Saturday, June 9, 2012

Sahun Hong: Moving On Up

While reading through Sahun Hong's program notes, a few things leap out at you: he enrolled at Texas Christian University at the ripe old age of eleven, graduated at sixteen and does mathematics in his spare time. Did I mention that the Fort Worth native is still only seventeen, and is already pursuing an Artist's Diploma at TCU?

If you can pick your jaw up off the floor (it took me a while) long enough to listen to his music, Hong is also a fascinating pianist. He started out with the familiar J.S. Bach "Well-Tempered Clavier", specifically Prelude and Fugue No. 6. This piece has an absolute deluge of notes in it that threatens to drown the unfortunate pianist. However, Hong not only survived, but thrived in the Great Flood of sixteenth-notes (I think that's what they were): while playing all of these complex patterns, he found the time to draw out scores of little hooks and fillips that are built into the Bach. He found meaning in this mass of notes and was very good at drawing it out for the audience.


This pattern would continue throughout the rest of the program, as Hong continued to show a deep appreciation for the intricacies of the music. Whether it was soft and small or loud and forceful, Hong was able to draw out all the little patterns Schumann put in his Fantasiestücke. He got maybe a touch too aggressive at times in the Schumann, but it really didn't matter. When Hong tried for grandeur near the end of the piece, he pretty well got it; and when he tried for a softer, more expressive sound, it really showed both on his face and in his play. In my notes, right at the end of the Schumann, it says "He's doing pretty much everything pretty well". Hong's Chopin Nocturne and Leon Kirchner's "Interlude II", closing out the program, were performed with a similar mix of technical proficiency and emotional appeal.

Although Hong's mid-concert talks were a little hard to follow (he paused between almost every phrase), he was able to deliver a lot of really good technical information about each piece. This was particularly true of the Kirchner, where he demonstrated and explained several themes before putting them to work in the calm, quiet Interlude.


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