Music Industry Vision Statement
A Piano Recital by Young-Joo Lee in Palau Altea, Altea, Spain
I intend to be a lover of music and attend a lot of concerts and recitals, so do not try to write a review each time, except for some notes from my journal. But sometimes the game is so perfect, so touching interpretations that the experience demands a record, if only to help spread true talent, perhaps exceptional. And so it was with Young-Joo Lee, a Korean pianist. She gave her concert Friends of the Music of the Marina Baixa on November 9, 2007 at the Palau de Altea on the Costa Blanca of Spain.
In short, the program seemed quite conventional. Presented Haydn, Rachmaninov, List, Ravel and Prokofiev. I envisaged a classical sonata to play as a loosener, a couple of preludes, a masterpiece, perhaps a princess now dead and then some final harmonious Prokofiev to round things out. I am not suggesting that the concert programs offered to the Friends of Music tend to be predictable. Quite the contrary, tend to the ambitions, but I'm always skeptical of programs that list only the composers names.
Young-Joo Lee began with a Haydn sonata, but it was much more than expected loosener. She played the piece, Kitchen XVI: 34 in E minor, with charm, wit and real invention, with some of the rhythmic turns and cadences that comes with an air of unexpected surprise. Haydn sonatas are rarely played well, and when they are, are a revelation, an ear revelation.
She went ahead with a very rarely played set of variations by Rachmaninov. We all know the Paganini Rhapsody for piano and orchestra, but how many of us ever heard a concert of the composer's work 42, the Variations on a Theme of Corelli? It is a late work, written in a more hard the composer's works known and generally popular. But it is a very demanding piece, both in its execution and implementation. Its twenty variations, more intermediate and coda, present a formidable challenge for the performer. They begin after the declaration of the small Corelli, tune apparently stagnation and require tremendous interpretive skill as well as technical mastery and Young Joo Lee displayed brilliance in both areas to bring out the best in music. A set of variations can often descend into the presentation of a list, with each element interesting in itself, but any lack of coherence. Not so with this Rachmaninov and much of the credit should go to the ability of the performer to identify and communicate the grand design.
Then we had a real gem. Young-Joo Lee played the last of Liszt's Paganini Studies. It is in the child and is based on the well-known theme of the 24th Caprice for solo violin, the same subject Rachmaninov used for his Rhapsody. Liszt's treatment of matter is nothing more than fireworks and as Young-Joo Lee played, there were moments in his hands and arms just a blur. But pianists often these pieces as if they were nothing more than a display of gymnastics. It is essential that everything should be in the right place, of course, but to achieve players from many states to sacrifice the musical vision, elegance and interpretation are muscled out by sheer technique. Not so with Young-Joo Lee. No was only part of a tour pianistic force was also a completely satisfying musical experience. The pyrotechnics made sense and became much more color the bangs and flashes of random display.
After the interval Young-Joo Lee presented his Ravel, who was the Valses Nobles et Sentimentales. Essentially it was the third piece in the form of variation in the trot. Under less hands, this could easily have become tedious, but Young-Joo Lee became a triumph. It was more than an opportunity to prove she could handle the legato ambiguities of Ravel language after the trust force of Liszt. She played with intensity and power when needed. But she also never let the sense of the waltz is subsumed in the detail.
And then, of Prokofiev. Young-Joo Lee gave us nothing less than the Seventh Sonata. Now the pianistic pyrotechnics needed an extra toughness, an almost industrial delivery through thematic and harmonic genius composer should shine. And playing Young-Joo Lee was not only to the piece, which provides a complete revelation. To say that the third movement that drove the car directly into the garage an understatement! It is a piece that hurtles toward its end abruptly, but to work must be totally ruthless in their pursuit, never stalling, do not anticipate. To describe his game the more perfect would be to make it an injustice. It was much better than that and, frankly, I think the audience was completely stunned.
It offered a bis perfect in the form of a Piazzolla tango and then retired for a rest. Young-Joo Lee is an incredible talent. I hope his solo career flowers.
About the Author
Philip Spires
Author of Mission, an African novel set in Kenya
http://www.philipspires.co.uk
I was born in Wakefield, west Yorkshire in the United Kingdom and grew up in Sharlston, then a mining village. After London University I lived in Kenya. Then I taught in London before moving to Brunei and then the UAE. Since 2003, I have lived in Spain, completing a PhD and my first published novel, Mission.
Panel: Reinventing the Music Biz | MidemNet 2011