KUN-WOO PAIK PLAYS MOZART: WIT, WONDER, AND THE UNEXPECTED / Review

KUN-WOO PAIK PLAYS MOZART

WIT, WONDER, AND THE UNEXPECTED

Victoria Concert Hall

Tuesday (4 November 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 November 2025 with the title "Kun-woo Paik delivers Mozart with honesty, depth and artistry in stirring recital".

South Korean pianist Kun-woo Paik has made it a speciality of performing recitals featuring the music of just one composer. In 2014, Franz Schubert was the subject, while Robert Schumann distinguished his 2020 recital. On this evening presented by Altenburg Arts, the offering was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a highly satisfying programme drawn from three recently released all-Mozart recital discs.

It has been said that “Mozart was too easy for amateurs, but too difficult for professionals”. His “easy” C major Sonata (K.545), which carries the sub-title Sonata Facile, may seem to many like child’s play, and how often has it been heard in professional recitals? Almost never, as if performing it were some kind of a condescension.

Paik produced pure poetry in its simple uncluttered lines. Without including repeats nor succumbing to the temptation for ornamentation in its three short movements, the music sounded fresh and unsullied, as if how Mozart wanted it to be. From a virtuoso famous for Liszt, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev, this was some sea change, and one will never hear it the same way again.

Technically and interpretatively more complex was the Rondo in A minor (K.511), a work of intense contemplation and simmering melancholy. Instead of a world-weary trudge commonly encountered, Paik found a wellspring of optimism and hope, like seeing light at the end of a long tunnel.

This paved the way for the early Sonata in F major (K.280) which required fine and meticulous fingerwork coupled with seamless lyricism. Mozart demanded that his music “flow like oil”, and Paik duly delivered a reading of utmost fluency, contrasting the slow movement’s pensiveness with the finale’s wit and humour.

The recital’s second half opened with two miniatures alternating major and minor modes. The diminutive Adagio in C major (K.356, 617a), originally written for glass harmonica, was simplicity itself, while the Little Funeral March in C minor (K.453a) provided moments of seriousness with its sequence of big chords.

The exactly same modes were repeated for two major works, beginning with the Sonata in C major (K.330), one of Mozart’s most sunny utterances. Clarity and crispness of articulation distinguished Paik’s reading, the fast outer movements sandwiching a slow movement of true feeling which alternated between F major and minor. Its finale was a show of unfettered joy.

What followed had to be Mozart’s greatest single-movement work, the Fantasy in C minor (K.475), which encapsulated every vista of his passions and sorrows. Sounding implausibly modern for its time, its harmonic upheavals and myriad dynamic shifts pointed ahead to the turbulence of the Romantic era.

Its stark and unnerving opening of bare octaves spelt extreme sobriety, yet glimpses of congeniality and warmth were revealed in pages to come. Outbursts more associated with Beethoven also coloured its complexion, but Mozart’s complex psyche was finally laid bare by Paik unmannered and unhistrionic account. Despite the clamour, no encore was offered. After playing of such honesty, depth and artistry, none was needed.

Photography by Ung Ruey Loon.