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Klara Min (photo credit © Lisa-Marie Mazzucco)

Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, and make it your career?

Music itself.

My mother is a composer and she taught many piano students at home so I became familiar with the sound of piano when I was very little. I remember enjoying the beautiful sound, and I was amazed that my fingers could make music. As a child, I always liked singing and I think I tried searching for my own way of singing on piano, too. Since then my dream was to become a pianist who performs all around the world.

Who or what were the most important influences on your playing?

I think I cannot just pick one. Music is a reflection of life, and all I absorb, observe and experience in life influence my playing.

One day when I was twelve in Japan, my grandmother bought me two cassette tapes with Horowitz’s playing Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas. I didn’t know who he was and didn’t know much about different pianists back then, but his playing of Beethoven’s third movement of Moonlight sonata made my heart run. I remember very clearly that I was extremely excited about the inner beats of that movement. I also grew very closely to Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies and Chopin’s music.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

I guess challenges change according to where you are in life. I must say that the greatest challenge nevertheless is to accept what we call ‘Ars longa, Vita brevis’ (Art is long, Life is short). I can only do my best in music, so I give in and be humble before music. It is so easy to let your ego burn yourself, but if you truly appreciate the beauty of music nothing else but for the sake of music, then you learn and grow.
And I like challenges in general, so I gladly accept them. It is so easy to give up, so give up giving it up!!

Which performances/recordings are you most proud of?

I am happy when I feel that the audience empathizes with me in music. Sometimes it is not easy. But there are certain moments that I feel connected to the listeners. Those moments give me a heartfelt pleasure.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?

I like concert halls with good acoustics. Performing is listening and the acoustic is very important.

I used to love intimate spaces for a performance, but nowadays I prefer spacious venues where I can project farther.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?

I enjoy complete silence. I like to imagine sound before creating or listening. I don’t listen to music all the time but when I do, I enjoy listening to Lied, Beethoven String Quartets, Kreisler, Cortot,  J.S. Bach, and many more.

Who are your favourite musicians?

There are so many for so many different reasons!

My favourite pianist of all time is Alfred Cortot. He really has a distinctive tone I love.

But there are so many musicians who I respect and admire, not only limited to pianists. The list will go on and on. Being a good pianist is one thing, but being a good musician is more important for me.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

The Berlin Philharmonie Hall, where the stage is surrounded by the audience in 360 degrees. I felt a bit dizzy in the beginning as everywhere I looked, I could have eye contact with the audience. I found it most fascinating, and the audiences in Germany are such sincere listeners. I felt that they really expected to hear music not a show-off. It was a very special experience.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

Love. Love life. Embrace human nature. Be joyful with what life gives you and cherish.

There is a Russian poem by Pushkin I used to enjoy in my teenage years.

Should this life sometime deceive you,

Don’t be sad or mad at it!

In the day of grief, be mid
Merry days will come, believe.

Heart is living in tomorrow:

Present is dejected here:
In a moment passes sorrow:

That which passes will be dear

Music is to cherish life. And musicians, performers in specific, should carry enormously positive spirit even in the midst of performing the gloomiest music in order to do so, and that comes from loving.

It takes great maturity. It is a great mind that enables all, not a dexterity.

What are you working on at the moment?

I have been working on the programme for my Wigmore Hall bebut Recital (which took place on April 23): Schumann Arabesque, Fantasiestuecke Op. 12, Chopin Sonata No. 3 and Mazurkas, and a UK premiere of Sean Hickey’s Cursive.

After the debut recital, I will be working on character pieces I have commissioned with American composer Henry Martin, and all Beethoven Piano Concertos for which I will be making a recording with DELOS next year.

What do you enjoy doing most?

I enjoy travelling, discovering new façade of life by experiencing different cultures, food, people and language.

And by travelling, giving concerts, it is the most exciting experience.

But what really nurtures my mind, what makes myself in tune is the connection with God and another human being. I think my longing for deeper connecting with another being is a fuel for making music.

In everyday life I love hanging out with friends, and walking in Riverside Park with my puppy.

Pianist Klara Min has appeared in concert in North America, Europe and her native South Korea in major concert halls, including the Berlin Philharmonie Hall, Gasteig Hall in Munich, New York’s Carnegie Hall, and the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) hall in Seoul. She made her Carnegie Weill Recital début in 2002 as a winner of the Artists International Competition in New York. She is a recipient of a Samsung scholarship. Her competition prizes have included the Grand Prize of the IBLA Grand Prize International Competition, the Best Performance of Mozart Prize at the Viotti-Valsesia International Piano Competition in Italy and a top prize at the World Piano Competition in Cincinnati. Born into a musical family in Seoul, Klara Min started her first piano lesson with her composer mother, going on to study at Yewon School and Seoul Arts High School, the Manhattan School of Music and the Lübeck Musikhochschule. She has been a member of the piano faculty at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and an assistant teacher at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. She is a Yamaha Artist.

www.klaramin.com

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brittencurated

An intimate portrait of Benjamin Britten, as seen through a sequence of bittersweet songs for voice and piano and voice and guitar, provided the perfect antidote to the Wagner marathon at the Proms. The concert included an intense and very moving performance of the Canticle ‘Abraham and Isaac’ with tenor James Gilchrist, soprano Ruby Hughes and Imogen Cooper at the piano.

Read my full review here

Watch the entire concert (click on the picture to go to the BBC Radio Three website)

pcm

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It has long been my ambition to perform all 5 Beethoven Concertos in one evening, and it is great to be able to do this in a concert in aid of the Musicians Benevolent Fund. This charity has done so much over many decades to support musicians who have fallen into difficulties of one sort or another and provides invaluable scholarship money to talented students. The icing on the cake is that this will happen in my old Alma Mater, the RNCM in its 40th anniversary year, with an orchestra comprising many of its students past and present, with the very talented young conductor Daniel Parkinson. (Martin Roscoe)

All five piano concertos in one evening, performed by Martin Roscoe, one of the UK’s most acclaimed and versatile pianists, and conducted by Daniel Parkinson, together with an introduction by John Suchet. This promises to be a marathon feast of music, culminating in Beethoven’s Fifth ‘Emperor’ Concerto in the final concert at 9pm. By presenting all the concertos in a single day, audience members attending all three concerts will be offered a unique window on Beethoven’s creative life, and insights into the evolution of the piano concerto in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, from the youthful post-Haydn Nos. 1 and 2, through the No. 4, which marked a major turning point in the development of the concerto with the piano entering before the orchestra, to the sweeping proto-Romantic and virtuosic No, 5, the ‘Emperor’.

The concerts take place at the Royal Northern College of Music on 5th October, from 5pm, and tickets are available now. For further information, please visit the Beethoven Piano Concerto Project website: www.beethovenpianoconcertos.co.uk

I recently interviewed conductor Daniel Parkinson for my Meet the Artist series. Read his interview here.

BeethovenPCP A5 FLYER1

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I am without a piano until early August when my new (old!) grand piano arrives. After the initial sense of loss after saying goodbye to my trusty Yamaha upright has worn off (on seeing my despondent face this morning, the time when I am usually busy practising, my husband suggested asking for the Bechstein to be delivered sooner), I am going to try practising in a different way – without a piano.

There is much to be gained from working away from the piano and the ‘distraction’ of the keyboard: reading, analysing and annotating the score, marking up fingering schemes, cutting through the music to the heart of what it is about, its subtleties and balance of structure, studying style, the contextual background which provides invaluable insights into the way it should be interpreted, listening to recordings by others.

Reading: I habitually read scores in bed, having given up reading novels when I embarked on my diploma studies. I tend to read a score in a general way initially, for overall structure and shape, patterns and “colours” (this visual aspect is very important in my learning method, my synaesthesia assisting in the process). In a busy or complex score, such as the Messiaen I am learning at present (Regard de l’Etoile and Regard de la Croix), where there are some awkward chord clusters, I like to have a good idea of the shapes of the music imprinted in my mind’s eye. This also helps with memory work. Detailed reading comes with a careful analysis of the structure of the music, including a careful reading of the separate parts for left and right hand, and highlighting any potential pitfalls, or very tricky/awkward sections.

Another aspect of “reading” is reading around the score – i.e. books on music and composer, from detailed analaysis to performance practice and general commentaries, and programme notes.

Listening: Another important aspect of the learning process, there is useful work to be done by simply listening to other people’s interpretations of a piece or pieces on which I am working. This is not to imitate another’s reading of a work, but to gain insights or ideas, particularly for performance practice. For example, I have been enjoying Schiff’s recording of Bach’s Fifth French Suite, which I am working on at present. His treatment of ornaments in the repeats of the ‘Allemande’ is interesting and worth considering when I return to the keyboard.

And like “reading around”, there is useful work to be done “listening around” the music I am studying – again for historical context, stylistic considerations, interpretation etc. (I have a Spotify playlist called “For Reference” which I where I collect tracks which inform my current learning.)

Thinking: This may seem rather vague, but I spend a good deal of time thinking about the music I am learning, often when I am far away from the piano, such as on the District Line on a Monday morning on the way to my other job. This includes memory work (aural, visual and kinesthetic), “imagining the sound”, considering interpretative aspects, communication and emotion. This sits rather well with my teacher’s maxim “think before you play”.

Inspirations: Going to concerts provides me with some of the most potent and exciting inspirations – and it doesn’t have to be piano music either.