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.