Six years ago, I handed the directorship of the Festival to Dr Chang Tou Liang. After a decade, it was time for audiences to be inflicted with another enthusiast’s musical tastes. Tou Liang brought great diversity to our programming, challenged audiences with unusual repertoire and introduced some extraordinary pianists. On behalf of all pianophiles in Singapore, I thank him for his efforts both in leading the Piano Festival over the past five years, and for his infectious enthusiasm for all things musical.

Before passing the baton to a new director, however, I wanted to invite pianists who had developed a strong relationship with our orchestra and with Singapore audiences. This will allow us to hear different facets of their artistry, and it also deepens our long-term partnership with these outstanding musicians.

For this year, each pianist was asked to include something by Chopin, but the repertoire choices were their own. The resulting programs put us back onto familiar ground. For those who look for the cutting edge in festivals, the programmes may seem to be slightly conservative. In my opinion, great music demands repetition and re-interpretation: we should never tire of encountering masterpieces refracted through the minds and hands of true artists. I recently encountered two live recordings of Chopin’s first Ballade by Arthur Rubinstein. The performances were both inspirational, yet markedly different in many details. Rubinstein wasn’t reproducing a recorded performance. For him, each performance was a fresh opportunity to revisit and reinterpret music he had played for more than sixty years. That is the special joy that we seek in a live recital: heightened risk-taking that elicits a deeper musical response. It doesn’t always work out: sometimes there are spills. But when the stars are correctly aligned, the emotional thrill goes far beyond what you will get listening to most recordings.

Nikolai Demidenko is no stranger at our Festival, but he comes fresh from having made a recording (to be released) on one of Chopin’s own pianos, beautifully restored in Warsaw. The mechanism and sound of the Pleyel piano is so different from our modern Steinways that one could argue that all performances of Chopin on a modern piano are but transcriptions. It will be interesting to see if Nikolai’s Pleyel experience has influenced his Steinway interpretations of Chopin and Schumann.

Pascal Rogé has also been a regular visitor to Singapore over two decades. Chopin did not feature in his recitals for many years, but he has recently devised a programme in which Chopin’s music is interleaved with short works by fine French composers influenced by him, including Faure, Poulenc and Debussy. The second half of his programme celebrates his recent marriage in Japan to Ami Hakuno, a fine pianist in her own right. Both Vladimir Feltsman and Yevgeny Sudbin have been very welcome concerto soloists at SSO concerts and are making their Singapore recital debuts. I look forward very much to their wide-ranging programmes.

I would like to express my thanks to Tou Liang for his continuing efforts in the Young Virtuoso Recitals, and to the administrative team at the Singapore Symphonia Company who are the unsung heroes behind every concert by the SSO, and at the Piano Festival. As always since the inception of the Festival, Walter Haass has come from Perth to take care of the Steinways and to voice them according to the preferences of each pianist.

This year, I especially thank Lionel Choi for writing the program notes. Lionel, a former music critic like myself, is a great pianophile and a passionate music-lover. I am very pleased to announce that Lionel will take over next year as the Artistic Director of the Singapore International Piano Festival.

GOH YEW LIN
Artistic Director
Singapore International Piano Festival 2009