Interview: Rae Yue Pung, pianist
Rae Yue Pung, Warner Concert Hall, Oberlin Conservatory. Photo taken by Mingzi Yan
Rae Yue Pung is a 21-year-old pianist from Singapore who recently released her debut album “Piano Sonatas” on all digital platforms. A physical release of the album is planned for 2025. TWoA talked to Rae about classical music education in Singapore, her musical journey, and the challenges and rewards of embarking on the transition from highly-gifted child musician to mature artist.
Tell me a little bit about your musical journey. How did you start playing the piano?
My mom said that when she was teaching a student, I was listening, and at the age of three, I was able to copy the melody on the piano of a Beethoven sonata. And that's when she realized that I was “super talented,” and she started teaching me, and then sent me to a professor at the age of four. I don't really believe that I was so talented that I could replicate some melody at the piano. I think I probably just pressed some random notes. And my mom went: “Oh my gosh, she can be a pianist!” - and that's probably how it started.
You recently released your debut album “Piano Sonatas.” How did you reach this milestone?
The journey to creating an album started after winning a $12,000 piano competition in Australia. I was able to get several offers for performances and connect with people in the record label industry. From there, I was given a pathway to have my music professionally recorded and pitched to Spotify, YouTube Music and other digital platforms, with a physical release coming in mid-2025.
I started planning this album late last year. I knew that I had to do it, because it's on the checklist of every musician to have an album. There were two pieces I had to put in because they are my favorites: Robert Schumann’s piano sonata No. 2 and Nikolai Medtner’s “Sonata tragica.” I wanted to have a theme to the album, so I added another sonata, Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano sonata No. 7. I worked on it for about a year.
You are originally from Singapore, but you recently graduated from Oberlin College in the United States and are now studying at the Imola International Academy in Italy. What impact has living abroad had on you?
I've lived overseas for quite a long time. At Oberlin and at Imola, which is my new school, I'm the only Singaporean in the student body. In Italy, it's not that surprising, but Oberlin has 3000 students and for the whole four years, I was the only Singaporean in the student population.
As an international student, being the only one from your country can feel a bit weird sometimes. It’s about the small things that you want to reminisce about, like a shared memory, a shared food, and then you realize, that your friends don’t share these!
The experience made me think a lot deeper about the classical music scene in Singapore. One of the reasons why I wanted to do this album is: I wanted to prove that big projects are accessible and possible for local pianists like me, even though I'm young.There are many talented pianists in Singapore, but the scene is very young. Our conservatory was founded in 2003 which is when I was born. I've seen that a lot of pianists in Singapore choose not to pursue music professionally because they feel that it's not lucrative, that it's not feasible to do this for a living.
How do you explain this?
Since my mom is a piano teacher, I was able to observe that Singaporean kids who study music seriously usually reach a crossroads really early in life because of our academic school system. In Singapore, you have a big exam at age twelve, and then from age twelve all the way to university, it's a really intense academic environment. You just study all day; you don't have time to practice at all. You can practice maybe one and a half hours or two hours, that's it. I've seen a lot of kids win competitions, they perform with orchestras, they do all the things “young prodigies” do, and then they reach a stage where they have to do that exam at twelve. And then they start thinking: “Maybe it's too risky to become a musician.” These kids would tell me when I was younger: “I don't think it's possible to be a professional classical musician. How are we going to earn money, where are we going to perform? There's no audience for this kind of music.” They would just give up. It's a bit different now.
Did your family support your choice?
My mom is a piano teacher, and my dad has always been really supportive of music. He loves music. They've always wanted me to be a pianist. It's not like this is my dream, and I went against them. For us, we're a team going for the same goal. I auditioned for The Purcell School in the United Kingdom when I was eight. My mom had asked a well-known pianist where I should study, and she had advised The Purcell School. That’s how William Fong, who is a professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the Head of Keyboard at The Purcell School, became my teacher.
I was really young when I went to The Purcell School, and I stayed for about a year. I don’t remember much. It was tough for us, because my mom had to stay in Singapore and be the breadwinner for our family. The Purcell School is a boarding school. I had to live on campus, my dad would live about 15 minutes away from school, so we were all separated. The parents were allowed to come and visit you for about 15 minutes every day, in the evening, at six o'clock. My dad couldn't work in the UK because he didn't have the visa for it. Every evening, he would cook a meal for me, put it in a little Tupperware and bring it to school to me. That was the only Asian food I got. I would feel so homesick. I would take the Tupperware back to my dorm room. I remember this one time, he made chicken wings for me, and I just suddenly felt so sad because it tasted just like home. I was in my room, crying and eating chicken wings by myself. That’s my core memory of being at The Purcell School.
Later, I would live in Singapore and then I would fly every two months to Italy to take lessons. I was basically homeschooled. That's how I studied music until I was about 16.
When you were nine-years old, you won the 21st Chopin International Piano Competition in Poland in your age category. Inevitably, some journalists referred to you as a “prodigy.” How do you feel about this label?
It's common for people to say about young kids: “Oh my god, you're so talented, you’re such a little prodigy.” I think when I was a kid, it helped me a lot, because growing up, I had a lot of health issues. I liked the fact that I was known for my strength, which was music, instead of these other deficiencies. I thought of it as a good thing. And then I became a teenager. In the piano world, in the competitions, the level of how good you need to be jumps quickly from when you are a kid to when you are a teenager to when you are an adult.
I found it really challenging to keep up to the expectations that people had, because I had given interviews and been on the radio when I was really young. When people search my name, they think that I'm really good. I felt like, when people actually heard me play, they would be disappointed. I think I put a lot of pressure on myself because of that, because I felt I had to live up to a certain standard that people had for me, whether it was my parents or teachers or just friends. It was especially difficult in my later teenage years, because in piano competitions, they have an under-18 and over-18 category. I was slowly realizing: these competitions are getting a lot harder to find success in.
I started to go overseas, and I realized that everyone is a “prodigy” in their own home countries. Everyone has been called a prodigy at least once, and everyone is talented, and everyone has all sorts of different things. That's when I started thinking: how can I differentiate myself from all these other “prodigies”? This is one of the reasons why I did this album, because I had to find something that no one in my friend group was doing.
What is the reason for this jump in expectations at competitions?
As you get older, it's not just about playing the right notes and memorizing things well, as it is in a children's competition. You have to be artistic and musical and expressive, you have to have the whole package. That's how the standard just gets higher and higher as you grow older. It's about how you transition from being a child musician, just playing the right notes and having basic expression, to developing your own voice. That's what judges really want to see in a competition, that you have a vision for your music and you're not just “being a good little student.”
When did you become aware of this change in expectations at competitions?
When I was about 15. I joined a lot of competitions that year and won them, but sometimes, the jury would tell me: “I want to hear more of your voice. I want to see what you think of the music.” But they still let me win, so I was really confused, and wondered what this all meant: “You want me to have my own voice? I just played. Isn't that my voice?”
I think what they really meant was that they didn't want to “hear” my teacher’s instructions through my music. They really wanted to see what I thought of the music. I think during this transition, it's very important to have a teacher who will let you develop your own feelings about the music, someone who can let you be independent and guide you about how you should think, but not dictate to you.
How do you find your own voice?
It’s quite a struggle, because I'm also still in the process of trying to find it. I'm not sure what kind of advice I can give, but I think it's important in classical music not to give up, to be determined. I think the main factor that determines success in this industry is being able to continue, to keep trying, to think of new ways to improve yourself. A teacher once told me: “Every second that I'm not practicing, I'm thinking about music. When I was young, I would go for a walk, and on that walk, I would think about how to improve that piece in my head.” I think that is the key to really finding your voice as a musician, to think about the music, to love the music and to ask yourself: “How can I do this better, what can I understand from this piece?”
What has been the most challenging part of your musical journey so far?
Every step is challenging. Being a classical musician is just like a non-stop road of challenges. You just have to be determined enough to overcome everything. I've always been ambitious. The good thing is that, for me, when I see a challenge, it just motivates me to work harder and to try and overcome it, to find creative ways to improve my resume and improve my musicianship.
What has been the most rewarding part of your musical journey so far?
It's important to celebrate the small things. That's key for staying motivated as someone who wants to be a musician. When I'm practicing and I manage to fix a really difficult passage, that's really rewarding. That's a whole day of hard work paying off. A good performance, that's rewarding. I try to do at least one big project a year. This year, that was the album. Seeing this album on Spotify and being able to show it to my parents was really rewarding for me. They play my album in the car sometime when I'm not there.