FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact for Klara Min: A440 Arts Group
paula@a440arts.com
NAXOS RELEASES DEBUT RECORDING BY PIANIST KLARA MIN: PA-MUN (RIPPLES ON WATER)
CD features rarities by Korean composers, including the world premiere recording of Younghi Pagh-Pahn’s Pa-mun
NEW YORK, NY – Recognized for her “lovely, nuanced tone, genuine expressiveness, excellent technique, exuberance and vitality” (New York Concert Review), Korean-born pianist Klara Min has released her debut solo recording on the Naxos label devoted to the music of Korean composers. The recording features the world premiere recording of Younghi Pagh-Pahn’s Pa-mun, as well as rarely heard works by Isang Yun, Sukhi Kang, Uzong Chae, and Chung Gil Kim.
The disc, which highlights several generations of Korean composers, opens with Younghi Pagh-Pahn’s (b.1945) Pa-mun (Ripples on Water) (1971), which also serves as the recording’s title. Evocative of wave reflections on water, the composer notes, “On the quiet lake, and when one throws small stones one after another, the surface makes circles and those circles create another pa-mun.”
Ms. Min, who spent months gathering music for the album, notes that “It’s interesting that most of the Korean composers represented on the recording trained in either Germany or France. The music includes a broad representation of Western compositional techniques, sometimes side-by-side with Korean folk elements.”
Isang Yun(1917-1995) was imprisoned by both the Japanese (during World War II) and then by the South Koreans during the mid-1960s. Thanks to the efforts of Herbert von Karajan and Igor Stravinsky, he was released. The petition they put together included signatures of new music luminaries including Stockhausen and Ligeti. Yun eventually settled in Germany, where many South Korean composers were drawn to study. His expressionistic Fünf Stücke (1958) is featured on the disc. Also included are Three Piano Sketches by one of Yun's students, Sukhi Kang (b. 1934), who was the teacher of one of the most renowned Korean composers, Unsuk Chin.
Composer Uzong Chae (b.1968), who studied at the Paris Conservatoire and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, is represented by Three Preludes. The style of each Prelude varies from sixteenth century polyphony to contemporary popular music. The disc closes with a three wonderfully minimalistic pieces by Chung Gil Kim (b. 1934) from his four-movement suite entitled Go-Poong (Memories from Childhood). The idea of “soundless tone space” is an important element in Go-Poong, and is meant to reflect the beauty of line and space in traditional oriental paintings.
A native of South Korea, pianist Klara Min made her New York recital debut in 2002 at Weill Recital Hall as winner of the Artists International Competition, in which she performed the world premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Piano Etudes and the New York premiere of Pippa’s Song by American composer Henry Martin.
Ms. Min has performed extensively throughout North America, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, and in her native South Korea, in some of the world’s most important concert venues, including Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and Merkin Hall, New York, Gasteig Hall, Munich, Berlin Philharmonie Hall, and KBS Broadcast Hall in Seoul, South Korea. She has performed with several orchestras including the Korean Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Symphony Orchestra, Symfonieorchester Berlin, Armenian Philharmonic, Jupiter Symphony, Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, New York Sinfonietta, American Chamber Orchestra, among others.
In August, 2011, Ms. Min made her Chicago recital debut on the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series, broadcast live on WFMT/Chicago. For her 2011-2012 season, Ms. Min will appear in several concerts throughout the New York area, perform the Schumann Piano Concerto as guest soloist with the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra in Alaska, and film a new solo recital DVD.
Born into a musical family in Seoul, Ms. Min began piano studies with her composer mother. Following studies at the Seoul Arts High School, Ms. Min completed her bachelors and masters degrees in piano performance at the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Byron Janis and Sara Buechner. In 2006, Ms. Min earned the prestigious Aufbaustudium-Konzertexamen in piano performance with pianist James Tocco at the Luebeck Musikhochschule in Germany. Klara Min is a Yamaha Artist.
####