Ong

In this year of his sixtieth birthday, how good to have this reminder of Fou Ts'ong's lifelong devotion to Chopin. Only in the Polonaise-fantaisie does he do himself less than justice: such idiosyncratically fitful, shape-damaging rubato is bound to sound mannered after re-hearings on disc. Just once or twice I would have preferred a more poised, Lipatti-like continuity in the Barcarolle too, though here there are many seductive things by way of compensation.

Domenico Scarlatti is a great composer disguised as a mediocre one. Part of the disguise is that he’s a formulaic miniaturist. It’s easy to dismiss his sonatas with the airy notion that if you’ve heard a few of them, you’ve heard them all. So pianists usually dispatch them as twee appetizers, played with a wink and a smirk, setting the table for meatier fare. But such dismissal dissolves under the sheer inventiveness of the sonatas. Like the protagonist in Ilse Aichinger’s “The Bound Man,” Scarlatti finds endless possibilities within his self-imposed confines.

Olivia Ong is a Singaporean singer who found success in Japan with English-language renditions of bossa nova classics.

Olivia Ong is a Singaporean singer who found success in Japan with English-language renditions of bossa nova classics.

Olivia Ong is a Singaporean singer who found success in Japan with English-language renditions of bossa nova classics.

The three chapters of this CD with the three main tones of the singing-bowl therapy were perfectly adopted by Ong Ba Ling for our western ears and they form an ideal basis for a singing-bowl therapy session, or simply to relax by listening to the tones, breathe deeply and to meditate. A great album for beginners and also for the advanced.