From 1996 Penguin Guide to Classical CD's:
The Singapore-born pianist Yitkin Seow is a good stylist: his approach
is fresh and his playing crisp and marked by consistent beauty of sound.
Seow catures the melancholy of the Gymnopédies very well
and the playing, though not superior to Rogè or Queffélec
in character or charm, has a quiet reticence that is well suited to this
repertoire. The recording is eminently truthful.
Hi-Fi News and Record Review, Nov 89, Bryce Morrison
Yitkin Seow sounds dessicated rather than seductive in Tango
… and his rubato in the Gnossiennes can be fitful and unidiomatic.
Elsewhere his playing is pianistically refined and accomplished, the recordings
beautifully natural … Nonetheless, there are more delectable selections,
most notably from Anne Queffélec on Virgin.
Gramophone Dec 89, Christopher
Headington :
(Compares Seow CD with CD's from Peter Lawson & R. de Leeuw (old CD
of repackaged 1970's LPs)
….We had to wait far too long for the first solo recording from Yitkin
Seow, for he is an excellent pianist with a keen sense of style. I would
like to have from him and Hyperion such mainstream works as the Brahms
Paganaini Variations or Chopin's B minor Sonata, music that he plays
very well; but failing that, his artistry is fully evident in the present
Satie collection. The recital begins with the composer's most popular pieces,
the three Gymnopédies, sensitively done but, given their
simplicity and Greek inspiration, arguably just a tiny bit too beautified
by rubato compared with the more straightforward Peter Lawson on his Classics
for Pleasure disc. The same goes for the Gnossiennes, but I hasten
to add that Seow's freedom did not worry me seriously and he does characterize
each piece well, thus avoiding monotony. In drier pieces such as the Embryons
desséchés he gives us wit and point, playing the 'fake
endings' - and the references to Chopin's Funeral March and other music
- with just enough humor to emphasize their jokes yet not overdoing them.
It is similar with the "Clementine" stylization of the Sonatine
bureaucratique. Altogether this is an attractive and well-chosen Satie
collection, well recorded in St. Barnabas's Church in North London with
an acceptable degree of reverberation. The booklet notes by James Harding
are full and informative….All in all, Seow's recording is the one that
most attracts me.
