ECHOES BEYOND / Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute / Reflections by PHAN MING YEN

ECHOES BEYOND

Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute

Conservatory Concert Hall

Saturday 5 September 2026

This reflection was written by PHAN MING YEN, personal friend of the Tans, in memory of the late Mr Tan Kah Tee.

On the evening of 5th September, a concert honouring the memory of the late Tan Kah Tee was held at the Concert Hall of the Yong Siew Toh (YST) Conservatory of Music. Titled Echoes Beyond, the event was presented by the YST Orchestral Institute under its “Ones to Watch” Series. The institute’s publicity marketed the programme as one of “searching, transformation and renewal, reflecting on the enduring impact of a life well lived.” 

Photo: Faezah Zulkifli

In the first half, audiences heard the YST Orchestra under principal conductor Jason Lai in Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question and Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration. The second half began with YST Head of Piano Studies Albert Tiu and Cello Faculty member Qin Li-Wei in Harry Sdraulig’s Fantasia on Waltzing Matilda and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Spring Waters before YST Concerto Competition 2026 Prizewinner Jiang Qifan took center stage with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.3.

Photo: Faezah Zulkifli

The titles of the works in themselves may already echo the programme, although Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.3 was more of a practical calling card to seek opportunities than one bearing any visionary message. This was the work with which the composer wrote specially for his debut in the USA, where he eventually settled — perhaps more out of necessity than choice, as he always longed for the Russia he once knew.

Photo: Sean Chew

At a pre-concert reception, YST Dean Peter Tornquist paid tribute to Tan Kah Tee’s legacy for the conservatory — a donation of three concert grand pianos and the Tan Eng Chin Scholarship. 

Alborada del coq,
inspiration for improvisation.
Photo: Mrs Catherine Tan

Photo: Sean Chew

This preceded a sharing by Tan’s widow, Mrs Catherine Tan, that was memorable for an anecdote which illustrated the depth to which music resonated in his life. One morning, when Tan was already stricken by the illness that would take his life, he still found strength to improvise on the piano, accompanying the crowing of a rooster that had wandered into their house compound. Tan, from all those who remembered him, was always there in the audience at YST concerts.

Charles Ives and Richard Strauss

As for the concert itself, a thought flashed by during the climactic moments of Death and Transfiguration and stuck in the mind for the whole evening — reinforced by the orchestra’s support in the Rachmaninoff. The YST Orchestra reminded me of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at their best in the mid-1990s: performances delivered with raw conviction and power. It was the kind of conviction that made you want to revisit music you once knew or made you curious about music you were hearing for the first time.

Photo: Toh Yan Ee

The wistful mood set by Tiu and Qin in the two cello-piano duos after intermission set the stage for the epic that is Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto — famously once described as a work of quicksilver mood shifts that ran the gamut of all human emotions.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Photo: Toh Yan Ee

Jiang Qifan’s high-spirited drive through of the third movement of the Rachmaninoff and his encore of Rachmaninoff’s Polka de W.R was enthusiastically received by the audience comprising guests and the public. The concert was part of the conservatory’s “Ones to Watch” Series, and the evening certainly piqued one’s curiosity about who to listen out for next.

The concerto was performed on the
Fazioli grand piano donated by Tan Kah Tee.
Photo: Toh Yan Ee

Photo: Phan Ming Yen

The writer wishes to thank Dr Kevin YL Tan for valuable suggestions.

Post concert photos:

Photo: Toh Yan Ee

Photo: Toh Yan Ee

A MAHLER CONCERT NOT TO MISS: OMM PLAYS MAHLER 7 / QIN LI-WEI PLAYS SHOSTAKOVICH on 29 May 2026

There's still time. A rare opportunity to hear Gustav Mahler's Seventh Symphony. Even the SSO does not play it often. The Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) led by French conductor Alexander Bloch lifts the roof off Esplanade with the orchestra's first performance of Mahler 7, widely regarded as his most problematic symphony. Why? It has five movements, two long outer movements sandwiching two nocturnes (Nachtmusik) and a demonic scherzo, a strange juxtaposition. It is sometimes called Song of the Night, not Mahler's description.

I had a rare opportunity to attend the dress rehearsal, and if anything is an indication, it's going to be a superb and memorable evening. Not just for the serious music, but to feel the passion of all the performers on stage. 

The concert opens with Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto with Qin Li-Wei as soloist, who will give a truly sizzling performance. The Mahler, although complex and convoluted, gets a performance that is clear-headed, vigorous in spirit yet filled with many moments of aural sensuousness. "The symphony is like a world. It must have everything," so said Mahler himself. Here are the photos. 

The Bells, not by Rachmaninoff but Mahler!

QIN LI-WEI PLAYS 

SHOSTAKOVICH. MAHLER 7

Friday 29 May 2026

Esplanade Concert Hall, 7.30 pm

Get your tickets ($18-48) here:

Qin Li-Wei Plays Shostakovich • Mahler 7

SG Culture Pass credits accepted!

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!”

QIN LI-WEI RETURNS / re:Sound / Review

 

QIN LI-WEI RETURNS

re:Sound

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Saturday (30 August 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 September 2025 with the title "Cellist Qin Li-Wei and re:Sound deliver exuberant showcase of string techniques".

If there were a locally-based soloist who could be relied on to generate ticket sales and assure box-office success, that would be Chinese-Australian cellist Qin Li-Wei.

Blessed with innate communicative skills and apparent ease of execution, his third collaboration with crack chamber outfit re:Sound opened with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Cello Concerto in A major (H.439). Composed in 1753 and straddling between the Baroque and Classical eras, this work is fast becoming as popular as Joseph Haydn’s two famous concertos.

In the intimate spirit of chamber music, Qin functioned as a third cellist in ensemble tuttis and when his solo arrived, a mellow but full-toned voice was revealed. Nimbleness and agility ruled in the first movement, later brooding in the introspective slow movement filled with sensitivity and feeling, which the Germans called Empfindsamkeit.

Its lingering beauty would later find culmination in a brief but soulful cadenza. The exciting finale reeled off like a fast danceable jig. With cello and accompanying strings in quickfire repartee, this made for an exhilarating end.

The Singapore premiere of 20th century French composer Jean Francaix’s Concert Variations for Cello (1950) was served like a 12-minute dessert after the main course. This was not strictly a set of variations, but witty and sometimes bluesy character studies alternating between fast and slow. Virtually an encyclopaedia of virtuoso cello and string techniques, it delighted in pizzicatos while a perpetual motion final variation closed the work on an exuberant high. Qin’s encore of the Gavotte from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suite No.3 in C major was also warmly received.

When Qin Li-Wei plays,
everybody listens.

A landmark set by re:Sound this evening was Ludwig van Beethoven’s Third Symphony in E flat major (Op.55), or Eroica Symphony, performed in Singapore for the first time without a conductor. Concertmaster Yang Shuxiang did the honours by leading from his violin. This reading was also remarkable for using valveless natural horns and trumpets, and baroque calfskin timpanis.

While the other musicians played on modern instruments, this performance with chamber orchestra came as close as possible to the spirit of music-making in Beethoven’s lifetime, some 200 years ago. While running for some 50 minutes, there was never hint of a drag. Distinguished by lithe and light textures, this was also the edgiest performance in living memory. Urgency and heroism in the first movement was contrasted by tragic gravitas of the second movement’s Funeral March. Surprisingly, this slow movement’s longueurs was a minute swifter, a case of relativity being upended.

Very exciting was the Scherzo, where the trio of natural horns played by Edward Deskur (founding Singapore Symphony Orchestra member), Alan Kartik and Xavier Tan faced the ultimate test in its Trio section. They blazed through fearlessly with lusty aplomb. The finale, built on variations on a dance from Beethoven’s ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, brought the enterprise to an unforgettably breathless close.

As an encore, the orchestra performed the memorable Scherzo completely from memory. For the record, it sounded even better the second time around.

Post concert photo:

Three fine pianists:
Natalie Ng, Lin Xiangning & Abigail Sin