CD Review (The Straits Times, September 2017)

CLIBURN GOLD 2017

YEKWON SUNWOO, Piano

Decca 4815527 / ****1/2

In June of this year, the 28-year-old Yekwon Sunwoo became the first Korean pianist to win 1^st prize at the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition held in Fort Worth, Texas. This winner's recital disc captures “live” some of his key solo performances in three rounds of competition. 

Included is the World Premiere recording of Canadian pianist-composer Marc-André Hamelin's Toccata On L'Homme Arme, the specially commissioned set-piece for this competition. It is a no-holds-barred fantasy on a medieval French song which literally sweeps the entire keyboard, and he nails it with stunning aplomb.

Sunwoo's musicality is also displayed in Haydn's Sonata No.58 in C major and Liszt's transcription of Schubert's lied Litanei (Am Tage Aller Seelen), which may be considered anti-virtuosic for their lack of outright showiness. However these are a foil for the gilded sheen applied to Percy Grainger's Ramble On Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier Final Duet, which demands the most delicate of touches and fine sense of balance in revealing the harmonies. 

The through-and-through showpieces come in Ravel's La Valse and Rachmaninov's Second Sonata (Op.36, the shorter 1931 edition), which he delivers like any Cliburn laureate should. An hour's worth of piano gold seems like short measure, but here is a worthy musical calling card.      

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, August 2016)

SOLITAIRES

KATHRYN STOTT, Piano

BIS 2148 / ****1/2

This is a handy anthology of 20^th century French music, with the composers casting a fond retrospective glance at musical forms and compositional styles of the past. The term “neoclassical” comes to mind but that does not apply to all works, which are tonal with the tendency to twelve-tone technique strongly resisted. 

Jehan Alain's brief Prelude & Fugue (1935) is a neo-Bachian tribute by a composer better known as an organist. Henri Dutilleux's only Piano Sonata (1946-48), in three movements, is both lyrical and jazzy in its resourceful use of harmonies, capped by an imposing yet free-wheeling Chorale and Variations as a finale.

The best known work is Maurice Ravel's La Tombeau De Couperin (1914-17), with six movements including a prelude, fugue, baroque dances and toccata to close. Each piece was written in memory of a friend killed in the Great War. British pianist Kathryn Stott is sensitive to all form of rhythms, idioms and nuances which make for very lively performances. 

She concludes with Olivier Messiaen's Le Baiser De L'Enfant-Jesus (Kiss Of The Infant Jesus) from the massive 20-piece cycle Vingt Regards Sur L'Enfant Jesus (1944), a gentle lullaby built over a repeated ground bass. New is old, and old is new in this revelatory recital disc.

BENJAMIN BEILMAN, Violin

YEKWON SUNWOO, Piano

Warner Classics 0825646008971 / ****

Every young musician's dream is to cut a debut recording, and American violinist Benjamin Beilman, winner of the 2010 Montreal International Violin Competition, shows his mettle in an interesting programme of contrasted works. In Schubert's lyrical Grand Duo in A major (D.574) that opens, Beilman crafts a tone that is wiry, incisive and always on-edge. 

This might come across to the listener as acidic and unyielding for Romantic repertoire, and is far better suited to the two 20^th century works that follow. The mystery and folk-inflected pages of Janacek's Violin Sonata however benefit from this direct, full-frontal approach.

For Stravinsky's Divertimento, an adaptation of music from the ballet The Fairy's Kiss (which in turn uses Tchaikovsky's music), the narrative qualities and sense of fantasy are well brought out. The recital comes full circle with the Vienna of Fritz Kreisler's Viennese Rhapsodic Fantasietta, a single-movement violin concerto in all but name. 

Unsurprisingly, it is based on the waltz, opening in a tonally ambiguous haze before relaxing into the congenial dance that is so beloved. Beilman and the ever-sensitive Korean pianist Yekwon Sunwoo, himself a multi-award winner, ably provide the enjoyable conclusion that this disc deserves.