's most heartrending moments. Even when she took liberties in stretching out the final cadenza, it was the blazing conclusion that elicited the longest applause.

The second half was almost double the length of the first, and it featured the 60-strong Chorus Sine Nomine from Austria with the same orchestra conducted by Johannes Hiematsberger. The main work on show was Schubert's Mass No.6 in E flat major (D. 950), composed in the final year of his all-too-brief life.  

The choir's size and experience of its singers (it is not a youth choir) ensured that the widest possible range of dynamics was encompassed all through its heavenly length – some 50 minutes, typical of late Schubert. From the quiet opening Kyrie Eleison expanding to the ecstatic declamations of the Gloria and Sanctus, rising to lofty heights of Brucknerian grandeur, there was little that the mass of voices missed.

Both the ladies and gentlemen's sections were well-matched and homogeneously merged as one. In the Credo, the three solo voices of tenors Jakob Tobias Pejcic and Florian Ehrlinger and soprano Marie-Antoinette Stabentheiner emerged. The effable lilt in Et Incarnatus Est, with its gentle triplet rhythm, was simply delightful.

A solo quartet completed by alto Daniela Janezic and bass-baritone Daniel Gutmann distinguished in the Benedictus, albeit all too briefly, but it was the statuesque Stabentheiner's soaring voice that stood out. All the fugal sections were splendidly handled by the chorus, no doubt the effort of Hiematsberger's meticulous and expert honing.

Before the mass which headily closed the concert, there was more easy listening in choral favourites. Brahms' Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen (How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place) from A German Requiem, Gabriel Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine (sung in French) and Hubert Parry's Blest Pair Of Sirens (in English) merely served as the warming-up prelude for the Schubert.  However brief this encounter was, may more such fruitful collaborations of equals continue.

All photos by courtesy of Global Cultural Alliance.

TWO CONCERTS NOT TO MISS: CHOIR OF GONVILLE & CAIUS COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE / BRIEF ENCOUNTERS

Here are two forthcoming concerts in Singapore which you should not miss, especially if you love choral music: 

The Choir of Gonville  

& Caius College, Cambridge

Geoffrey Webber, Director

Victoria Concert Hall

Tuesday, 29 August 2017 at 7.30 pm

Tickets available at SISTIC

https://www.sistic.com.sg/events/caius0817

Programme includes:

MENDELSSOHN Hear My Prayer

ALLEGRI Miserere

BRITTEN Rejoice in the Lamb

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
Li Churen, Piano
Chorus Sine Nomine (Austria)
Metropolitan Festival Orchestra
Chan Tze Law & 
Johannes Hiematsberger (Conductors)
Esplanade Concert Hall
Sunday, 3 September 2017 at 7.30 pm

Tickets available at SISTIC
https://www.sistic.com.sg/events/caffair0917 

Programme includes:
RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto No.2
BRAHMS How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place
from A German Requiem
FAURÉ Cantique de Jean Racine
PARRY Blest Pair of Sirens
SCHUBERT Mass No.6 in E flat major, D.950

NATIONAL PIANO & VIOLIN COMPETITION 2015 / Review

NATIONAL PIANO 
& VIOLIN COMPETITION 2015

Artist Category Finals 
& Prizewinners' Concert

Saturday & Sunday (5 &6 December 2015)

Victoria Concert Hall

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 December 2015 with the title "Sky's the limit for Goh Soon Tioe award winner".

The National Arts Council (NAC) has been manning the National Piano & Violin Competition since the mid-1990s. This edition, which marks the NAC's final run, was co-organised with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and saw a major constitutional change. Pre-selection of all competitors meant that there were fewer performers, 64 violinists and 91 pianists in total.

The final rounds for the Artist categories of both the violin and piano involved concerto performances with the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra conducted by Chan Tze Law. Saturday evening was a violin extravaganza not unlike the final of the Singapore International Violin Competition held in January.

British-Malaysian violinist Liuyi Retallick, recent graduate of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, comfortably won 1^st prize with an immaculate reading of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, characterised by a big and gorgeous tone from start to end. She could have turned on the heat for a more exciting showing, but chose to play it safe, which was the secret of her success.  

Liuyi Retallick with her teacher Igor Yuzefovich,
concertmaster of the SSO.

With no 2^nd prize awarded, 3^rd place went to Singaporean David Loke Kai-Yuan, now studying in Yale, who seemed to engage more in Mendelssohn's E minor Violin Concerto. His totally musical reading was indelibly etched on his face, from painful grimace to sheer ecstasy, but was let down by momentary lapses of intonation.

Honorable mention went to Samuel Tan Yek Hee, all of 10-years-old and performing for the first time with an orchestra. A natural charmer on a 3/4-sized violin, he coped unusually well with the fireworks required for Wieniawski's Second Violin Concerto. All he needs is greater expressiveness, a better instrument and experience, which will no doubt come with time.

On Sunday afternoon, there were two performances of Schumann's Piano Concerto. Singaporean Jared Liew Wei, student of the Salzburg Mozarteum, gave an exceptionally polished reading, one which made time to luxuriate in its harmonies and smell the flowers. Although he could have projected further and exert his authority, it was a major surprise that his shining effort was not placed higher than 3^rd. Singaporean Joan Lynette Tay (below), long-time resident in New Zealand, provided a more assertive and tense view of the Romantic favourite, but struggled with getting all the notes in. A stumble towards the end meant only an honourable mention beckoned.

Josephine with her teacher Boris Kraljevic,
formerly of NAFA.

The last pianist Josephine (who goes by just one name) from Indonesia should have done much more for Saint-Saens' bubbly Second Piano Concerto. Her highly-assured account was stolid rather than spectacular. The mercurial scherzo was surprisingly earthbound, like champagne without fizz, but her steady and secure tarantella finale earned 2^nd place from an international panel of jurors. The 1^st prize went a begging for the first time since 2001.

The Prizewinners Concert saw performances from the top-placed musicians of all categories. It was also the perfect showcase for Zechariah Goh Toh Chai, the local composer commissioned for four set-pieces in the Senior and Artist Categories. His Ondeh Ondeh and Two Sketches for violin, Quinquagenarian Celebration and Jubilation for piano were varied in style, highly idiomatic and not to mention virtuosic, confirming his place among Singapore's creative elite.

Ronan Lim with his teacher Lee Shi Mei,
who looks almost as young as him.

The coveted Goh Soon Tioe Outstanding Performer Award of $10,000 went to to 16-year-old violinist Ronan Lim Ziming, who displayed astounding maturity and lyricism in Ondeh Ondeh, the first movement from Brahms' First Violin Sonata and Lutoslawski's coruscating Subito. A student of Lee Shi Mei, herself a major prizewinner in 2007, the sky's the limit. This competition just provides the wings.