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

When I was 8 years old, I had a chance to play for a renowned pianist in Korea and I was very nervous for a whole week. One day before meeting her, I had a nightmare that she told me not to play piano and I cried a lot. That was the point when I realised that I want to play piano my whole life, no matter what. In fact, she was very lovely in person.

Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?

My piano teacher for 5 years from age 10. She was a very active performer and I went to her every concert. From the moment when she would enter the stage with the conductor until the end of concert, the audience was enchanted by her. She was my absolute idol. She always told me that your music starts when you enter the stage and at her concerts she demonstrated to me what she meant. She was magnificent and it was my dream to be a pianist like her.

I am grateful that I have met so many wonderful musicians who are a big influence in my life and not just in music: especially Leon McCawley, Deniz Gelenbe, Gabriele Baldocci, Pascal Roge, Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Ola Karlsson and Peter Grote.

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

For a long time I played piano for someone else. One day I lost that person and I was really lost for a year. Slowly I learnt to love music again and play piano for myself. Now I will always have a reason to play my music because it is finally truly who I am.

Which performance are you most proud of?

I am fortunate to have played at prestigious concert venues all around the world. I enjoy playing at big halls, and was surprised when I had a life-changing experience at a lower standard hall. After the recital an elderly lady came to me crying. She was speaking Spanish, which I could not understand, but I could feel how happy she was. I was really touched and proud that I could make people happy, or happier, with my music. After that point I was reminded of the origin of music and my purpose in being musician.

Which particular works do you think you play best?

The music that means something to me.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

I aim to have a mixed repertoire so that there is something for me and for the audience.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

Wigmore Hall in London, Palau de la Musica in Valencia and the Berlin Philharmonic are amazing and at the top of my favourites list.

On one occasion I played a solo recital on a big stage (the stage itself has a capacity of 500 people) in Korea. It was interesting for me as it was hard to control the acoustic. It was very challenging but gave me joy.

Favourite pieces to listen to?

I love listening to Chopin piano concerto recordings. Every pianists has a different interpretation.

Who are your favourite musicians?

Alfred Cortot and Jacqueline du Pre

What is your most memorable concert experience?

Performing the Prokofiev Piano Concerto no.3 for Alzheimer’s patients and a solo recital at an army base. I never had such a concentrated and enthusiastic audience.

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

Know yourself. Physically and psychologically.

What are you working on at the moment?

I am preparing two world premieres for a Wigmore Hall recital this month, by Stephen Montague and Gwyn Pritchard. These works were commissioned as part of my project to commemorate lives lost at sea – an idea that came to be after the tragic disaster of the Korean ferry MV Sewol on the 16 April 2014. I sometimes forget the many different sides of nature and tend to label it based on what is visible on the surface. For the second part of my recital I have selected pieces related to this idea, including the two premiered pieces.

What is your most treasured possession?

My Spotify subscription and Edwin Fischer’s recording of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.

Identified by Gramophone as the ‘talent of tomorrow – today’, Jenna Sung gives her debut Wigmore Hall recital on 16th November 2014 as a prize for the 2013 Jaques Samuel Pianos Competition. The programme includes works by Haydn, Skryabin, Chopin and Ravel, together with the premiere of new works by Stephen Montague and Gwyn Pritchard. Further information and tickets here

Jenna Sung’s biography

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The delightful 1901 Arts Club, tucked away down a side street close to Waterloo Station, seems just about ideal for intimate chamber recitals, and the perfect retreat on a cold November evening to enjoy a superior concert of music by Brahms and Schubert played by Korean/British pianist Yoong Chung.

The concert marked the launch of Yoon’s first CD of late piano works by Schubert, the Sonata in C minor D958 and the Drei Klavierstücke D946, which formed the main part of the programme, but the evening commenced with Brahms’ Albumblatt (“album leaf”), a short work which was only discovered in 2011. Sensitively played, a simple singing melody over a rippling bass line, it was an appropriate opening piece for an evening of music written for the salon, to be played amongst friends.

Schubert’s Drei Klavierstücke (literally “piano pieces” – the title was given by Brahms on the publication of these pieces) are sometimes also termed “impromptus”, and each expresses perfectly the sense of the word: spontaneous and extempore. Composed during 1828, that annus mirabilis of output for Schubert and only a few months before his death, they are rich in contrasts, colours and moods, and Yoon was alert to the shifting characters and improvisatory nature of these pieces. His opening of the second Klavierstück was particularly tender and lyrical, its tempo relaxed and elegant, and a reminder that Schubert was a composer of songs. Throughout, tasteful pedalling, limpid sound, clarity of expression, precise articulation, and convincing use of tempo rubato, all underpinned by solid technique and musical understanding, made for an extremely satisfying performance.

The Sonata in C minor, D958, is the most portentous of Schubert’s last three piano sonatas and also the most overtly “Beethovenian”, not least in its use of Beethoven’s “favourite” key, C minor, and the darkly dramatic opening statements of the first movement. Once again, we were treated a performance of great transparency, profound expression and sensitivity to Schubert’s writing, and while some purists may not approve of Yoon’s use of rubato here, as in the earlier pieces, I found his account wholly convincing and refreshingly imaginative. This was not surface artifice but a performance founded on clear purpose and musicality. It was the best Schubert I have heard all year.

After a rollicking Rachmninov encore, we retired to the elegant upstairs bar and sitting room at the 1901 for prosecco and convivial conversation, much in the manner of Schubert and his friends in the 1820s. It was a pleasure to meet Yoon, and two of his former teachers.

The same expression, clarity and precision is evident on his CD, all tastefully packaged with a minimalist monochrome design and attractive slipcase. For further information about the CD, please visit Yoon’s website

My Meet the Artist interview with Yoon Chung

1901 Arts Club

 

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

My parents were given a piano as a wedding present so it was a natural step for me to try the piano. Fortunately, (or, some might say, unfortunately) I took to it and liked it immediately.

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

I owe a great deal to my teachers:  Maria Curcio and Mark Swartzentruber for their guidance in my formative years in London, Benjamin Frith for his passion, Joaquin Achucarro for his discipline, Ferenc Rados for opening my mind.

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

Finding a happy balance.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?

Wigmore Hall is pretty special.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?

I could happily play Brahms and Beethoven all day long.

Who are your favourite musicians?

Richter, Gilels, Haskil, Horowitz, Argerich and Schiff, to name but a few. I have also heard staggeringly beautiful recordings of Lili Kraus and Annie Fischer recently.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

Performing in the cloister of Sant’Andrea Apostolo in Amalfi. It was utterly magical.

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

Honesty and truth.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Not to have any worries. Alternatively, a good, leisurely breakfast.

 

Pianist Yoon Chung is a versatile musician and has performed throughout Europe, America and the Far East.  His London appearances include the Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre, Kings Place, St. John’s Smith Square and St. James’ Piccadilly.  He has been broadcast in France, Japan, Korea and America.  Born in Seoul, Korea, Yoon spent his formative years in London under the tutelage of Maria Curcio and Mark Swartzentruber and was an ABRSM postgraduate scholar at the Royal Northern College of Music.  Further studies were undertaken in America and Hungary under Joaquìn Achùcarro and Ferenc Rados.  Yoon is a founder member of Trio Andante and currently resides in London.

Yoon Chung’s full biography

www.yoonchung.co.uk

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Fryderyk Chopin’s evergreen Mazurkas lend themselves to a wide variety of interpretations, and on her CD on the Delos label, Korean pianist Klara Min shines another light on them in a personal survey of her favourites.

The mazurka is a Polish folk dance in three time with an accent on the second or third beat. Chopin elevated the form into the concert miniature, in effect creating a new genre that became known as the “Chopin genre”. The sixty-nine Mazurkas that he composed in his lifetime remain amongst his best-loved music for piano. They offer some of the most intimate musical insights into Chopin’s relationship with his homeland, with their lilting rhythms and harmonies, poignant suspensions, tender, meandering melodies and falling cadences, and the subtle use of rubato. Others are more lively, with bright rhythms and piquant textures; yet all seem imbued with zal, that untranslatable Polish word so often associated with the music of Chopin, suggesting nostalgia and longing.

Klara Min’s approach to these works is sympathetic and thoughtful, if occasionally a little too studied in some of the phrasing and use of tenuto. But overall she neatly captures the individual idiosyncrasies, and shifting nuances and textures of these miniatures, with melodies sensitively highlighted, though never at the expense of the interior architecture of the music (the Mazurkas are replete with complex harmonies and counterpoint). A warm tone and wide-ranging pianistic colours, combined with supple tempo rubato, a plaintive tenderness, which runs through all the works on the CD, and Min’s technical acuity result in a charming reading of these exquisite miniatures. The selection closes as intimately as it opens, with the heartrending Op 68, no. 4, Chopin’s last composition – a piece which my piano teacher says she never teaches to students “because it is so very special”.

The CD comes with detailed notes and is produced with vibrant, clean sounds.

Klara Min will feature in a forthcoming Meet the Artist interview