EIF 2023 Yeol Eum Son Queen's Hall 15th August Review
Yeol Eum Son was at The Queen’s Hall Edinburgh today, a performance that was part of the long running and very popular 11am Edinburgh International Festival concert series.
Born in Wonju, South Korea in 1986, Yeol Eum Son has over the years proven herself to be one of the most gifted pianists of her generation and her ongoing high profile performances across the world bear testimony to her obvious talent and technical skills.
Today, those technical skills were obvious throughout this performance and this was very much a Beethoven programme as his music and his influence upon future generations of composers and musicians was apparent in a very carefully selected programme of music.
Split into two performance halves, this concert allowed Yeol Eum Son to demonstrate not only an enviable range of technical skills but also to give all of us a glimpse of just how diverse her ability to capture different moods, colours, and emotions in music are, and the music below was a pleasure to listen to.
Bizet Variations chromatiques
Czerny Variations on Pierre Rode’s Ricordanza
Liszt ‘Ricordanza’ from the Transcendental Etudes
Alkan Variations on a Theme of Steibelt
It was obvious from the music above that, for Yeol Eum Son, technical accuracy is obviously highly important to her, but actually feeling the music and the emotions that it creates is also just as important.
For me, it is always interesting to see the threads of how one composer hands on their music to the next generation and in Yeol Eum Son’s performances this was often clear – Czerny was Beethoven’s protegé and Liszt studied with Czerny.
That technical accuracy was, however, more than put to its test in the second half of this concert and Yeol Eum Son’s often very emotional and expressive performance and interpretation of Beethoven Piano Sonata No 29 Op 106 ‘Hammerklavier’. Not only did Beethoven design this work to be the most technically demanding of his piano concertos, it is also considered by many people to be one of the most technically demanding works ever written for piano in the classical repertoire, and Yeol Eum Son just looked so composed, so comfortable throughout this performance and for moments it was almost as if she left us to be completely immersed in Beethoven’s wonderful music.
Yeol Eum Son is obviously a highly gifted technical player but, just as important for me, she is also an expressive and emotional player and without the last two gifts being there, music can become simply a technical exercise. Music should always evoke an emotional response within you and today Yeol Eum Son took us from sorrow to joy and everything in between with her performances.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Born in Wonju, South Korea in 1986, Yeol Eum Son has over the years proven herself to be one of the most gifted pianists of her generation and her ongoing high profile performances across the world bear testimony to her obvious talent and technical skills.
Today, those technical skills were obvious throughout this performance and this was very much a Beethoven programme as his music and his influence upon future generations of composers and musicians was apparent in a very carefully selected programme of music.
Split into two performance halves, this concert allowed Yeol Eum Son to demonstrate not only an enviable range of technical skills but also to give all of us a glimpse of just how diverse her ability to capture different moods, colours, and emotions in music are, and the music below was a pleasure to listen to.
Bizet Variations chromatiques
Czerny Variations on Pierre Rode’s Ricordanza
Liszt ‘Ricordanza’ from the Transcendental Etudes
Alkan Variations on a Theme of Steibelt
It was obvious from the music above that, for Yeol Eum Son, technical accuracy is obviously highly important to her, but actually feeling the music and the emotions that it creates is also just as important.
For me, it is always interesting to see the threads of how one composer hands on their music to the next generation and in Yeol Eum Son’s performances this was often clear – Czerny was Beethoven’s protegé and Liszt studied with Czerny.
That technical accuracy was, however, more than put to its test in the second half of this concert and Yeol Eum Son’s often very emotional and expressive performance and interpretation of Beethoven Piano Sonata No 29 Op 106 ‘Hammerklavier’. Not only did Beethoven design this work to be the most technically demanding of his piano concertos, it is also considered by many people to be one of the most technically demanding works ever written for piano in the classical repertoire, and Yeol Eum Son just looked so composed, so comfortable throughout this performance and for moments it was almost as if she left us to be completely immersed in Beethoven’s wonderful music.
Yeol Eum Son is obviously a highly gifted technical player but, just as important for me, she is also an expressive and emotional player and without the last two gifts being there, music can become simply a technical exercise. Music should always evoke an emotional response within you and today Yeol Eum Son took us from sorrow to joy and everything in between with her performances.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com