SIMON TRPCESKI Piano Recital
Victoria Concert Hall
Sunday (13 April 2025)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 April 2025 with the title "Simon Trpceski's transcendental technique in full flight".
It was 2013 when Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski last appeared here, performing in the Singapore International Piano Festival and with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. His most recent solo recital, presented by Altenburg Arts, showed that time has not dimmed the memory of an artist who has very personal ideas about music, married with a transcendental technique that invites superlatives.
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| Photo: Ung Ruey Loon |
The manner which he hung on the opening note of Frederic Chopin’s Mazurka in G minor (Op.24 No.1) - for almost an eternity - showed that rubato was a vital element of his Chopin playing. The delaying of the next note and making up for it with faster tempi was the lifeblood of Romanticism, also informing the three Polish dances of the set that followed.
Some may find this mannered, but Trpceski has the ability to persuade, winning the listener over with beauty of tone and no little force of personality. For the apparent neoclassicism of Edvard Grieg’s Holberg Suite, he applied generous helpings of sustaining pedal, such that it exhibited none of the dryness of baroque dances.
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| Photo: Ung Ruey Loon |
Audiences will be far more familiar with the version for strings, thus his approach was one of lushness and an unabashed sweep of sound. The Air, emotional heart of the suite, was taken at such a deliberate pace that it risked somnolence but there was much to admire how he crafted its elegiac melody on the left hand over the right hand’s repetitive accompaniment.
An in-your-face virtuosity arrived with Russian pianist-conductor Mikhail Pletnev’s stupendously challenging transcription of the suite from Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker. There were just four movements in common with the orchestral Nutcracker Suite, most notably the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Seldom has the celesta’s tinkles been so well mimicked, the result of Trpceski’s lightness of touch and very deft use of pedalling.
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| Photo: Ung Ruey Loon |
The March, Tarantella and Trepak were a tour de force of barnstorming but it was the grandstanding melody of the final Andante maestoso, achieved with extreme smoothness and lyricism, that stole the show. This same work was performed by the 15-year-old Elisey Mysin just six weeks ago, but Trpceski’s experience and maturity made the telling difference.
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| The stage was bathed in Soviet red for the performance of Prokofiev's wartime sonata. |
Closing the recital proper was Sergei Prokofiev’s Sonata No.7 in B flat major (Op.83), which sometimes carries the nickname Stalingrad as it was a wartime creation. Trpceski’s performance took no prisoners, with the fidgety opening movement exhibiting percussive violence and an undertow of disquiet.
The apparent warmth of the central Andante caloroso was just a guise, its escalation to turmoil later tempered by the tolling of funereal bells. The infamous Precipitato finale began at break-neck speed, and if one wondered whether Trpceski could sustain the rapid machine-gun fire, that was emphatically in the affirmative for an ear-shattering conclusion.
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| Photo: Ung Ruey Loon |
There were five encores in total, by Prokofiev (Scherzo Humoristique, Op.12 No.9), Rodion Shchedrin (Humoresque), a Macedonian folksong (Don’t Sell Your Estate, Koljo) and lovely duets by Debussy (En bateau from Petite Suite) and Brahms (Hungarian Dance No.5) with two of Singapore’s young talents Maxim Oswald-Lim and Theodore Penn Hur. Just charming.
Post-concert photos:
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| Simon Trpceski autographs Kevin YL Tan's CD recording. |
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| Macedonia meets Montenegro. Simon meets with Boris Kraljevic. |
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| Lynnette Seah had accompanied Simon in his last SSO concert in 2013. |