According to the Naxos website this release is a "Klara
Min Piano Recital". On the front cover of the CD itself,
the title is "Pa-Mun: Ripples on Water (Korean Piano Music)",
but on the back and spines it is "Piano Music from Korea".
For extra spice, the CD is also on sale with an alternative
cover, mainly available outside the UK, featuring simply a large
photo of Min and the legend, "Klara Min: Piano Music by
Korean Composers".
At any rate, 'Korean Piano Music' is something of a misnomer:
there is very little ethnically Korean about the music in Min's
programme. At least four of the Korean-born composers have had
training in Germany, Austria or France, and it is this fact
rather than any familiarity with the classical or folk Korean
tradition that comes through in these piano works. The disc
is best considered, then, as an introduction to the young pianist
Klara Min, Korean herself, but now resident in New York.
Younghi Pagh-Paan's piece, Pa-mun, is a musical evocation of
the ripple effect of stones thrown onto the smooth surface of
a lake, and provides an apt title for the album as a whole:
virtually all the music is reflective, nebulous and ostinato-based,
with the emphasis on sonorities rather than narrative. Two of
Uzong Chae's three Preludes are quite upfront about their minimalist
credentials, no.8 being one of the few energetic pieces in the
recital.
Klara Min's liner-notes credit Sukhi Kang with South Korea's
first ever art music work in electronic media in 1966. In the
Three Sketches, which date from the same time, Kang is scarcely
in more compromising mood: these are three concise atonal pieces
with big leaps, jerky rhythms and tone clusters that Anton Webern
would recognise. Not widely appealing, for sure, but nothing
that more traditional palates could not endure for its five
minutes.
The same might be said of Isang Yun's Fünf Stücke, described
as "student pieces", though Yun was in his forties
when he wrote them - he had by this time moved to and settled
in Germany and was studying under Boris Blacher. Though this
expressionistic statement will not be to most tastes, Yun is
still probably the only composer ever to have been sentenced
by his state to life imprisonment for espionage, only to be
freed and exiled after petitioning by Stravinsky, Karajan, Ligeti,
Stockhausen and others! Though a later work, his atonal Interludium
A still shows the influence of Blacher and German modernism.
Hesitant, brittle quiet passages alternate with sudden but almost
dispassionate outbursts. This disquieting, almost menacing work
is the highlight of Min's programme: what a pity that she did
not record other longer works that give her, and the listener,
a chance to feel properly immersed in the music.
Given that the disc is a mere 55 minutes long, the omission
of the final section of Chung Gil Kim's four-movement Go-Poong
must amount to wilfulness on Naxos's part - or is it really
more than 25 minutes long?! The subtitle, 'Memory of Childhood',
is taken almost literally for the first part, which is little
more than a slow, hypnotic repetition of block chords. In her
notes Klara Min states that "Korean folk melodies and traditional
tunes are used to shape the melodic content" - if that
is true, those folk melodies have more than a passing resemblance
to Western art music!
In sum, there is nothing must-have or even must-hear about this
CD, but the music is absorbing in its way, and Klara Min's piano
playing is demonstrably intelligent, technically assured and,
where necessary, delicate or muscly.
Sound quality is invariably excellent at the American Academy
of Arts and Letters, and this recording is no exception.
Byzantion
Collected reviews and contact at reviews.gramma.co.uk
Klara Min (piano)
