The first time I heard Paul Lewis was on a CD. It was a recording of Schubert’s Winterreise. I am ashamed to admit that I had never heard of Paul before, and the reason I bought the CD was actually to hear Mark Padmore, whom I consider one of the most talented and sensitive tenors of our time. He is someone who sings "intelligently", as Paul himself put it when we finally met.

I love Schubert, but I am not really a big fan of Winterreise. I find it too sad. Although it was written for tenors, I also have few recordings by baritones and mezzos. My favorite version used to be the one with Hans Hotter and Michael Raucheisen, that is, until the day I listened to Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis. I was completely transported. Mark was intensely moving, and Paul, especially in Gute Nacht, was delicate and tender, with subtle phrasing and dramatic pauses. The sound of the piano was like an echo, sighing at the sadness of the lyrics. My heart beat in time with his notes, sinking with the cadenza. It was without doubt the best Gute Nacht I had ever heard in my life.
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This year, La Folle Journée is celebrating the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth. I decided to take my mother, a Chopin enthusiast, for a special three-day musical marathon.

Once again, thanks to the concierge team at The Peninsula, I managed to secure a good number of tickets. Unfortunately some performances had sold out the day the tickets went on sale, but I did get places at a grand total of ten concerts, chosen mainly according to the programme as many of the artists were unknown to me.

The artist I was most looking forward to seeing was Ivo Pogorelich. I had never heard him live in concert, but own many of his recordings. His rendition of Scarlatti’s Sonatas is definitely one of my favorite CDs. He was performing Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Sinfonia Varsovie, an outstanding orchestra which had participated in the Queen Elisabeth Musical Voyage.
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I have been spending a lot of time in London lately, so I have regretfully been unable to attend all the exciting and exceptional events of the Hong Kong Arts Festival. Nevertheless, during the few days I was in Hong Kong, I managed to get tickets for a small number of concerts. Among these were the Philharmonia Orchestra and Valery Gergiev with the Mariinsky Orchestra.

Berlin-born Maestro Christoph Von Dohnányi was unfortunately indisposed and was replaced by Italian conductor Fabio Luisi. Together with the Philharmonia Orchestra, one of the UK’s top orchestras, he delivered a beautiful programme for two Festival concerts.

The one I attended featured Beethoven’s Overture from The Creatures of Prometheus, followed by the Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat for Violin and Viola by Mozart, finally closing with the Symphony No. 9 ‘The Great’ by Schubert after the interval.

Beethoven’s Overture was pompous, unrevealing and delivered with much fanfare. In my personal opinion, it is definitely not his best work. Maestro Luisi is a physically engaging and very energetic conductor, exhibiting strong body language. The orchestra was probably just warming up since I noticed a slight tempo difference—maybe 1/16^th—between the musicians.
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I was in London for three days, and was lucky enough to find myself in the midst of the London Handel Festival. I got a ticket for the concert Arias for Mrs. Arne, which included a pre-concert festival walk around the Covent Garden area.

The meeting point was at the Covent Garden tube station. A small group of about 30 were led by Janice Liverseidge, a Blue Badge Guide and Handel-lover, who revealed to us the hidden facets of the Covent Garden and Drury Lane area.

I have been to Covent Garden many times before, although mostly for performances at the Royal Opera House. I never had the chance to get a closer look at the area simply because each time I went, I found myself either rushing in to attend the Opera on time or rushing out for dinner, since I usually find myself starving at such a late hour.
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Commissioned by the Paris Opera, Verdi wrote a five-act opera based on Friedrich Schiller’s play, Don Carlo. According to the grand opera criteria of the times, the work had to be sung in French, with spectacular scenes providing an opportunity for grand staging such as large choruses and ballets. And so the original score lasted four hours, excluding intervals. Luckily for me, the version I saw was restructured for Italian theatres and was trimmed down to four acts. It was still a four-hour show, but with two intervals rather than one.

I was in Paris to celebrate the birthday of a close friend, and was very fortunate to get a last-minute ticket on a Friday evening. I had just arrived from Hong Kong and was fighting jetlag. I can’t help but think that watching an opera with which I was unfamiliar was rather an achievement on my part, all things considered!

I am proud to say that I did not fall asleep at all. Although it lacked any famous arias, the music was beautiful, with passages that ventured into the sublime. The story is about Don Carlo’s despair over his father, Philippe II, marrying his fiancée. It also tells of Philippe II’s misfortune because his wife does not love him. To further thicken the plot, there is also the Princess of Eboli, who was mistress to Philippe II but also loved Don Carlo.

At this point, you must be wondering how the writer or composer came up with such complicated situations, but reality was actually even more perverse. Philippe II married four times, twice to cousins and once to his own niece. Don Carlo’s sweetheart, Elisabeth, was the only one of Philippe II’s wives unrelated to the family. What Verdi did was apply the age-old opera formula: the tenor (Carlo) wants to seduce the soprano (Elisabeth), but there’s always the bass/baritone (Philippe II) in the way.
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I was in London for my daughter’s birthday, and was very excited when I found out that Magdalena Kožená was performing at Wigmore Hall, with none other then András Schiff at the piano. This is a meeting of two great artists: one of the best mezzos of our time, and a wonderful pianist whose recordings of Schubert are almost legendary.

I have always been a big fan of Kožená, since the day I bought her recording of Bach’s Arias, and now, having the opportunity to hear her live was overwhelming. As for Schiff, the first time I heard him live was in San Francisco, when he performed one of Beethoven’s piano concertos. I was so impressed that I returned the next day to see the same programme. Thinking back, that was some 10 years ago now.

My second run-in with Schiff was in London. He was performing an all-Schubert programme at Wigmore Hall, but by the time I found out about the concert, it was already sold out. I had to use all my power and connections in order to get a secondary ticket which cost me a small fortune. I don’t know whether it was the jet lag or any other particular reason, but I almost fell asleep during the concert.
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The last time I was in Singapore, it was a long time ago. Back when the children still enjoyed playing in the sand and splashing in the pool, we had a short stay at Sentosa, a holiday resort island which you cannot exactly call Singapore.

So this time, when I had to come for a meeting, it was a good opportunity to enjoy this buoyant city properly.

After an extensive search on the internet, the only concert I found was a chamber music one with winds, staged at the Arts House, which used to be Singapore’s first Court House and former Parliament House.

Built in 1827, the whole venue was turned into a multidisciplinary arts centre in 2004, which was a great idea because once you are there, you can feel the interesting melange of the history’s imprint and the next generation’s cultural influence.

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I took my mother to Taipei for a short holiday and as usual, was on the lookout for classical music events.

When I read online about a major event dedicated to Tyzen Hsiao, praised by the local media as “Taiwan’s Rachmaninov” and “Taiwan’s last Romantic poet of the piano”, I did not think twice, and got us two tickets for the concert, to be held at National Concert Hall.

The Concert Hall exhibits typical Chinese features and stands majestically at Liberty Square. The pipe organ, purportedly the largest one in Asia when installed in 1987, is indeed very imposing and intimidating from the stage; in fact, the whole place is quite grand compared to other venues I have been to in Asia.

The concert started with the Piano Concerto in C minor, performed by Chiao-Ying Chang, and accompanied by NSO (National Symphony Orchestra) under the baton of Wen-Pin Chien.

I was impressed by the serene musicality and the harmonic richness of the work. The composer’s similarities with Rachmaninov were obvious in terms of melody and structure, but unlike his celebrated alter ego, there were no real highlights or phrases catchy enough to be remembered.

The second part started with the Cello Concerto in C, performed by Lana Hsiung. The cello’s solo introduction was dramatic, and immediately, followed by a flow of lyrical and expressive passages. The whole piece was beautiful and interesting, but unfortunately, not deeply engaging.
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Anna, Anna, Sacrée Nana!

Anna Nebretko is known to be a star in the opera world.

But nowadays, record companies have become so proficient in marketing and “creating” artists, so to speak, with digitally enhanced images, glamorous makeup and wardrobe, “technically” improved sound and more, that the classical music “stars” have become not so different from the manufactured starlets and supermodels of popular media.

Reality is cruel however, and most of the time these subjects suffer from average talent and a distinct lack of personality. Besides a marketable face (Lang Lang perhaps being the exception), what they have to offer is ferocious ambition, and not much else.



So before hearing Nebretko perform live, I will confess to having doubts about her ability. I went to watch her perform Donizetti’s L’Elixir d’Amour at the Opera Bastille, which did not help her cause, as I’ve never been a big fan of the venue. It was built during François Mitterrand’s era, and the French president sought to create a “modern and popular” venue to share classical music with the masses.

Though the venue was modern in its time, it hasn’t aged well, with a cold and bland interior that seems devoid of personality, and the acoustics are unfortunately a bit disappointing for an opera house.
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I debated whether I should go to the Beijing Music Festival or not, as I had just returned from over four weeks of traveling in Europe, which included the Queen Elisabeth Musical Voyage, and was looking forward to some peaceful rest time at home.

Nevertheless, I decided at the last minute that if I missed the opportunity to go this time, I would have to wait another year before the next festival, therefore, even if it is only for two days, it’s still worth the effort.

The BMF has a very well-designed website that is clear with all programme details, but is absolutely useless in terms of tickets sales for non locals – I ended up having to go through friends and connections in order to get tickets for concerts.

My unique first BMF experience was held at the Poly Theatre, a venue with no charm or character, or for that matter, acoustics fit for any decent classical music concert.

On that evening’s program was the violinist Sarah Chang with the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields.

Sarah Chang has always been one of my favorite violinists. My first encounter with her talent was through the DVD Spanish Night, filmed when she performed with the Berliner Philarmoniker under the baton of Placido Domingo. At the time, I remember thinking: what a charming, delicious young lady, and the playing was pure delight.

A few years later, I heard her live with the English Chamber Orchestra in Shanghai, and again I was completely under her charm.

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