Ones to Watch
Orchestral Institute: Echoes Beyond Saturday, 5 September 2026 YST Concert Hall
In memory of Mr Tan Kah Tee (1951–2025) YST is deeply grateful for the enduring support of Mr Tan Kah Tee, whose generosity shaped the educational journeys of countless students and strengthened the Conservatory’s artistic and educational mission. His legacy lives on through the music, students and community he so deeply believed in.
Saturday, 5 September 2026 YST Concert Hall
Ones to Watch
Orchestral Institute: Echoes Beyond YST ORCHESTRAL INSTITUTE WITH JASON LAI, PRINCIPAL CONDUCTOR AND ALBERT TIU, PIANO QIN LI-WEI, CELLO JIANG QIFAN (BMus3), PIANO CHARLES IVES The Unanswered Question, S.50 RICHARD STRAUSS Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24 HARRY SDRAULIG Fantasia on Waltzing Matilda SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Spring Waters, Op. 14, No. 11 Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30
Vice Dean’s Message The fields are still white with snow, But the streams already herald spring – They run and stir the sleepy banks, They run, and glitter, and proclaim… — From “Spring Waters” by Fyodor Tyutchev, transl. Philip Ross Bullock Welcome, and thank you for joining us for this evening’s Orchestral Institute performance, Echoes Beyond, under the direction of YST Principal Conductor Jason Lai. Tonight we remember Mr Tan Kah Tee, whose generosity and belief in YST helped shape the journeys of countless students and left an enduring mark on our community. As we reflect on what it means for a life’s influence to endure, I am drawn to Tyutchev’s image of a landscape poised between two seasons. Winter has not disappeared—the fields remain covered in snow—yet beneath and around it, the waters are already moving. Something has passed, something remains, and something new is beginning. Perhaps this is one way to understand legacy. It is not simply what is left behind, but what continues to move through the lives of others. Our programme traces something of this journey. We begin with Charles Ives’s question that remains unanswered, suspended against an almost timeless stillness. Richard Strauss’s music takes us further, confronting mortality directly before arriving at his extraordinary vision of transfiguration—of a life’s striving transformed into something beyond itself. YST faculty Professor Qin Li-Wei and Professor Albert Tiu then bring a more intimate voice to the programme: Harry Sdraulig offers a fresh reimagining of the familiar strains of Waltzing Matilda,
before Rachmaninoff’s Spring Waters announces renewal with irrepressible energy. The evening culminates in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, performed by YST Concerto Competition 2026 Prizewinner Jiang Qifan (BMus3). From its remarkably simple opening melody, the concerto unfolds into a vast journey of lyricism, struggle and extraordinary virtuosity, music that seems always to be reaching towards something beyond itself. Fittingly, Qifan performs tonight on the Fazioli F278 Concert Grand gifted by Mr Tan to mark YST’s 20th Anniversary in 2023. There is something especially meaningful in this meeting of instrument, music and young musician: a gift from one generation becoming part of the artistic journey of another. Spring’s waters do not wait for winter to disappear before beginning their journey. They move through the landscape as it is, carrying the promise of what is still to come. Tonight, as we remember Mr Tan Kah Tee, we celebrate all that continues to flow from his generosity—in the music we make, in the young people we nurture, and in the possibilities they will carry forward. Associate Professor Brett Stemple Vice Dean (Performance & Research)
Associate Professor Brett Stemple, YSTs Vice Dean of Performance & Research was Appointed Associate Professor of Music at the Conservatory in 2017, where he also served as the Head of the Brass & Percussion area. In his time at YST, Brett steered the evolution of the YST Orchestral Institute, a creative musicians’ laboratory, designed as an innovative forum for conservatory-level orchestral training.
Programme Notes COMPILED BY FAEZAH ZULKIFLI & TOH YAN EE EDITED BY A/P BRETT STEMPLE
The Unanswered Question, S.50 CHARLES IVES
Charles Ives composed The Unanswered Question in 1908, at a time when he was developing a musical language that deliberately challenged conventional ideas of harmony, structure and listening. The work reflects his fascination with transcendentalist thought, particularly questions of existence, consciousness and humanity’s place within the natural world. Rather than unfolding as a conventional musical argument, it places several contrasting layers of sound alongside one another. A sustained string ensemble provides a slow, almost motionless backdrop—what Ives described as “the silence of the Druids”. Against this stillness, a solo trumpet repeatedly poses what Ives called “the perennial question of existence”. A group of woodwinds responds with increasingly agitated figures, each attempt becoming more complex and unsettled. Eventually, the woodwinds fall silent, while the trumpet asks the question once again. There is no resolution. The question remains suspended over the stillness of the strings, suggesting that some questions persist precisely because they cannot be answered. The music leaves us with the feeling of something continuing beyond the boundaries of the work itself—a thought that lingers long after the music fades. As the opening work, this work establishes a reflective space for the evening. The “unanswered question” it leaves invites us to consider what stays with us long after a moment has passed. Ives offers no answer, but perhaps that is the point; some questions are significant precisely because they remain with us, returning at different moments in time and taking on new meanings with each resurgence.
Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24 RICHARD STRAUSS
Where Ives leaves a question in suspension, Strauss imagines a final transformation. Both works, however, look beyond the immediate moment—towards what remains after an experience has passed, and how what came before can continue to shape what comes after. When Strauss composed Death and Transfiguration in 1888–89, he was still in his twenties. The tone poem imagines the final moments of an unnamed artist, lying on his deathbed and recalling episodes from his life. Strauss conceived the work around the idea of an artist who, after a lifetime of striving towards an ideal, experiences a final transfiguration. The music unfolds as a journey through memory. The opening is fragmented and unsettled, suggesting physical weakness and the irregular breathing of the dying figure. As the work develops, themes associated with childhood, youth, struggle and artistic aspiration emerge and return. These recollections are not simply repeated; they gather new significance as the narrative progresses, culminating in the work’s final transformation. Strauss’ recurring motifs are central to this sense of remembrance. Material heard earlier in the work returns later in altered form, as though remembered from a different vantage point. The past is therefore never entirely past: earlier experiences continue to inhabit the present, shaping the journey towards its conclusion. Yet Strauss ultimately carries us beyond memory. In the work’s extraordinary final pages, the transfiguration theme rises with increasing radiance until the full orchestra—crowned by the brass—
transforms the artist’s lifelong striving into something vast and luminous. The poet Alexander Ritter, who later gave literary form to Strauss’ conception, described the artist hearing from heaven that which he had sought throughout his earthly life: “world-redemption, world-transfiguration!” What begins at the bedside of a dying man thus ends beyond the boundaries of an individual life: not simply in death, but in Strauss’ magnificent vision of fulfilment and transcendence.
Fantasia on Waltzing Matilda HARRY SDRAULIG
Few melodies carry as strong an association with place as Waltzing Matilda. Written by Australian poet Banjo Paterson in 1895, with music traditionally attributed to Christina Macpherson, the song emerged from Australia’s bush-ballad tradition and gradually became one of the country’s most recognisable pieces of music. Its familiarity has allowed it to function almost as a musical memory: a melody capable of evoking a landscape, a culture and a shared history with only a few notes. Australian composer Harry Sdraulig’s Fantasia on Waltzing Matilda, written in 2020 for cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Kathryn Stott, approaches that memory from a new perspective. Rather than simply arranging the original song, Sdraulig takes its melody as a point of departure, exploring its possibilities through shifting harmonies, textures and moods. The word “fantasia” is particularly apt: the familiar tune is allowed to wander, expand and transform. What listeners recognise is continually placed in a new context, creating a dialogue between the remembered and the unexpected. The melody remains recognisable even as the music around it changes. Memories rarely return exactly as they were. They are carried with us, revisited and reframed by the experiences that come after. A familiar melody can work in much the same way: each new performance preserves something of what came before while inevitably adding something of the present. In this work, remembrance becomes an act of continuation. The past
is not preserved unchanged; it remains alive through reinterpretation. What remains of a person may likewise be found not only in memory, but in the influence that continues through others—in values passed on, opportunities made possible, and paths that take shape because of what came before. Performed here by YST faculty cellist Professor Qin Li-Wei and Head of Piano Studies Professor Albert Tiu, Fantasia on Waltzing Matilda begins an intimate pairing at the heart of the programme. Together, they carry us from Sdraulig’s act of remembrance into Rachmaninoff’s vision of renewal.
Spring Waters, Op. 14, No. 11 SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
From Sdraulig’s idea of remembrance, the programme turns towards renewal. In Rachmaninoff’s Spring Waters, what emerges is not a remembered melody but the arrival of a new season, carrying the traces of the one before it. Composed in 1896 as part of Rachmaninoff’s Twelve Romances, Op. 14, Spring Waters sets a poem by Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev. Originally written for voice and piano and heard here in an arrangement for cello and piano, the work depicts the rushing waters of spring as winter gives way to the energy and promise of a new season. Rachmaninoff responds to Tyutchev’s imagery with music that is almost constantly in motion. The piano’s rapid figuration evokes water rushing downhill, while the cello takes up the soaring vocal line, rising above it with increasing excitement. The repeated rhythmic patterns create a sense of momentum that seems impossible to contain. Unlike the stillness of Ives or the reflective recollections of Strauss, Spring Waters looks outward and forward: renewal is not something contemplated from a distance, but a force already in motion. Yet the work’s sense of renewal does not erase what came before. Spring arrives because winter has passed; the new season emerges from the cycle that preceded it. The past remains part of the present, even as the landscape changes. This gives Spring Waters a natural place within an evening shaped by remembrance. To move forward does not necessarily mean leaving the past behind. What has been experienced, learned or given can become part of what follows, taking new form in circumstances we cannot yet know.
YST Concerto Prizewinner Showcase
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
Rachmaninoff composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 in 1909, completing it in Dresden before travelling to the United States for its premiere. He performed the solo part himself at its first performance in New York, and the work soon became closely associated with his formidable abilities as a pianist. The concerto is often described in terms of its technical demands, but its virtuosity is inseparable from its expressive character. The opening is strikingly restrained: the piano introduces a simple, flowing melody that seems almost to emerge from silence. From this modest beginning, the music gradually expands into a large-scale journey through contrasting moods of lyricism, agitation, intimacy and power. Across its three movements, Rachmaninoff repeatedly brings back and reshapes musical ideas. Themes are not merely repeated; they acquire new meaning as the music moves forward. Material introduced earlier may return transformed, appearing in a different register, texture or emotional context—continually looking backwards and forwards at the same time. This quality of musical memory gives the concerto a natural place at the end of this evening’s programme. Where Ives’ question lingers beyond its final note; Strauss’ themes gather the memories of a life; Sdraulig reshapes a melody deeply embedded in cultural memory; and Spring Waters turns towards the renewal of another season, the act of returning in the concerto similarly showcases how the past reemerges in new forms, carrying traces of what came before into what comes next.
Performed by YST Concerto Competition 2026 Prizewinner Jiang Qifan (BMus3), the concerto also brings this process into the present. A work written more than a century ago is entrusted to a new generation of musicians, who encounter it, interpret it and make it their own. Its music continues not because it remains unchanged, but because it can be renewed through each new performance. There is a similar continuity in the life of a community—the influence of one person can extend beyond any single moment, carried through the people they have supported, the opportunities they have helped create and the work that grows from them. What begins with one act of generosity can take on forms far beyond its original intention. The final notes of the concerto therefore do not quite mark an ending. They leave behind the accumulated traces of everything that has come before—questions, memories, melodies and renewed possibilities. Like an echo, the sound may fade, but something of its presence remains, carried by those who heard it and those who will carry it onwards.
Creatives & Production
Jason Lai PRINCIPAL CONDUCTOR
Jason Lai is the Principal Conductor at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, Principal Guest Conductor at the Orchestra of the Swan, and former Associate Conductor of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Hong Kong Sinfonietta. Jason has been a prominent figure in Singapore’s musical life since his arrival in 2010, but also active internationally giving masterclasses in Europe and China. He has also guest conducted the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic, Podlasie Opera Philharmonic in Poland, Macao Orchestra, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, and Hong Kong Philharmonic. Intent on broadening the appeal of classical music to audiences who would not normally think of going into a concert hall, Jason has built a unique reputation as a communicator with mass appeal through his television appearances in both the UK and Asia. He has appeared on the BBC as a judge in both the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition and the classical talent show Classical Star. He was also a conducting mentor in the series Maestro and won the competition with his celebrity protégé. Since settling in Singapore he has continued with his television work and was presenter and conductor for Project Symphony, an eight part series which followed him in his quest to set up a community orchestra. Other shows for BBC World News include Heart of Asia exploring the contemporary arts and culture scene in Thailand, Indonesia, Korea and the Philippines, and Tales from Modern China, a voyage through contemporary China. Most recently in Singing to Remember for Channel News Asia, Jason set out to test the theory that regular group singing in choirs helps slow down the damaging effects of dementia.
Orchestral Institute FIRST VIOLIN
Lin Yi-Hsuan, concertmaster Aureitsevich Natallia Chen Yun-Li Ng Ee-Jun Xu Zhuorui Varvara Gritsenko Wu Yingtong Zheng Xiyan Zhao Tian^ Foong Shu Yan Ashley Xu Mingzi Chiang Hsin-Jui Zhan Qihui Zhang Hanzhi
SECOND VIOLIN
Viktoria Ivaylova Marinova, principal Zhao Tongzhou Siew Xuan Ying Pey Kanchanabandhu Gao Wei Tina Li Mingcan Chen Yi-Tien Chia Min Cher Yin Chen Ziyue Peng Yiyang Yang Shuxiang*
VIOLA
Yu Yang, principal Claudia Khang Loo An Yang Yvonne Liu Xuanyu Lee Hung Chen You-Yun Maryia Kazarez Lu Mina Wu Haiping
CELLO
Wang Jiaye, principal Lai Shin-Yen Liu Yiduo Sun Xiaoran Liu Yubin Lev Alieiev Yang Jiayi Chai Siming
DOUBLE BASS
Huang Yung-Ting, principal¹ Cheng Hsu-You, principal² Yu Wenpeng, principal³ Yuan Moer Fu Kaiwen Zhou Yutong Chiang Shao-En
FLUTE Oh Seonyoung, principal¹ Simeon Yap Sheng Kiat, principal²³ Lin Yu Shan Li Jianuo Qi Yufei Chen Chih-Ying
TRUMPET
OBOE
TROMBONE
Goh Jing Zhong, Jasper, principal² Valentino Gerry Febrian Banggul, principal³ Huang Xingyang
CLARINET
Hayden Chung-Hei Butt, principal² Sean Nicholas Alexander, principal³ Zhang Xin
BASSOON
Liu Jiayu, principal² Wen Xiyu, principal³ Chen Sijia Chen Sihong Choi Hong Wa
HORN
Popetorn Buangam, principal² Lin Shu-Yu, principal³ Zhang Xinyan Lim Shi Zheng, Lucas
Chang Ching-Hsuan, principal¹ Chiu Fang-Meng, principal² Jia Liye, principal³ Yeh Tsung-Ruei Wen Chia-Chun Quek Han Jie Alvin
Conan Pierce Moraal, principal Hui Chi Ning Liu Xiaowei
TUBA
Pang Hung Yi
TIMPANI
Isabel Chin Chun En Kuo Yan-Shin
HARP
Zeng Yan, principal Adria Castillejo Comellas
PERCUSSION
Chua Xu Hui Xavier, principal² Lin Yen Ting, principal³
¹Ives — The Unanswered Question ²Strauss — Death and Transfiguration ³Rachmaninoff — Piano Concerto No. 3 ^Guest/Alumni *YST Orchestral Institute Coach
Administration Team ORCHESTRAL INSTITUTE
PRODUCTIONS
Vice Dean (Performance & Research) Brett Stemple
Artistic Coordinator & Strategic Project Manager Kenny Ooi
Orchestra & Ensembles Manager Yap Zi Qi Orchestra & Ensembles Assistant Uvahraaj S/O Anbarasan
PROGRAMMING COMMITTEE Committee Chair Brett Stemple Committee Members Abigail Sin Albert Tiu Eric Lamb Faezah Zulkifli Jason Lai Kelsey Tan Kenny Ooi Lim Yan Lim Yang Zhi Qin Li-Wei Yap Zi Qi
Production Coordinator Christopher Ong Yadao Technical & Operations Manager William Yee Sound & Video YST Audio Arts & Sciences
DEAN’S OFFICE Executive Assistant to the Deanery Lim Yang Zhi Development Office Kelsey Tan Communications Office Faezah Zulkifli Toh Yan Ee
Mrs Catherine Tan would like to express her heartfelt thanks to YST and the many friends who have offered their friendship, encouragement and support over the years. She would especially like to thank Dr Khoo Kei Siong, Mr Tan’s oncologist, as well as Mr Lim Soon Kiat, Mr Tan’s good friend, for their patience, care and support throughout the journey. She is deeply grateful for the many wonderful people who have also been part of the journey, and for the warmth and generosity of the community that has surrounded the family.
@ystconservatory
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