TWO SPLENDID PIANO RECITALS AT YONG SIEW TOH CONSERVATORY

 

The Conservatory's Fazioli Grand
was donated by Mr & Mrs Tan Kah Tee

TWO SPLENDID PIANO RECITALS

AT YONG SIEW TOH CONSERVATORY

   Wednesday afternoon (29 April 2026)

Imagine you are a fourth-year student at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, and your final test before graduation is an hour-long recital, a culmination of years of study and practice. That recital (or practical examination) determines your Bachelor’s degree, and you leave the halls of Kent Ridge as a professional musician. I had the fortune to attend two such piano recitals from two very talented final year students. That these could have been recitals at a piano competition or part of a piano festival is a testament to what the students have achieved.

The first pianist was Chakrit Khanovej from Thailand. I had previously judged his performances at the 2020 Thailand Steinway Youth Piano Competition, where he was awarded the 1st prize in the Senior Category. Only a cruel technicality prevented him from being the pianist to represent Thailand at the Regional Finals. True artists learn from experience and become the better for it, and his senior recital was a serious programme with two major sonatas and a dessert to top it off.

Beginning with Beethoven’s Sonata in A major (Op.101), the gentle giant showed a poetic and lyrical bent in the first movement, then let it rip in the striding syncopated march of the second movement which was the undoubted influence of the corresponding movement of Schumann’s Fantasy (Op.17). The short third movement was merely an introduction to the finale, and it was a magical moment when the first movement’s theme returned, a true reminiscence which was not to him. The heroic finale was where nerves frayed, getting lost in the fugue but he did not stop, instead completing the sonata on an optimistic high.

This was followed by Schumann’s frankly over-long Sonata No.1 in F sharp minor (Op.11) in four movements. The introduction in dotted rhythm and exposition were very well-handled and he made a good case overall. The ensuing Aria and Scherzo were well contrasted, but the problematic and circuitous Finale was where for many coming to grief almost seemed a formality. He shrugged off the lapse to close the work strongly. With the heavy lifting over, Chakrit seemed a far more relaxed personality as he polished off Nikolai Kapustin’s jazzy Variations Op.41 (on a Ukrainian theme which the bassoon solo from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is based on) with cool but stunning aplomb.

Chai Zi Qing from Malaysia used to go by the name Venus Chai, but I am glad she has dropped that Roman goddess name, for nobody can take a moniker like that seriously (much like Aphrodite, Lolita, Kitty or Fanny) except on OnlyFans. She is a serious artist and her performances of two great repertoire works proved just that. It is often difficult to coherently string together the 18 short pieces that make up Schumann’s Davidsbundlertanze (Op.6) but she did it.

The quixotic shifts of mood between the passionate (Florestan) and reflective (Eusebius) movements is bewildering, but she made each piece sound special before moving on the next one. Her technical command was also beyond reproach, making light of some really treacherous passages. The poetry and lyricism in the Innig second piece would soon return and that felt like a welcome homecoming as the work wound to a quietly lilting and reflective close. To make music come alive is true virtuosity, even when there are not so many notes to overcome.

Her pet showpiece was finally unleashed, in another stunning reading of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit. I was not the only person in the hall who witnessed her performance at last year’s Ravel Marathon at the recording studio and returned for more. In the big auditorium, the true sonorities of her vision were realised. 

Ondine was shimmering and sensuous, building up to a thrilling and cataclysmic climax before its placid denouement. The repeated B flats in Le gibet were hypnotic in their intensity, while Scarbo scrambled with manic malevolence that was all-consuming. An absorbing Gaspard is a rare thing to behold, and this brought back to mind the best Gaspard of my memory, some 21 years ago from another lady from Malaysia, Foo Mei Yi.

I have little doubt that Chakrit and Zi Qing, two very musical souls, will have promising careers to come. This is only the beginning of greater things, and I can only wish them well for the future.

HUNGARIAN PIANO QUINTETS / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Faculty & Students / Review

 

HUNGARIAN PIANO QUINTETS

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory 

Faculty & Students

Conservatory Concert Hall

Wednesday (18 March 2026)

It is no longer a secret. Yong Siew Toh Conservatory is the best place in Singapore to enjoy chamber music. T’ang Quartet, Red Dot Baroque, Lorong Boys and the Singapore Chamber Music Festival are resident here and its faculty (many of whom are chamber music veterans) and students are fully involved in chamber music making. Not to mention the many visiting chamber groups – Takacs, Hagen, Juilliard, Brodsky, Jerusalem, Miro and Verona Quartets, Calefax et cetera.

This evening of piano quintets is likely to have included two Singapore premieres, unless Take 5 (Lim Yan and company) had earlier gotten their hands to them. At any rate, pianist Albert Tiu (Head of Piano), violinists Qian Zhou (Head of Strings) and Chien Hsin (3rd year student), violist Zou Zhang (alumnus) and cellist Wang Zihao (alumnus) performed two rarities, two very demanding piano quintets by two great Hungarian composers. Both Tiu and Qian took turns to introduce the works and their nostalgic qualities, especially harking back to their late Romantic roots.

The Second Piano Quintet in E flat minor (Op.26) of Ernő Dohnanyi (1877-1960), composed in 1914, is less often heard than his earlier C major quintet. It opened in dark and mysterious hues with piano tremolos, then revealing an idiom influenced by Brahms. The throes of passion and intensity generated, with tension alternating with moments of playfulness defined this music. The five players sunk their teeth in and never let off.

The central Intermezzo relived the dance music of old Vienna, a gemutlichkeit later celebrated by the likes of Kreisler and Korngold. A fast scherzo-like section flew with Mendelssohnian lightness, also containing the witty writing to be found in Dohnanyi’s famous Variations on a Nursery Theme and moments that could have influenced John Williams’ Harry Potter music. The weighty finale opened with a fugue from the strings, contrasted by a chorale theme on piano. The warmth of sonority radiated through Straussian harmonies, then darkened as earlier themes returned (in the Lisztian cyclical manner referred to by Tiu) before closing quietly.

The only Piano Quintet (Sz.23), in C major, by Bela Bartok (1881-1945) is an early work that even predates the Dohnanyi. Composed in 1903-04, its sprawling four movements that play for over 40 minutes recalled the aspirations of Brahms’ own piano quintet. That was the only similarity, a superficial one, as Bartok’s was by far a more jolly and extrovert piece, quite unlike the folk-inspired barbarism of later and more representative works. Sheer opulence is hardly something attributable to Bartok, and this uncharacteristic masterpiece was cut from the same silky linen as his Rhapsody Op.1 (Sz.26) for piano and orchestra, an update on Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies, also from 1904.

The ensuing Vivace had similarities with the earlier Dohnanyi Intermezzo, an old world dance with the quality of a burlesque, except its whimsicality was a little more vigourous. The Adagio was harmonically the most adventurous, its chromaticism yielding an elegiac movement in C minor with genuine Slavic pathos. More Straussian harmonies were heard, and this continued attacca into the Vivace finale, where the first movement theme returned, but now transformed into a joyous polka-like dance. Now ensconced in Hary Janos (Kodaly’s comedic opera) territory, humour ruled with several false endings before closing abruptly in high spirits. 

The loud and vociferous applause more than provided encouragement for further chamber concerts of this kind to return. So watch this space.

A bravissimo to all the performers.

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Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, 

check out this webpage: 

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BRODSKY QUARTET IN RECITAL / Review

 

BRODSKY QUARTET

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Tuesday (3 March 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 March 2026 with the title "Brodsky Quartet delivered taut ensemble work in Singapore debut".

Established in 1972, the UK-based Brodsky Quartet is likely the world’s longest-lived string quartet with some of its founding members still performing. Second violinist Ian Belton and cellist Jacqueline Thomas were there from the very beginning, later joined by violist Paul Cassidy in 1982 and first violinist Krysia Osostowicz in 2021 to form the present group.

Photo: Michael Huang

The Brodsky’s Singapore debut opened with J.S.Bach’s Sonata No.3 in C major (BWV.1005), originally conceived for unaccompanied solo violin, and arranged for quartet by Cassidy. With every note of the original retained, the polyphonic quality of its four movements was now amplified.

Despite the division of labour between four players, tautness of ensemble was key in reining in the extra voices. There was much pleasure in hearing the viola and cello singing the main themes for a change, added lines of counterpoint, and rustic drones in the fugue (which seemed to quote the London Bridge ditty) and the vigourous dance-like finale.

All three works performed was the third work of the genre by each composer. Heard next was English composer Benjamin Britten’s String Quartet No.3 in G major (Op.94), his final completed work from 1975. The acerbic and dissonant idiom lent an extra edge to the work’s autumnal quality.

The opening focused on instruments playing as couples, the next worked on repeated and insistent rhythms, while the central movement highlighted first violinist Osostowicz’s solo as leading voice in a birdsong of sorts. The Burlesque’s demented little waltz that followed uncannily foreshadowed the second half’s quartet by Dmitri Shostakovich, who had died earlier in the year.

First violinist Krysia Osostowicz
was once the violinist of Domus (piano quartet).

The finale, Recitative and Passacaglia, quoted from Britten’s final opera Death in Venice, and included a gently rocking dirge-like theme that was passed from one instrument to another before closing with a whispering finality. One could not have hoped for a more persuasive or sublime reading.

Photo: Michael Huang

Completing the evening was Soviet-era Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No.3 in F major (Op.73). Composed in 1946, after the end of the Second World War, the grimness of preceding events was masked by the risus sardonicus of its seemingly jolly opening. The quartet soon exposed the ruse with the music getting more convoluted and being waylaid into a fugal cul-de-sac.

Shostakovich's wry smile.

Founding cellist Jacqueline Thomas
spoke about Shostakovich's art of coded music.

The similarity of the second movement’s tipsy waltz to the earlier Britten Burlesque and ensuing tip-toeing of marionettes on strings revealed both composers shared a musical and spiritual camaraderie that transcended distance and ideology. Cellist Thomas shared with the audience Shostakovich’s unofficial titles for the movements and hidden messages. The third movement’s message was “war unleashed”, and the quartet duly delivered the bunker-buster bombs.

What could only follow was a funeral march in a form of a passacaglia, a grieving that was genuine and heartrending which the surface Klezmer-influenced gaiety of the finale barely disguised. The finale denouement was an uneasy calm yielded by quiet resignation. The gloom was lifted with two delightful encores, Thomas’ arrangements of short Shostakovich pieces, an Elegy and Polka, which brought down the house.

A YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE - TRADITIONS IN BLOOM / Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra / Review

 

A YOUNG PERSONS GUIDE – 

TRADITIONS IN BLOOM

Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Sunday (8 March 2026), 4 pm

Singapore is literally growing orchestras by the year, and in this concert, one got to witness what happens in the nursery. The children of the Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra (SYPO) were joined by Year 3 orchestral pedagogy students of Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in an hour-long concert that served as a harmonious classroom lesson for both students and their parents.

SYPO players stand up to be counted.

The SYPO students dressed in hong bao red t-shirts formed the bulk of the strings, while YST students in black occupied the principal seats and almost all the woodwind, brass and percussion sections. Together they made a joyous noise, conducted by YST alumnus Luo Wei.

The concert begin with familiar strains of the Chinese New Year favourite, Mao Yuan’s Joy of Spring (Xin Chun Le), with just the strings of SYPO. There was a rawness to the sound, but that was overshadowed by the sheer enthusiasm invested in the playing. It just got better with the older students joining in for the two popular works influenced by folk music.

Liu Tie Shan and Mao Yuan’s Dance of the Yao People needs little introduction, as it was performed in SYPO’s last concert as well as the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s inaugural concerts in 1979. Beginning slow, it soon gathers in pace. The main theme recurs as in a rondo, but gets faster and more voluminous with each run. Woodwind solos shine as the dance is ornamented, and very soon the merry-making erupts through all the ranks. It was a joyous reading, and one can say that the sound generated has already surpassed that of the SSO during its early years.

Photo: Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra

Roughly the same formula was repeated in Georges Enesco’s Romanian Rhapsody No.1. The slow opening involved solo clarinet and oboe in a call and response routine, and very soon the strings join the fray. If the Chinese dance was vigorous, this one was energy multiplied manifold, and there is always a thrill hearing cascading strings move through the orchestra, with rising strings emerging at the other end. The final dance was an exciting hora, bringing the enjoyable piece to a virile close.

The major work in the concert was Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, also known as Variations on a Theme by Henry Purcell, the subject being the Rondeau from Abdelazer. The showpiece involved all the sections of the orchestra, as well as impressive solos from each of the instruments. Narration was provided by engaging host Lai Chong, and cartoon visuals were projected on the large screen above. For the many parents in the audience, there was now no excuse for mistaking one instrument from another, besides learning how an orchestra functions.

The students created a big sound for the tuttis, while the many tricky solos were handled with ease by the conservatory students. The closing fugue was a tour de force of virtuosity, and there was no shortage of spirit and verve as the work wound to a suitably rousing and rowdy conclusion. 

It has been a pleasure to witness these young musicians at work under the uniting baton of Luo Wei. While only a fraction of them will become professional musicians in the long run, there is little doubt that all of them will become lovers of music for life.

Photo: Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra

Photo: Singapore Youth Philharmonic Orchestra

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL VIOLIN COMPETITION 2026: GRAND FINALS / Review

 

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

VIOLIN COMPETITION 2026

GRAND FINALS

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (7 February 2026)

This review was published by The Straits Times on 10 February 2026 with the title "Ukraine's Georgii Moroz wins Singapore International Violin Competition 2026".

The Grand Finals of the Singapore International Violin Competition (SIVC) 2026 was a culmination of two weeks of intense violin virtuosity. Arguably the best final concert in four editions, three 20th century violin concertos were performed in partnership with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Joshua Tan.

Organised by Yong Siew Toh Conservatory and judged by an international panel of ten violin pedagogues and performing artists, it was fortuitous that two of three grand finalists were either past or present students of the Conservatory. One can only conclude that good teaching here is a catalyst for great artistry and superior results.

Zou Meng (China), presently residing here, performed Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto in D minor (Op.47, from 1904-05), literally a re-run of his triumph at the 2023 National Piano & Violin Competition. If anything, he has progressed. 

Sculpting a robust and gritty tone for this granite-hard score, intonation was never an issue. A wider palette of colours enabled him to generate warmth in the central slow movement and later focus with laser-intensity in the thrilling and rhythmic finale.

Georgii Moroz (Ukraine), who graduated here in 2023 and now based in Berlin, upped the ante several notches for Bela Bartok’s Violin Concerto No.2 (1937-38). Influenced by Hungarian folk music, Moroz had the full measure of its lusty and gutteral voice. Also completely natural with its dissonant idiom, he mastered and overcame the accompaniment’s thorny textures with aplomb.

Photo: Jellal Koay

In the slow movement’s theme and variations, Moroz conjured a sense of fantasy and mystery despite its elusiveness. Nothing was ever routine, and in the rambunctious finale, he raced away with orchestra in tandem and never glanced back.

Michael Germer (Denmark) looked to dominate in Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No.1 (Op.99, 1947-48), now a staple of competitions worldwide but like the Bartok, heard for the first time here. Its very wide dynamic range suited Germer to a tee, brooding in bitterness for the opening Nocturne, and then furiously duelling with the winds in the Scherzo.

Photo: Jellal Koay

The third movement’s Passacaglia was a tour de force of building an arch-like edifice before climaxing in a cruelly-taxing cadenza. The Klezmer-influenced finale was a wild race to the edge of a precipice, with neither soloist nor orchestra yielding a step till its brilliant and breathless close. Cue an outburst of applause.

Fine margins separated Moroz and Germer, who were awarded first and second respectively, a fair decision, with Zou bagging third place. Fourth, fifth and sixth places were awarded to Karisa Chiu (USA), SongHa Choi (South Korea) and Qingshu Weng (China). The special prizes, for performances of J.S.Bach, Eugene Ysaye, chamber music, violin and piano recital and the commissioned set piece, David Loke’s Soliloquy, were shared by the top three.

Michael Germer and Georgii Moroz
find out their fates.

This might have been the most impressive finale in the competition’s short 12-year history but a question hangs over the SIVC’s future. Will it survive in this form? Only time will tell.