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Christopher Halls

Chances were that even if pianist Aristo Sham Ching-tao had shown up for his first homecoming recital and only played variations on “Happy Birthday”, the audience would have been just as enraptured.
On the heels of the Hongkonger’s triumph at the prestigious and famously gruelling Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in June, it was no surprise that tickets for his two HKU Muse concerts at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) were snapped up like hot cakes after Sunday mass.
The 29-year-old pianist had a bounty of musical gems in tow, some of which were key solo works that helped secure his impressive win at the Cliburn.
That said, any concerns about hearing “carbon copies” of those competition performances on August 30, as he kicked off his Asian tour, were unfounded.
In a convivial preconcert talk hosted by HKU’s chair professor of music, Daniel Chua, Sham explained that after the Cliburn competition, he now finds himself in a quasi “transitional phase”, with new-found freedom to begin shaping his own musical stories and textures.

Solid, centred and multi-textured playing were the hallmarks of Sham’s opening recital.
As many pianists do these days, Sham opted for romantically embellished transcriptions of Johann Sebastian Bach over any of the master’s own keyboard works. This trend has ruffled the feathers of the Baroque purists in their quest for absolute historical “correctness”, but their concerns were irrelevant as Sham pulled off both of the Bach transcriptions by Rachmaninov and Busoni with aplomb.
The pristine aspects of Bach, which are at first well preserved in Rachmaninov’s take on the “Prelude” from the Partita No 3 in E major suite, originally written for solo violin, saw Sham sparkle with pinpoint accuracy. As Rachmaninov’s stamp set in, he began to embellish with whimsical elegance.
Similarly, the “Gavotte” was a fine blend of Sham’s super-crisp articulation and some silky smooth episodes of legato playing, all marked by generous and poised liberties taken at the cadenza points.
That one would struggle to dance to Rachmaninov’s transcription of the “gigue” was clear enough. In fact, had the composer transcribed all seven movements of Bach’s suite instead of just three, seasickness may well have set in for all the romantic swelling.
In Sham’s rendition of Busoni’s “Chaconne” from Bach’s Violin Partita No 2 in D minor, he relished the grandness of the organ-like textures – as he did at the Cliburn – then contrasted that power with even more poise and retrospection on the HKU Steinway in the ensuing pianissimo echoes.
With a barrage of flawless technique, Sham was commanding as things heated up “Busoni-style”. Moreover, he never lost sight of the towering structure and crucial pulse of the “Chaconne”.
A true highlight was Sham’s performance of Ravel’s “Gaspard de la nuit” – “The Night Treasurer” – where listeners were both transported and captivated by cascades, ripples and water drops in the opening “Ondine”, which depicts a water nymph inspired by Aloysius Bertrand’s poetry.

Sham’s eerie portrayal of bells tolling for a corpse on the gallows in “Le gibet” – complete with creepy-crawlies – was, by turns, harrowing and profoundly moving, and notably a notch freer and even more mysterious than at the competition.
Then in “Scarbo”, Ravel’s concluding movement, where rhythmic unpredictability is front and centre, Sham’s nimble depiction of a nocturnal dwarf was both aptly impulsive and frenzied.
The second half was pure Rachmaninov – without transcription – and Sham took on the Russian’s personal and intimate compilation that makes up the “Études-tableaux” for the piano.
The pianist’s arpeggiated swells and swirls in both opening sea-inspired movements were fabulous, as was the fascinating scherzo-like humour he extracted in the fusion of a Ukrainian Hopak dance and a gavotte in the fourth B minor movement.
The lugubrious C minor funeral march with its chiming church bells – Rachmaninov’s seventh movement – was laden with atmosphere and nuance.
Lusciousness and yearning also came in spades where called for, especially in the eighth part in D minor, where Rachmaninov’s double notes, which quote Scriabin’s fifth piano sonata, were treated with great expertise.
And even if the thick chordal writing in the final oriental march bordered on the heavy and unrelenting, the young pianist managed it with great bravura.
Sham has shown his affinity for tightly constructed music and an insatiable thirst for a different experience beyond the Cliburn. His journey ahead promises great things.
“2025 Van Cliburn Gold Medalist: Aristo Sham”, HKU Muse, Grand Hall, Lee Shau Kee Lecture Centre, Centennial Campus, University of Hong Kong. Reviewed: August 30.


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Sham played his first homecoming recital since winning the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Texas in June


Sham played his first homecoming recital since winning the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Texas in June.


World of performing arts

Aristo Sham Ching-tao

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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Sham played his first homecoming recital since winning the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Texas in June

Sham played his first homecoming recital since winning the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Texas in June