Concert Information
ONE MELODY 하나의 선율
Celebrating 50 Harmonious Years of Singapore-Republic of Korea Relations
Fri, 31 October 2025, 7.30pm Esplanade Concert Hall
SHIN – what the sea was whispering (8’)
Orchestra of the Music Makers
Chan Tze Law, conductor
Kun-Woo Paik, piano
CHOPIN – Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor (35’)
BRAHMS (arr. SCHOENBERG) – Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 (arranged for symphonic orchestra) (45’)
Today’s performance lasts approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes, including a 20-minute intermission.
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The Orchestra of the Music Makers
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
—
Arthur O’Shaughnessy, “Ode”
The Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) is a Singapore-based symphony orchestra established in 2008, comprising over 140 highly-trained volunteer musicians. Although many have chosen careers outside of music, our musicians are dedicated to the high standards of music-making and community work which OMM stands for. Under the mentorship of Chan Tze Law, a leading Singaporean conductor and Vice-Dean of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, OMM has become an integral part of Singapore’s classical music scene and has gained international repute for presenting works of epic proportions, including the critically-acclaimed Singapore Premieres of Bernstein’s Mass, Wagner’s Das Rheingold and Die Walküre.
OMM was among the most active arts groups in Singapore during the COVID-19 pandemic, receiving the COVID-19 Resilience Certificate for organising a wide array of digital productions, live performances, and outreach events between August 2020 to December 2021. Recordings of these digital
Photo Credits: Yong Junyi
@orchmusicmakers @omm.sg @omm.sg www.orchestra.sg
productions have also been featured at the Expo 2020 Dubai, as well as on the Singapore Airlines Inflight Entertainment System.
Highlights of OMM’s 2025-26 season include performances with Tito Muñoz, Lang Lang and KunWoo Paik.
Orchestra of the Music Makers Ltd is supported by the National Arts Council under the Major Company Scheme for the period from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2028.
Chan
Tze Law
Chan has appeared at major European music festivals and led orchestras and soloists throughout China and the Asia Pacific region. His performances of Mahler’s 8th Symphony with OMM was named “Best Concert of 2015” by Singapore’s Sunday Times, while his Sing50 concerts with Lang Lang and MFO celebrating Singapore’s Golden Jubilee received widespread critical acclaim.
In 2020, he conducted OMM and an international star-studded cast at the Esplanade Theatres on the Bay in Die Walküre, Singapore’s first-ever production of an opera from Wagner’s Ring cycle. Opera (UK) proclaimed that Chan “elicited a multitude of expressive nuances and drew immense power without force from his musicians.”
As Associate Professor and founding faculty member of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music at the National University of Singapore, Chan serves as Vice Dean and lectures in conducting and music leadership. He also oversees the university’s Center for the Arts in his role as Vice Dean of Students and is the architect of NUS ‘Arts for All,’ an innovative framework ensuring arts access for
Singaporean conductor Chan Tze Law serves as music director of Singapore’s Metropolitan Festival Orchestra (MFO) and the award-winning Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM).
all university students. Internationally, Chan has served as visiting professor at Mahidol University College of Music in Thailand and was the founding chief conductor of the Australian International Summer Orchestral Institute. He has led conducting masterclasses at prestigious institutions including the Peabody Institute (USA), Royal Academy of Music (UK), and Queensland Conservatorium (Australia). He has served on the selection committee of the Oxford Conducting Institute International Conducting Studies Conference and conducted at the Australian Youth Orchestra’s National Music Camp in 2020 and 2022.
Chan made his Singapore conducting debut with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in 2001. He has premiered and recorded numerous compositions by Singapore-based composers alongside major classical repertoire by Mahler, Bruckner, Wagner, and Elgar. His recordings are available on Spotify and Apple Music Classical and have been featured on Singapore Airlines’ KrisWorld, Australia’s ABC Classic FM, and the UK’s BBC Radio 3.
피아니스트 백건우
KunWoo Paik
Soon after, he drew international attention with premieres such as Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. At fifteen, he moved to New York to study with Rosina Lhévinne at The Juilliard School, later continuing his studies in London with Ilona Kabos and in Italy with Guido Agosti and Wilhelm Kempff. He is the winner of the 1971 Naumburg Piano Award and a Gold Medalist at the Busoni International Piano Competition. His international career gained momentum with his New York recital of Ravel’s complete piano works at Lincoln Center and his orchestral debut at Carnegie Hall.
Paik made his European debut in 1974 with three consecutive recitals at Wigmore Hall, followed by a 1975 recital at the Berlin Philharmonie. Since then, he has performed with leading orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, London Symphony, BBC Symphony (Last Night of the Proms, 1987), Orchestre de Paris, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Warsaw Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, and English Chamber Orchestra. He has collaborated with conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Mariss Jansons, Sir Neville Marriner, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Long Yu, and Mikhail Pletnev.
Paik’s extensive discography includes Scriabin, Liszt, the complete solo piano works of Mussorgsky, and Rachmaninov’s complete works for piano and orchestra (BMG). His recording of Prokofiev’s
Pianist Kun-Woo Paik made his debut at age ten performing Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the Korean National Orchestra.
complete piano concertos earned both the Diapason d’or de l’Année and the Nouvelle Académie du Disque prize. As an exclusive Decca artist, he released acclaimed albums of Busoni’s Bach transcriptions and the piano works of Fauré.
In 2005 he began his major project to record the complete Beethoven sonatas for Decca, later performing the full cycle in China and Korea to great acclaim. For Deutsche Grammophon, he has released albums devoted to Chopin, Schumann, and most recently Granados’s Goyescas (2022).
In 2024 he released his first Mozart album, the beginning of a multi-year project paired with extensive nationwide tours.
Recognized for his artistic achievements, Paik was named a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government and received the 6th Seongjeong Artist Award in 2023. He currently resides in Paris, continuing to devote himself to concert life and recording.
Jonathan Shin
what the sea was whispering (2025)
The title of my work comes from the final stanza of Gyeongpo Beach, the opening poem of Singaporean poet Gwee Li Sui’s collection of love poems One Thousand and One Nights :
And there were the two of us in a story with so many beginnings, at a point when we hardly knew what we might find in our sand, what the sea was whispering at the edge of your country.
While I encountered Gwee’s poem nearly a decade ago, it was only a few weeks into the work’s gestation that I recalled and connected its significance. The “us” refers to the poet himself and the collection’s dedicatee — a Korean novelist. The powerful imagery of the two lovers at the strand of Gyeongpo Beach, watching “[t]he rim of the dark blue sea / hunched and fell into white threads” became a departure point for my work: two lovers, joined for eternity by a work of art.
Sea laps at the shores of our two nations. From this sea spring our nations’ lifeblood and flow our people’s stories and songs, our joys and sorrows, and the irrepressible and incomprehensible essence of love. In this spirit I have composed a fantasy based on three Korean songs about three different loves: the love for one’s child [섬집아기 (Island Baby)], the unrequited love for a lover [연 (Longing)],
and the love for one’s nation [아름다운 나라 (Beautiful Country)].
In a world leaning towards divisiveness and conflict, I offer “what the sea was whispering” as a gift of gratitude for the close diplomatic relations between Singapore and the Republic of Korea, and as a hope that this bilateral tie will grow ever stronger and deeper.
Programme Notes
Frédéric Chopin
(1810-1849)
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor (1830)
In the early 19th century, it was common for virtuoso performers to compose their own showpieces, works designed to highlight their command of the instrument.
Frédéric Chopin, himself a pianist of extraordinary brilliance, followed this tradition with his two piano concertos, written as vehicles for his touring appearances across Europe. The Concerto in F minor, though composed first, was published as his second. Its premiere in Warsaw in 1830 established Chopin as a national hero, with two performances of note: one on his own piano, and another on a borrowed Viennese grand. Yet criticism of his orchestral writing led him to retreat from the concerto stage after 1831, turning instead to the more intimate settings where his genius for the piano could flourish. He never returned to orchestral composition.
The opening movement, Maestoso, reflects the Classical legacy of Mozart with its traditional orchestral introduction, where both principal themes are presented. Once the piano enters, Chopin’s inventiveness shines; the orchestra becomes less an independent partner than a delicate frame for the soloist’s voice. Lyrical melodies unfold into passages of dazzling virtuosity, the writing sensitive to the piano’s sonority. What begins in tranquility soon swells with intensity, building to a fiery orchestral passage before closing in a brilliant flourish from the pianist, capped by a decisive orchestral gesture.
Often regarded as one of Chopin’s most exquisite creations, the Larghetto bears the hallmarks of the nocturnes he would later compose. It was inspired by Konstancja Gładkowska, a young soprano for whom Chopin harbored a secret, unspoken affection. “Six months have elapsed, and I haven’t yet exchanged a syllable with her,” he confessed, “she who was in my mind when I composed the Adagio (Larghetto) of my Concerto.” The movement sings with lyrical intimacy, its long-breathed melodies echoing the voice of Gładkowska, while moments of restless yearning suggest Chopin’s inner turmoil.
The finale, Allegro vivace, bursts forth with the rhythms of the mazurka, the quintessential Polish dance, imbued with its lilting accents. It weaves through a medley of lively salon styles before a “signal horn” heralds the coda. Here, the pianist takes flight in a whirlwind of notes, sending the concerto off in a jubilant, dazzling display of virtuosity. Chopin even hints at orchestral experimentation with passages of col legno strings—an effect he never revisited, though Berlioz seized upon it in his Symphonie fantastique the following year.
Johannes Brahms Programme Notes
(arr.
Arnold Schoenberg)
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor (1861, arr. 1937)
Was Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) a traditionalist chained to the past, or a visionary who helped shape modernism?
To Wagner and his followers, he was the former, too dependent on classical forms and Beethoven’s example. In stark contrast, Arnold Schoenberg labelled Brahms a progressive. Within Brahms’s commitment to structure and form, Schoenberg saw rhythmic vitality, harmonic adventurousness, and endless creative variations. For him, these striking innovations marked Brahms as a forward-thinking composer whose influence carried well into the twentieth century.
In 1937, Schoenberg paid homage by orchestrating Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1. His reasons were simple: he loved the work, felt it was too rarely performed, and thought the piano often covered the strings. “I wanted once to hear everything,” he explained, “and this I achieved.” The result magnifies Brahms’ voice, uncovering its symphonic character while bringing new colors to the score. Like Ravel with Mussorgsky or Stokowski with Bach, Schoenberg honored the original while reimagining it for a new medium.
The first movement opens with a four-note motif in the clarinets, soon taken up by the strings and developed into broader sonorities. Numerous themes follow, ranging from soaring melodies to jaunty dances, each transformed through Brahms’ hallmark technique of developing variation. This restless unfolding leads to a return of the original motif, now solemn and weighty in the strings,
bringing the movement to a powerful close.
The second movement, marked Intermezzo, is characteristically Brahmsian. By preferring the intermezzo to the scherzo, Brahms chose subtlety over bravura, reflecting his introverted temperament. The movement begins with a shadowy, questioning theme in oboes and English horn, later brightened by clarinets. A nimble Animato section brings playful energy, with violin lines adorned by fluttering woodwinds. Ultimately, the opening returns, restoring the hushed atmosphere before a brief, spirited flourish ends the movement.
The third movement unfolds on a broad canvas. A broad, noble melody introduced by the strings sets an expansive tone, soon contrasted by a dotted rhythmic figure that grows from ominous murmurings into a celebratory outburst, complete with percussion and bright woodwinds. Yet this jubilant mood fades, before the grand opening theme returns, reasserting itself in stately, dignified fashion.
The finale, the celebrated Rondo alla Zingarese (“Gypsy-style Rondo”), brims with fire and virtuosity, inspired by Hungarian and Romani folk idioms. It begins with biting string effects played col legno (with the wood of the bow), immediately establishing a percussive, explosive drive. The music races through a kaleidoscope of lively themes: frenetic dances, playful woodwind chatter, and a surprising interlude for string trio that offers a brief moment of intimacy. The momentum soon rebuilds, pushing forward with irresistible energy until the fiery opening theme returns in triumph, propelling the quartet to its dazzling conclusion.
The Music Makers
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