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Not long ago, the West developed an overwhelming love for all things Korean: cuisine, romance dramas, pop groups. Much less notorious is the emerging Korean scene of classical music composers. Internationally-acclaimed pianist Eun-Hee Park aims to shed light on its abundance with her new release, KOREAN SOUNDSCAPES.
The album presents a veritable cross-section of Korea’s living composers, but also of Korean culture at large, particularly its balancing act between established tradition and hyper-advanced modernity. Vignettes of urban life intermingle with folk songs, Western compositional techniques with age-old Korean melodies, and traditional dances with barely tonal meditations. A fascinating peek behind the cultural curtain, enlivened further by Park’s immaculate pianism.
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The CD album, featuring music for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, was released in 2022. The project was funded by the grants from the University of Montevallo and the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and was recorded at the University of Oregon. The album was a winner of the 2022 Global Music Awards Silver Medal in a Chamber Music - Album category.
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The album was released in 2021, and features nocturnes and romances for cello and piano by Georg Goltermann (1824-1898). This project was funded by grants from both the University of Montevallo and the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. The project was recorded at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.
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A love for vocal music has maintained its presence throughout Korea’s turbulent history, and Ga-Gok or ‘Art Song’ has long offered opportunities to convey personal sentiments and messages through lyrical settings of the nation’s poetry. Today’s often deeply expressive Korean art songs uniquely combine traditional Korean/Asian musical elements within the structure of Western music. They feature the finest examples of solo and duet songs by leading Korean female composers, thus providing new insights into Korean society and its modern musical culture. The album was a winner of the 2023 Global Music Awards Silver Medal in a Classical Music category.
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Notes from Home
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Released in 2018, I collaborated with clarinetist Jonathan Holden (Associate Professor of Clarinet at Florida State University) on this CD album. The album features works by British composers, such as Hurlstone, Finzi, Bliss, Roxburgh, Benett, Stanford and Ireland. The project was recorded at Florida State University.
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The CD album features beloved Piazzolla's tango arrangements for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. All the arrangements were by violinist of enhakē, M. Brent Williams.
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Libby Larsen’s Rodeo Queen of Heaven takes its inspiration from religious iconography given a contemporary twist—a painting of a Madonna with gun—in a rhythmically vivacious tableau. Peter Lieuwen presents an aural portrait of the Gulfstream, fusing grace with melodic fragments in a nature depiction rich in depth. Peter Schickele’s Quartet is profuse in syncopation, jazz, folk music and a melancholy that only heightens the brilliance of the finale’s off-kilter dynamism. Copland’s Sextet began life as his Second Symphony but, pared down, proves utterly idiomatic, vital, melodically exciting and bracing.
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pendulum
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This installment features works from seven SCI composers: Doron Kima’s As From a Dream focuses on changes in texture as well as symmetry, developing varying thematic episodes throughout; Metamorphoses II by Clifton Callender is a gradual transformation of musical figures, employing harmonic extensions typical of folk fiddling; Jorge Variego, in Walls (flute nonet), presents a study on perception, using a nine-note block and rotating it in many directions as if it is three-dimensional; Alex Freeman’s Night on the Prairies, taking its name from a Walt Whitman poem, preserves the purity of the mid-West prairies and alludes to simple campfire tunes of the region; Wing Over Wing, Eric Nathan’s song-cycle, explores the various concepts associated with the definition of flight, taking imagery from Whitman’s poems and his own; Chris Arrell’s piece Narcissus/Echo pulls imagery from the Greek mythology, depicting the continual rippling theme of Narcissus’ reflection, which becomes the source of Echo’s repetitive calls; October by Philip Carlsen presents a succession of “rapid, metrically-shifting” arpeggiations as well as an exploration of voicing and doublings that trick the mind into hearing a piano of equal temperament as out of tune. This compilation reflects the diversity and originality of techniques coming from some of today’s most talented composers.
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Legacy
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Released in 2010, the album project was funded by Co-op Press Recording/Commission Assistance Grant. The project was recorded at Florida State University with a recording engineer and producer John Hadden.
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