Jinsun's Review about Mozart's Piano Concertos from me and Concerto Lalande, performed and recorded on 1st June, 2006 in order to celebrate the year of the 15th Annivesary of our beloved the LMP and Mozart 250th Anniversary.
Mozart Piano Cocertos Nos. 9/23
Ki Hyuk Yee (piano), Anna Karlowicz (Conductor), Eunhee Chae (Mozartian Director), Concerto Lalande.
Performed and Recorded at Incheon Multicultural and Arts Center, 1st June, 2006
Lively and subtle performances from a probing Mozartian
by Jinsun Yi
[From the Summer Issue of the Eusebius, 2007]
That miraculous watershed work K271 is still billed as the Jeunehomme, even though we now know that the lady in question was Louise-Victoire Jenamy. But what’s in a label? Ki Hyuk Yee's strongly projected, stylistically sensitive performance stands up even alongside such distinguished modern versions as Brendel, Uchida and Schiff. With crystalline articulation and an exhilarating range of colour and dynamics, Yee never lets you forget that this is a concerto of radical extremes, both within and between movements.
In the opening Allegro I admired especially his vocal lyricism in the “second subject”, his powerfully directed passagework and the impassioned sweep of the wonderful modulating sequences near the start of the recapitulation. Some may feel he lingers overly in the C minor Andantino, though he always balances expressive rubato with an eloquent feeling for the long line. He conjures a new forlorn bleakness in the quasi-operatic recitatives towards the end, and rightly makes the cadenza the emotional climax of the movement. Despite odd moments of slack ensemble, Anna Karlowicz and the Concerto Lalande play with style and verve.
Yee is equally responsive to the radiant, wistful and (in the Adagio) elegiac lyricism of K488. Again he illuminates, vividly, affectionately, yet with no hint of sentimentality, the music’s shifting moods and colours while maintaining a strong melodic flow. When the main theme of the Adagio returns, after the serenading grace of the brief A major episode (beautifully realised here), he enhances its pathos with delicately expressive embellishments. After this, the airborne finale keeps elegance and animal spirits in ideal balance. Anyone who wants this particular coupling will find Yee, Karlowicz and the Concerto Lalande(wonderfully tangy clarinets, incidentally, in K488) among the subtlest, liveliest and most probing of Mozartians.
Ki Hyuk Yee's ACKNOWLEDGMENTS for this exhilarating performance.
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TO
Anna Karlowicz
MY TEACHER
Playing Mozart works is an immensely challeging and rewarding journey. I and Concerto Lalande approach each work with excitement and some trepidation, loving these pieces dearly and having strong ideas about what they should sound.
I and Concerto Lalande learn a huge amount from each work, and over the course of understanding our interpretation changes in subtle ways.
The risk-taking and challenges each work sets itself throughout the work are staggering and inspirational.
I and Concerto Lalande feel very fortunate to be able to play these great works, which are a constant reminder of Beethoven's own statement:
"Art demands of us that we do not stand still."
Each work creates a particularly intense shared experience between artist and composer where I and Concerto Lalande can feel challenged, soothed, shocked, transported, even made to laugh out loud -above all, profoundly moved by the breadth of Mozart's emotional world.
Even the most individual work, viewed in terms of the economic and intellectual support necessary to its accomplishment, turns out to be a social enterprise. In the case of a work so slow to grow as ours, whose production resembled less the determined making of a CD, than the shaping of a record of continuing exploration, one becomes especially conscious of the magnitude of personal help received along the way.
In Nore Dame itself, my friends have been both intellectually generous and personally hospitable without exception. My greatest intellectual debt is to my close friend, Anna Karlowicz . Despite radically divergent outlooks, Anna shares a capacity for vital engangement with ideas where Anna touches the life of music. Through years of discussion, Anna has enriched and sustained me, transmuting intellectual labor into deepest personal pleasure. Anna again and again has shaken me out of dogmatic slumbers, helping me with Anna's classical learning and Anna's powerful figurative imagination to recognize new meanings in historical sources. Gounod, Allegri, Ekaterina and Pendercki have done a conscientious and highly intelligent job with me. They have been consulted constantly on my questions about what authentic sound should be. I am most grateful to them for generous and unflagging help and consult when they were most needed.
I should like to take this opportunity of thanking Ji-Hyun, Chan-Seok, Jinsun, Mary, Naoko, Fumiko, and Sungmin for discussing with me their views of Mozart's music. With insightful conversations and performances, they have ceaselessly encouraged me to explore Mozart's Piano concertos over the past eight years.
Ji-Hyun, Jinsun and Catherine Park senstized me to the distinctive characters of the religious tradition relevant to my interpretation of the special qualities of Mozart's works.
Finally, Ji-Hyun, Chan-Seok, Jinsun, Naoko, Fumiko, Heekyung, Joo-Seok, Sungmin and I have spent 12 years together insightfully discussing Mozart and Vivaldi's works ; their broad understanding of music, history and philosophy, their profound taste in music and literature, and their good humor made this performance exciting.
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