Musical Opinion Quarterly, October 2024
Review of Presteigne Festival concert, 23rd August 2024

“Back in St Andrews’ Church, Presteigne, an early afternoon concert on the same day by pianist Joseph Tong was ushered in by the Welsh premiere of David Matthews’ Five Trees (2022), written in response to Sibelius’ Five Pieces, Op 75, ‘The Trees’, which closed the recital. Each of the five movements of David Matthews’ piece represented a different British tree and Joseph Tong, for whom the work was written, had this music well under his fingers, finding nobility in ‘The Oak’, elegance and suppleness in ‘The Willow’, resilience in ‘The Scots Pine’, elation in ‘The Apple’ and a wistful dignity in ‘The English Elm’, which ended the set on an inspiring note of hope for the future.

Lynne Plowman’s Another Set of Footprints in the Snow (2018) derived from Debussy’s Prelude ‘… des pas sur la neige’ and began with the original solo piano piece before taking the material in new directions, making imaginatively varied use of Debussy’s initial scrunchy triplet figure, in particular.
At the heart of the recital was the premiere of another festival commission, Lara Poe’s Koivunrungot Kaarella, roughly translated as ‘the arch-shaped, bent birch trunks’. This variegated work took as its starting point a movement from Sibelius’ piano cycle The Trees, entitled ‘The Birch’. Joseph Tong was alert to the music’s many shifts in tone, from remote and distanced, to stealthy and spacious. An episode with motoric rhythms, subsequently fragmented, and another paragraph containing accelerating, clangourous motifs caught the ear in this polished, carefully calibrated first performance. Lynne Plowman’s Lullaby for Ianto (2007) was the first piece the composer wrote following the birth of her son, and it was fluently, expressively rendered, alert to each tiny adjustment in tempo and mood.
Rounded out with short works by Sibelius and Britten, Joseph Tong’s concert was deeply satisfying, with diverse repertory bound by an overarching theme of nature.” [Paul Conway, Musical Opinion Quarterly]

International Piano Magazine  January/February 2023
Review of Wigmore Hall recital, 25th November 2022

“Someone from whom we don’t yet hear enough is the British pianist Joseph Tong whose lunchtime recital – a satisfying blend of old and new – was perfect in every way. After Schumann’s Arabesque he played Sibelius’ seldom performed suite The Trees, catching the gentle waywardness of the first, letting the overtones shine through in the third, and ending in splendour with ‘The Spruce’. Under Tong’s hands the poetry of these unassuming little pieces flowered persuasively.
  Then he gave the London premiere of Five Trees – David Matthews’ answer to the Sibelius set. These pieces seemed to grow organically out of Sibelius, with hints of medieval modality and occasional touches of Debussy: Tong’s grave and commanding touch was exactly what this very English music required. He rounded things off with a performance of Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy which was notable in its raw expressiveness, and in its successful yoking of wild passion and meticulous control.”
MICHAEL CHURCH

“The miniatures of Grieg’s Stimmungen came over in suitably kaleidoscopic guise: if these deserve to be part of the regular concert repertoire, so, most certainly, do the Sibelius works he played. 

Valse triste, which has pre-echoes of Ravel’s La valse, came over hauntingly, and Five Characteristic Impressions came clad in mellifluous languor, thunderous energy, and evanescent delicacy; the Sonata in F honoured the memory of Beethoven, Schumann, and Liszt.”