Klara Min PIANO MUSIC FROM KOREA


Release date: July 26, 2011
Composers: Choe, Uzong; Kang, Sukhi; Kim, Chung-gil; Pagh-Paan, Younghi; Yun, Isang
Label: Naxos
Catalogue No: 8.572406

Award-winning pianist Klara Min has been recognized for her “excellent technique, exuberance and vitality” (New York Concert review). Here she brings the unique synthesis of traditional sources and contemporary compositional techniques of five leading Korean composers. Their works range from descriptive serenity in Younghi Pagh-Paan’s Pa-mun, childhood simplicity in Chung Gil Kim’s Go Poong (‘Memory of Childhood’) and rhythmic and dynamic extremes in Sukhi Kang’s Piano Sketches. Pioneering figurehead Isang Yun is represented by his early expressionist Fünf Stücke and the much later improvisatory Interludium.  Read the Press Release


Reviews

“Min plays with the most ravishing piano tone I’ve heard in the last 50 discs I’ve listened to, at least! Her dynamic control is out of this world—anyone who can make silk out of dissonance this strong is a top-notch artist in my book. She has a patience that most of these pieces require, and a love for intentional silences…. Anybody’s music would be served well by Min’s touch.”
– Stephen Estep, American Record Guide

“…Klara Min's sensitive, colorful, polished, and well recorded performances make a most compelling case for these works.”
– Jed Distler, Classics Today

“Klara Min has done a worthy job of tackling challenging music by the leading composers of her homeland.” 
– V. Vasan, allmusic.com, September, 2011

"Klara Min conveys that sense with beautiful phrasing, a deceptively facile way of handling the difficult pages and a dynamic sense so important to the successful performance of this music.”
– Grego Applegate Edwards, Classical-Modern Music Review

“There is tone poetry and twelve-tone abstraction and expressionist experimentation, and all of it is played both expertly and sympathetically by pianist Klara Min…Recommended.”
– Rick Anderson, Baker & Taylor CD Hotlist, September 2011

“..Klara Min's piano playing is demonstrably intelligent, technically assured and, where necessary, delicate or muscly.”
– Music Web International