Recitals of Frederic Chopin's piano music are usually predictable; a pair of Nocturnes, a clutch of Etudes and Preludes, a Ballade or Scherzo to impress, capped by the indestructible Second or Third Sonatas.
Not so for Singapore-based Filipino pianist Albert Tiu, who presented an adventurous and varied programme of mostly short pieces built around the cult of the Polish pianist-composer.
There were 21 works by 12 composers, grouped in five suites, showcasing a wide breadth and depth of influence, not to mention Tiu's understated virtuosity and unfailing musicality.
Who was Chopin and who were his forebears? One clue lay in the opening number, the Fugue In F Minor (from The Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1) by Johann Sebastian Bach, possessed with a chromaticism way ahead of his time.
The first suite, cast entirely in the morose key of F minor, also included the first of Chopin's Trois Nouvelles Etudes and a most sinuous of Etudes – the Op. 25 No. 2 – which revealed a mastery of the right hand.
Grieg's little-known Hommage A Chopin and Liszt's tricky La Leggierezza completed the set with no little aplomb.
The lyricism of bel canto was the next influence, with three Nocturnes in E flat major. The first was by Irishman John Field, inventor of the "night piece", its simplicity then surpassed by Chopin's familiar warhorse (Op. 9 No. 2), now dressed up in filigree by Chopin student Mikuli and Tiu himself.
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REVIEW / CONCERT
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CHOPIN – BEFORE & BEYOND
Albert Tiu, Piano
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall/Last Thursday
More extended was Frenchman Gabriel Faure's Fourth Nocturne (Op. 36), an essay of sumptuous beauty that furthered the genre.
The third suite comprised five waltzes, all in F minor again. Chopin was the linchpin, his lilting exercise followed by Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Debussy and Leopold Godowsky. The last was a later Polish pianist-composer paying tribute to the master, by craftily fashioning an earlier-heard Etude into a grand polyphonic waltz.
More was to come in the second half, with a trio of Venetian gondolier songs. Ironically, Mendelssohn's piece (from his Songs Without Words) had the darkest shade of the three. This and Liszt's Gondoliera (from Years Of Pilgrimage) bookended Chopin's late Barcarolle, arguablRead More – Source
