TRAVERSING / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

 

TRAVERSING

Ding Yi Music Company

Victoria Concert Hall

Saturday (11 April 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 April 2026 with the title "Eclectic programme allows musicians to shine in Ding Yi concert".

The title of Ding Yi Music Company’s first evening of its concert season had to do with eclecticism and transcending geographical and cultural boundaries. Led by its chief artistic mentor Tsung Yeh, who regularly helmed similar programmes with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, the concert was greater than the sum of its parts.

Tsung Yeh is the Conductor Emeritus
of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra
Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

Opening was the world premiere of Su Xiao’s short tone poem Sing A Pura. Beginning quietly with an air of mystery, the dizi gently rose above the percussion’s rhythmic accompaniment. The lilting dance that came after summed up the Chinese composer’s impressions of the city-state – lively, urbane and somewhat exotic.

More substantial was New York-based Singaporean composer Koh Cheng Jin’s Tang - Moonlight Fragrance, a single-movement concerto for orchestra inspired by Tang poetry. Huang Hsu-Lei’s long and impassioned dizi solo set the mood of contemplation. The demanding obbligato piano part with Ning An initially began as part of the general ensemble but soon grew in stature as the work picked up in tempo and volume.

Replacing guzheng and yangqin for creating specific sound textures, the part also included scraping the insides of the Steinway grand. Its percussive effects and virtuoso figurations also fueled the ethnic dance as the music lurched to a vigorous and wild close.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

The most demanding solo of the evening was by Yvonne Tay, whose guzheng worked overtime in Tang Jian Ping’s concerto Goddess of the Luo River. In a variegated score of multiple scenes, she cast a spellbinding thrall, from the gentlest of plinks to sweeping swathes of sound that rose above the orchestral throng. She literally personified the work’s subject, a figure of feminine grace and fearless self-empowerment.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

After a first half which did not pander to popular tastes, the concert’s latter half was to be much lighter. Bohemian cellist-composer David Popper’s Hungarian Rhapsody Op.68, arranged by Jon Lin Chua, was the virtuoso vehicle for Ding Yi’s Uzbek cellist Bekhzod Oblayorov. If the music sounded familiar, that was because it used the same Magyar folk sources as a number of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. As with those florid piano fantasies, the cello was obliged to jump through many hoops for an enjoyable romp.

Eric Watson’s Celtic Knots, receiving its world premiere, was an engaging succession of Scottish, Irish and Welsh melodies. Given the modal nature of the songs, among them Suo Gan (heard in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun), these translated very well for Chinese instrumental treatment. And one has not lived without hearing the suona imitating bagpipes or Londonderry Air played on pipa.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

Closing the evening was the 1950s Chinese Socialist-Realist and populist Youth Piano Concerto, concocted by a committee of composers including Liu Shikun, Sun Yilin, Huang Xiaofei and Pan Yiming. Ning An returned as the brilliant soloist in three movements influenced by Russians Dmitri Kabalevsky and Sergei Rachmaninov but with Chinese characteristics. It was so well received that its final four minutes had to be encored.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

CROSSINGS IN SOUND / National University of Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

CROSSINGS IN SOUND

National University of Singapore 

Symphony Orchestra

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Friday (6 February 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 February 2026 with the title "NUSSO bridges divide between classical and pop in stirring fashion".

In the opening concert of the National University of Singapore Arts Festival 2026, the National University of Singapore Symphony Orchestra (NUSSO) conducted by Chan Tze Law presented a stirring programme that attempted to bridge the divide between classical music and popular forms.

Italian opera composer Gioachino Rossini’s Overture to La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie) is a “lollipop”, a work of lightness that early audiences could relate to as easily as popular music. Drum rolls opened the piece, which initially strided with martial pretension, before breaking loose to reveal its true comedic intentions.

Photo: NUS Office of Student Affairs, Centre for the Arts

The patented Rossinian crescendo that graces all his overtures was taken deliberately, building up to a head of steam before wrapping up in a joyous conclusion. If the orchestra had not fully warmed up, it did so in the Symphonic Dances from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, orchestrated by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal.

Without replicated the exact sequence of songs and dances in the famous musical, it brought together most of its choreographed music, melding Latin and Puerto Rican rhythms with contemporary jazzy idioms in a virtuosic orchestral showpiece. Adding further interest were snapping fingers, a police whistle, lusty shouts of “Mambo!” and a fugue scored in jazz style.

While winds, brass and percussion were having a field day, the strings finally came into their own in the final song Somewhere, shining with a silvery sheen as the suite drew to a quiet close.

NUS Office of Student Affairs, Centre for the Arts

The final work was Ludwig van Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in C major (Op.56), the only concerto for piano trio (violin, cello and piano) in the active concert repertoire. For many, it was a guilty pleasure, often considered Beethoven’s least serious concerto but also the most fun to listen to.

Equally important was witnessing university students partnering and supporting Yong Siew Toh Conservatory’s dons and alumnus as soloists in concert. Where amateurs could stand equally tall with seasoned professionals, it was an exchange or metaphorical crossing that was never thought possible until recent times.

Beethoven never wrote a cello concerto but this came closest to it with cellist Qin-Liwei getting the plum parts and leading the way in all three movements. With violinist David Loke and pianist Ning An joining the fray, this was a spirited romp from start to finish.

With the orchestra quiet for much of the central slow movement, the trio was allowed to express itself with a luminous song-like glow. The finale’s Rondo alla Polacca, so named for its vigorous polonaise rhythm, provided a send-off that was clearly enjoyed by all in attendance.

NUS Office of Student Affairs, Centre for the Arts

The soloists’ encore of violinist Loke’s Pre-Dawn At Harbour River (a world premiere) opened in G minor like some trio elegiaque by Rachmaninov. Then morphing into a Canto-pop-like rave before breaking off abruptly as if he had run out of ink, paper and time, it drew plenty of laughs from the audience. It was a Haydnesque way of saying, “Enough of it, that’s all folks!”

A RAVEL PIANO MARATHON / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Piano Department

 

A RAVEL PIANO MARATHON

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory 

Piano Department

YST Recording Studio

Friday (7 November 2025)

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of French composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), and no celebration is complete without a survey of his piano music. Although he was no piano virtuoso, he was responsible for some of the classical repertoire’s most technically demanding solo works. 

For one whose quality trumps quantity, the entire corpus for solo piano fits snugly onto two discs. However, the existence of non-canonical works such as his transcriptions of orchestral music and works for four hands (including two pianos) distend this output drastically, which is the rationale of this marathon concert by the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory piano department headed by Albert Tiu.

It lasted the best part of four hours included two short toilet breaks. It could have been even longer had Stefan Xie Lingfei, who was to play Miroirs, not headed to Shanghai for a competition. Furthermore, the two piano versions of Introduction & Allegro (originally for harp and chamber musicians) and La Valse had been omitted. Somehow Entre Cloches from Sites Auriculaires had also gone missing. Nonetheless, it was still an enthralling evening of great music, totally satisfying for the small audience in attendance.

Albert Tiu gave a short preamble
on Maurice Ravel's piano styles and
themes to be found in this event. 

This is not an actual review (The Straits Times had rejected a proposal because of budget cuts) but a recounting of the sequence of performances (who played what and when) with a few personal remarks and observations, and photos of all players have been included.

1710 hours: The Ravel Marathon commenced, opening on two pianos with the Fanfare from L’éventail de Jeanne (Jean’s Fan, 1927), a ballet with ten composers contributing to the cause. Ravel’s short number was the first, a polytonal march with mock military pretenses performed by Ng Kye Lie and Tara Ng. The duo continued with Ravel’s “work without music”, Boléro (1929) which built up to a stirring crescendo. This transcription felt a little dry despite the clever use of harmonics in one variation, but there’s no faulting the rhythmic precision from the duo.

1729 hours: Fong Jean Ying was next with three short and quiet simple pieces. Prélude in A minor (1913) was written as a sight-reading test, while the Menuet in C# minor (1904) was so short – blink and it's over. Menuet sur le nom Haydn (1909), built around the five notes that spelt Haydn’s name (B natural-A-D-D-G) with inversion and spelt backwards, was innocuous good fun, and realised well in her performance.

1733 hours: The six dance pieces of Le tombeau de Couperin (1914–7), composed in memory of friends who died in the Great War, was shared by three pianists. Xian Ruofei accounted for the flowing Prélude in a fluidly virtuosic account, while the academic Fugue that followed was played with total clarity with all voices well accounted for.

1742 hours: Berry Wong was responsible for the two central dances, Forlane and Rigaudon, which were quirkily rhythmic in character. The former could have been dressed in more humour while the latter was overly percussive, thus rendering it mostly charmless.

1753 hours: No worries after that with Toby Tan Kai Rong to the rescue. The Menuet was kept simple as the charm returned while the coruscating Toccata, the recital first out-and-out technical challenge, made for a brilliant close to the neo-baroque suite. His exemplary pedaling kept up the showpiece’s melodic interest without making its barnstorming sound too dry.

1802 hours: Despite a couple of memory lapses, Mi Maw Li Awng gave a musical and sensitive account of the Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899). In this case, the princess was dead, but not the pavane. Thank goodness.

1810 hours: The concert’s first third closed with the Mother Goose Suite, or Ma mère l’oye (1908-10), performed by four hands on a single keyboard by Nie Likun and Lin Sin-Yue. A fairy-tale atmosphere was established in the Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty, while bird-calls distinguished the forest wander of Petit Poucet (Tom Thumb). The pentatonic wonderland of gamelans and bells was conjured with much vividness in Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas. Conversations of Beauty and the Beast contrasted the graceful with the gauche, while the Fairy’s Garden completed this lovely retreat into childhood. The performance was excellent all round.

1837 hours: With Shéhérazade, Ouverture de féerie (1898), the fairy overture written for an opera that never came to fruition, we arrived at the first transcription that sounded truly orchestral (Bolero does not count, unfortunately). The duo of Goh Kai Cheng and Chen Xing-Chi truly did justice to this very colourful score that deserves to be better known.

1851 hours: Menuet antique (1895) needs more love, because Darrell Lim played as if he hated every moment of it. Ravel does not need such crudeness and dessiccated sound.

1858 hours: Much relief came with the three-movement Sonatine (1903–5) from Kuo Lyu-Cen, which flowed with fluidity and lyricism. The central Mouvement de Menuet glowed with warmth, while the animated finale could have been taken a little faster for greater effect.

1911 hours: The very obscure La Parade (1896) sounds like movements by Chabrier and Satie – marches, waltzes and a mazurka - cobbled together like some rondeau pompeux. At least Zhang Huaxuan took it seriously by giving it his best shot, making it sound engaging and interesting. Did anyone notice an allusion to Scarbo in one of the interludes?

1923 hours: A much more mature and familiar work is Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911), a suite of eight varied waltzes inspired by Schubert’s own set. Jiang Qifan played it with spirit and verve, with the romping seventh waltz being a premonition of La Valse to come.

1938 hours: These two little tributes in the style of other composers, A la manière de Borodine and A la manière de Chabrier (1912–3), are a waltz and aria improvisation after Gounod’s Faust respectively. Chiu Pin-Hsin gave them the love they deserved despite their diminutive nature.

1943 hours: In lieu of the two-piano version, La Valse (1920) for two hands received a suitably thunderous reading from Chakrit Khanonvej, who liberally added notes of his own. Ravel’s score had a third stave which was open season to do whatever one desired.

2006 hours: The marathon’s final third opened with the most obscure score of some familiar orchestral music: Daphnis et Chloé Fragments Symphoniques (1912), comprising three rather substantial movements, Danse de Daphnis, Nocturne – Interlude - Danse Guerrière and Scene de Daphnis et Chloé. Despite being non-canonical, Tang Ke gave a performance of much colour and texture, and her pacing of this music was impeccable, which suggests she could become a conductor in the future.

2028 hours: Sérénade grotesque (1893) by the teenaged Ravel was his earliest piano work. Its Spanish rhythms looked forward to Alborada del gracioso (sadly not to be heard this evening) while its percussive beat to Bartok’s Allegro Barbaro. Chen Bo-Yu looked like he enjoyed it, and so did the audience which was laughing by its end.

2032 hours: Now we’ve reached the impressionist spectrum of Ravel’s oeuvre, with Jeux d’eau (1901) given a shimmering performance by Lin Shih-En, which had colour and many nuances in between. Here, Ravel was influenced by Franz Liszt and his depiction of fountains at Rome’s Villa d’Este.

2038 hours: Every person who had stayed up this long was rewarded with a quite spectacular performance of Gaspard de la nuit (1908) by Chai Zi Qing. She held a Venus-like grip on her audience if one can hear past her audible Gouldian humming, beginning with Ondine’s watery spell with very fine and detailed tremolos. The glissandi and arpeggios were simply spellbinding. The tolling B flats were hypnotic in Le gibet while Scarbo scampered with a wild abandon that defined the Gothic horror of this masterpiece.

2103 hours: Finally it was the turn of the two piano professors, Albert Tiu and Ning An who closed the evening’s fantastic smorgasbord. Frontispice (1918) qualifies as Ravel’s weirdest work, just two minutes of polytonal musings and five bars of birdcalls played by a fifth hand (Toby Tan doing the honours), before a sequence of crescendo chords looking ahead to the sound world of Olivier Messiaen.

2106 hours: Rapsodie Espagnole (1907) was the final work on two pianos by Albert Tiu and Ning An, four movements of impressionist and Iberian beauty - Prélude à la nuit, Malagueña, Habanera (originally from Site Auriculaires) and the rousing Feria to close. Has there been a better way to celebrate the greatness of Maurice Ravel? This absorbing journey from the Belle Epoque, neoclassicism to Impressionism was one to remember.

The Ravel Marathon officially ended at 2121 hours, and to think it could have continued to 2230 hours had missing pieces of the jigsaw been found. But what a journey that was, and one could only be happy and grateful for having been there to witness it all. If one missed Sir Stephen Hough this evening, he will return to the SSO sometime soon, but when will there next be another Ravel rave? Sometime in 2037 or 2075, but don’t hold your breath!