Concert review: Pianist Mikkel Myer Lee displays prodigious talent with Chopin’s piano concertos

Mikkel Stars Chopin

Mikkel Myer Lee, Piano
Asian Symphony Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Tuesday, 7.30pm

Back in 1984, a 12-year-old Russian pianist with black tousled hair rocked the musical world by performing both piano concertos of Frederic Chopin in the Great Hall of Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory. His name was Evgeny Kissin.

Singapore has found its own Kissin in Mikkel Myer Lee, who repeated the same Chopin feat at the Esplanade Concert Hall on Tuesday evening. He was just three days short of his 11th birthday.

Studying piano with American-Singaporean pianist Tedd Joselson and composition with Belgian-Singaporean composer-conductor Robert Casteels, the pre-teen with a pageboy cut was so diminutive that his feet just reached the pedals of the piano.

Displaying an innocence and guileless stage demeanour, he even had to be guided as to whom to greet and when to bow.

Once ensconced on the piano stool, however, the mini-maestro of the keyboard took over.

The Second Piano Concerto In F Minor (Op. 21), chronologically the earlier of the two concertos, was performed first. This was the right choice, given its more intimate scale and feel.

Straight off, one was struck by Mikkel’s sensitive and soulful approach to the music. Besides being impeccable in the most technically challenging passages, his musical phrasing was as natural as breathing itself.

While waxing lyrical on the perfectly-tuned C. Bechstein concert grand piano, what he lacked was power and projection. Listeners seated at the rear stalls and upper galleries would be hard-pressed to hear the fine details, despite the accompanying Asian Symphony Orchestra being exhorted by conductor Casteels to exercise maximum restraint.

This became more apparent in the First Piano Concerto In E Minor (Op. 11), a longer, grander and more imposing work calling for more orchestral winds and brass.

Despite the odds, Mikkel held his own, exerting whatever heft available in big chords and octaves. Poetry was never in short supply, and he came into his own in the Larghetto slow movements, where the transparent, lyrical nocturne-like qualities suited him.

With the orchestra silenced, the short solo cadenza in the Romanze of the First Concerto was taken at a broad and measured tempo. It was his way of saying, “Now listen to me when I am not in a hurry”, its clear and crystalline ringing sonority being a sign that he had ideas of his own.

The Polish dance rhythm in the finale was a life-affirming romp. This made for a grandstanding close with a spontaneous standing ovation to match.

In a nation that has produced wunderkinds over the decades – such as pianists Abigail Sin, Mervyn Lee and Toby Tan, as well as violinists Lee Huei Min, Tang Tee Khoon and Chloe Chua – Mikkel Myer Lee is the youngest.

He might just be the most prodigious one of them all.