SUKA MAKAN VEGETARIAN EDITION: ORIGINAL GREENS @ SHAW PLAZA, BALESTIER ROAD

This is the first vegetarian restaurant to be covered in Suka Makan. Being an omnivore, going to a vegetarian restaurant is not a common event. After the very few times I've been vegetarian, my usual reaction has been, "Needs more meat". I was put to the challenge this time by the Lee family, young pianist Mikkel Myer, his parents Bryan and Felina, and his teacher-mentor Tedd Joselson.

I've heard so much about Original Greens at Shaw Plaza, Balestier Road that I had to take up their kind invitation. This is a truly friendly place with a panoramic view of Balestier Road, and where Mikkel spends most of him away from the keyboard. Right away, I felt welcome and the menu looks wonderful.

Nasi Lemak

Mapo Tofu

Mala Dumplings

Seaweed Tofu Steak with Ginger

Two kinds of risottos:
Wild Mushroom and Eggplant Unagi

Mala Seafood Pizza

The concept is fusion vegetarian and no longer should it been said that vegetarians lead a boring feeding existence. All the dishes are very much like the best of Asian and Western cuisine, absolutely tasty except that no animals have been harmed. They also have a vegan option for most dishes, and this was what we opted for. No disappointments, only pleasure and the comforting feeling that no animals had to die for our dining experiences. Many thanks go to the Lees for broadening my experience, and palate.

Fruit flower tea & Matcha latte

Yellow fungus dessert

Fruity Acai & Chocolate Lava cake

ORIGINAL GREENS

360 Balestier Road #04-07 K2

Shaw Plaza

Singapore 329783

(20+) Facebook

MIKKEL MYER PLAYS BEETHOVEN PIANO SONATAS PART III / PRODIGIOUS 2026 / re:Sound / Review

 

BEETHOVEN:

THE COMPLETE 

32 PIANO SONATAS - PART III

MIKKEL MYER LEE, Piano

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (23 May 2026)

PRODIGIOUS 2026

re:Sound

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (24 May 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 27 May 2026 with the title "More mature piano-playing from Mikkel Myer Lee; Cathy Chen Xi, 12, impresses".

The third instalment of 13-year-old Mikkel Myer Lee’s Beethoven piano sonata cycle played to a full-house at Esplanade Concert Hall. It comprised four sonatas, two each from the German composer’s Early and Middle periods. Opening with Sonata No.2 in A major (Op.2 No.2), there was a palpable sense of maturity since his last Beethoven recital in December 2024.

Photo: Zoan Guan Ziwen

Appearing more relaxed, he had less of a tendency to rush the fences. Articulation was as clear as before, while phrasing and placement of accents showed he understood Beethoven’s idiom well. The astute omission of repeats also ensured a breezy account through its four movements. In the “facile” Sonata No.20 in G major (Op.49 No.2), he displayed fluency and buoyant spirits while not underselling the work’s value as a teaching piece.

Photo: Zhang Xiaochen

In two mature sonatas, his true mettle was revealed. Sonata No.26 in E flat major (Op.81a), or Les Adieux, has such difficult passages that would slay pianists triple his age. He took these well within his stride, its arch-like programme of the farewell, absence and return of Beethoven’s beloved patron Archduke Rudolf being very well-characterised.

Photo: Zhang Xiaochen

The most challenging work was Sonata No.23 in F minor (Op.57), the mighty Appassionata, where a big brawny sound was demanded. Here, Lee’s diminutive stature became a limitation, but he made up by being never short on nuance, wits and endurance, tiding him through three gruelling movements. 

His encores of the slow movement from Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata and Mendelssohn’s Song Without Words (Op.53 No.2) were also rapturously received by the noisiest and most ill-disciplined audience in recent memory.

Photo: Zoan Guan Ziwen

In Lee, Singapore has its answer to Russia’s Evgeny Kissin and UK’s Benjamin Grosvenor, the most significant piano prodigies of the past four decades.

Photo: Yong Junyi

Somewhat less unwashed was the audience that greeted 12-year-old violinist Cathy Chen Xi, 1st prizewinner of the 2025 Hengqing International Mozart Competition (Zhuhai), in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.4 in D major (K.218). Although partnered with the professionals of re:Sound who towered over her, she was more than able to hold her own.

Photo: Yong Junyi

She played with the ensemble in the tuttis, and in her solos, she emerged with a clear and pristine voice. Her tone was pure and unwavering, and her intonation immaculate. An unfailing singing line was maintained through all three movements, only asserting herself in cadenzas, which were very impressive as well.

The finale’s graceful little dance exuded pure joy and its rustic interlude with drones that simulated bagpipes provided delightful contrasts. In Chen, we have another violin prodigy who could become the next Chloe Chua.

Photo: Yong Junyi

This concert also provided opportunities for over 20 young musicians from the Singapore National Youth Orchestra and other schools to perform alongside Singapore’s top chamber orchestra. String players were placed side-by-side with pros for 20th century Polish composer Wojciech Kilar’s Orawa, a minimalist showcase that opened with just three instruments and then expanded to a full-voiced ensemble. The build-up of sonorities to a final shout was simply spectacular.

Photo: Yong Junyi

In Franz Schubert’s Symphony No.5 in B flat major, modelled on Mozart’s symphonies, woodwinds were added, and the sound generated was further enhanced. This listener first heard this work performed in 1979 by a very young Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and can conclude that good teaching and guidance has made the young musicians of today sound even more polished, and thus more prodigious.

BEETHOVEN THE COMPLETE 32 PIANO SONATAS, PART ONE / MIKKEL MYER LEE, Piano / Review

 

BEETHOVEN – THE COMPLETE 

32 PIANO SONATAS, PART ONE 

MIKKEL MYER LEE, Piano 

School of the Arts Concert Hall 

Tuesday (3 December 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 December 2024 with the title "Piano prodigy is gifted, but needs time to mature".

After the stupendous feat of performing two Frederic Chopin piano concertos in a single sitting last year, one wondered what 12-year-old Mikkel Myer Lee would do next. The answer was the 32 piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), a journey that would normally occupy a pianist for a lifetime. 

Photo: Nathaniel

The first instalment showcased four sonatas, three of which were from Beethoven’s early period, dating before 1801. Lee chose to open with the ambitious Sonata No.11 in B flat major (Op.22) in four movements. Straight off, he had all the many notes within his fingertips, playing completely from memory with neither faltering nor hesitation. 

Photo: Munster

Admirable as this was, especially an at age when most children are preoccupied with toys, such facility had drawbacks. Being able to speed through three fast movements was mightily impressive, but one needed to ally that with deeper thought processes. However, it was in the less frenetic slow movement that had sparks of inspiration which would reveal themselves later. 

He took a middle-of-the road approach to Sonata No.14 in C sharp minor (Op.27 No.2), famously known as the Moonlight Sonata because of its dreamy opening slow movement. Some choose to step on the sustaining pedal and murkily swim around the notes, while others posture about with protractedness. 

Thankfully he did neither, instead letting the notes speak for themselves. The folksy Allegretto central movement seemed too fast, but the Presto Agitato finale was perfectly judged, stirring up the tumultuous storm that showed he fully understood the stakes. He was just getting warmed up. 

Photo: Nathaniel

The best performance was in Sonata No.6 in F major (Op.10 No.2), the earliest and shortest of the four. He simply reveled in its implicit humour, the opening chords delivered with a nice bounce, qualified by a nonchalant shrug of a reply. The playful finale, with its chattering fugal voices, was a joy to behold. He was now fully in the groove. 

Photo: Munster

One questions the inclusion of Sonata No.31 in A flat major (Op.110) from 1821, part of Beethoven’s famous final trilogy. Surely Lee has yet to achieve the maturity to convincingly pull it off. In that respect, the jury is still out. The opening movement’s lyricism was well handled, but there was little differentiation in the Scherzo’s two themes, based on popular folksongs, which flashed across with blinding speed. 

The third movement possessed the right gravitas, and there should have been a gradual build-up to the noble fugue (and its inversion) to close the work. Instead, he rushed headlong into its contrapuntal thickets, coming out gloriously unscathed. 

Photo: Nathaniel

Clearly the audience, which annoyingly applauded between every movement of all the sonatas, enjoyed it. They were rewarded with six varied Chopin Preludes as encores. Already an old hand in these, Lee was now unimpeachable. Here is a rare generational talent who is still a work in progress. With time and further study, he will become a world-beater.

Photo: Munster

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.

MIKKEL STARS CHOPIN / Mikkel Myer Lee & Asian Symphony Orchestra / Review

MIKKEL STARS CHOPIN

Mikkel Myer Lee, Piano

Asian Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Tuesday (6 June 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 June 2023 with the title "Pianist Mikkel Myer Lee displays prodigious talent with Chopin's concertos".

 

Back in 1984, a 12-year-old Russian pianist with black tousled hair rocked the musical world by performing both piano concertos of Frederic Chopin in the Great Hall of Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory. His name was Evgeny Kissin. Singapore has found its own Kissin in Mikkel Myer Lee, who repeated the same Chopin feat at Esplanade Concert Hall on Tuesday evening. He was just three days short of his eleventh birthday.

 

Studying piano with American-Singaporean pianist Tedd Joselson and composition with Belgian-Singaporean composer-conductor Robert Casteels, the angelic pre-teen with a pageboy cut was so diminutive that his feet just reached the pedals of the piano. Displaying an innocence and guileless stage demeanour, he even had to be guided as to whom to greet and when to bow.  

 

However, once ensconced on the piano stool, the mini-maestro of the keyboard took over. The Second Piano Concerto in F minor (Op.21), chronologically the earlier of two concertos, was performed first. This was absolutely the right choice, given its more intimate scale and feel. Straight off, one was struck by his sensitive and soulful approach to the music. Besides being impeccable in the most technically challenging passages, his musical phrasing was as natural as breathing itself.

 

While waxing lyrical on the perfectly-tuned C.Bechstein concert grand, what he lacked was power and projection. Listeners seated at the rear stalls and upper galleries would be hard-pressed to hear the fine details, despite the accompanying Asian Symphony Orchestra being exhorted by conductor Casteels to exercise maximum restraint.

 

This became more apparent in the First Piano Concerto in E minor (Op.11), a longer, grander and more imposing work calling for more orchestral winds and brass. Despite the odds, Lee held his own, exerting whatever heft available in big chords and octaves. Poetry was never in short supply, and he came into his own in the Larghetto slow movements, where transparent, lyrical nocturne-like qualities suited him to a tee.

 

With the orchestra silenced, the short solo cadenza in the Romanze of the First Concerto was taken at a broad and measured tempo. It was his way of saying, “now listen to me when I am not in a hurry”, its clear and crystalline ringing sonority being a clear sign he had ideas of his own. The Polish dance rhythm in the finale was a life-affirming romp. This made for a grandstanding close with a spontaneous standing ovation to match.

 

In a nation that has produced wunderkinds over the decades, with pianists Abigail Sin, Mervyn Lee and Toby Tan, violinists Lee Huei Min, Tang Tee Khoon and Chloe Chua coming to mind, Mikkel Myer Lee is the youngest. He might just be the most prodigious one of them all.