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| Melvyn Tan |
| GEN |
| The Straits Time, 22 September 2011 | Chang Tou Liang His performance [...] was a total joy [...] he made the piano sing, living up to Mozart's direction of "flowing like oil". It was simply exilarating [...] The Guardian, 17 August 2011 | Tim Ahley Edinburgh Festival This was one of the marvellous concerts where everything seemed to illuminate everything else. [...] alive and alert with an intense sensuousness in which every percussive gestrue and flicker of colour has an exquisite physicality. Tan played with faultless grace... An outstanding recital and a festival highlight... The Guardian, 21 August 2011 | Fiona Maddocks Edinburgh Festival [...] a delicious yin-yang... Tan became an elegant, waif-like gamelan Orpheus teasing his strange, choked instrument to airy life. Harald Scotland, 16 August 2011 | Keith Bruce Edinburgh Festival [...] played by Tan, are quite mesmerically beautiful. [...] but the teatre of his performance was the icing on the cake. The body language of the bespectacled upright score-reading pianist of the Cage o different from the hunched wiry character playing Scarlatti. The Straits Times, 21 January 2011 Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore ‘Lovely homecoming for Melvyn Tan’ What a glorious return is his first recital here since the 1970s … Playing a mostly Romantic programme, it was both an emotional and historic event. One might say this was a Singaporean version of Vladimir Horowitz’s momentous 1986 return to Russia. The Business Times, 21 January 2011 | Christopher Lim Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore Tan brings home crowd to its feet’ Now that Tan has finally performed here in public, hopefully, he won't wait too long before coming back. Edinburgh International Festival Review, 18 August 2010 | SusanNickalls (scotsman.com) Melvyn Tan/Skampa Quartet at Edinburgh Festival Piano concerti by Mozart and Chopin (...) the light and pellucid quality of Melvyn Tan's piano contributions blended beautifully with the Škampa Quartet's rich string sound (...) But then the piano really is the star of this concerto, and Tan's sparkling performance was sheer delight. The Independent, 3 January 2010 | Anna Picard Playing on Paul McNulty's sweet-toned copy of a 1795 Walter fortepiano, Melvyn Tan explored the pinball harmonic flourishes and baroque follies of C P E Bach's Fantasia in C and the delicately outlined suspensions of Haydn's Sonata in C. The same composer's Variations in F Minor wrought gentle magic from a dowdy theme in little off-beat gasps of dissonance, sugary trills and pungent chromaticism, while the E- flat Sonata saw a mellow, nostalgic Adagio framed by exuberant showmanship and winking syncopation. A fine end to Haydn's anniversary year. The Telegraph, 29 December 2009 | Ivan Hewett Tan is truly a poet of the fortepiano, and drew the most astonishing range of colours from it, particularly in the great F minor Variations. These began with the stiff pathos of a toy-soldier’s march - a nice touch - but later took on a turbulence and grandeur all the greater for being so unexpected. Sunday Telegraph, 27 December 2009 | Haydn / CPE Bach. Wigmore Hall “The beginning of the great Haydn C major Sonata had a touch of balletic comedy one doesn’t often hear - but it was balanced by just the right degree of pathos. Tan is truly a poet of the fortepiano, and drew the most astonishing range of colours from it.” The Guardian, 10 February 2010 | LPO / Royal Festival Hall “The concert took flight with a hugely accomplished and enjoyable account of Poulenc's beguiling concerto for two pianos. Ronald Brautigam and Melvyn Tan provided just the right mixture of panache and insouciance in the solo parts, while Nézet-Séguin allowed the score’s moments of stillness to flower.” www.artsmart.co.za, 14.11.2009 | Michael Green Schumann piano concerto in A minor [...] His playing was technically commanding, and he played with a delicacy and sensibility entirely suited to this music. It was a real pleasure to hear the piano being caressed, figuratively speaking, instead of being thumped, as it is by some virtuosi. The Independent, November 2007 The star of the evening was the fortepianist Melvyn Tan, whose commitment, left-hand articulation and singing dexterity produced a performance of Mendelssohn’s Second Piano Concerto as memorable as the composer’s must have been, 170 years ago almost to the day. [Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment] The Guardian, November 2007 Mendelssohn’s Second Piano Concerto was dispatched with twinkling agility on an 1840 Erard by Melvyn Tan. [Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment] The Sunday Telegraph, October 2006 Tan is an excellent chamber musician, as he showed when close colleague, Steven Isserlis, shared the platform for three Debussy works, including a bold and dreamy account of the Cello Sonata. [Wigmore Hall] The Guardian, April 2006 His approach to the Schumann was intimate, avoiding the overt histrionics favoured by some interpreters. This was a performance, above all, of subtly shifting moods, hinting throughout at the potential for extremes without sliding into sentimentality or melodrama. The heaving left-hand arpeggios in the first movement spoke of passion teetering on the brink of obsession. Carefully shaded dynamics lent the intermezzo great pressure as well as charm, while the finale glimmered with quiet wit. [London Philharmonic Orchestra] The Sunday Telegraph, April 2006 Melvyn Tan unlocked a great variety of texture in Schumann’s Piano Concerto. Some pianists go for a bigger-boned approach in this music, but Tan’s crystalline technique was absolutely in keeping with the spirit of Schumann: mixing poetry and virtuosity throughout, he ensured that the final pages were unusually fresh and alive. [London Philharmonic Orchestra] |
