Biography

Hyeyoon Park - violin
Benjamin Grosvenor - piano

Combining integrity with elegance and focus with panache, Hyeyoon Park is an artist of outstanding style and virtuosity. Born in Seoul, she studied at the junior colleges of the Korean National University of Arts and of the University of Cincinnati. She also studied at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin and with Christian Tetzlaff at the Kronberg Academy, where she completed her Master’s degree in 2016. Since making her orchestral debut at the age of nine with the Seoul Philharmonic, she has achieved international acclaim playing with major orchestras around the world. “Her technique and command over the instrument are breath-taking, her playing being fully devoted to the music,” raved the Neue Westfälische. Hyeyoon Park was the youngest winner ever of the ARD International Music Competition in Munich at seventeen in 2009. Two years later she received a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, and a year after that the London Music Masters Award. Park’s partner in this LMMC recital is British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, described by The Independent as “ one in a million”. He is internationally recognized for his electrifying performances, distinctive sound and insightful interpretations. LMMC debut.

Notes

Karol Szymanowski, perhaps the most important Polish composer between Chopin and Lutosławski, passed through several stylistic phases in the course of his career. The three Mythes (1915), each a reflection on a page from Greek mythology, represent a high-water mark of his second, Impressionistic period. A huge range of colors, textures, expressive devices and emotional shades are required from both players.

Ravel’s Violin Sonata (1927) represents the composer as the Neoclassicist, not the Impressionist. There is a sense of coolness and detachment to the writing remarkable even for Ravel. Textures are transparent throughout, the piano writing in particular being spare and economical. The two instruments seem to go their separate ways much of the time, and Ravel is on record as deliberately intending to emphasize the differences in color and sonority between the two.

Clara Schumann (wife of Robert) was the woman pianist of the 19th century. She was also a child prodigy and an accomplished composer. Her three violin Romances (1853) are short, charming ‘character pieces’ of a kind very much in vogue at the time. A Berlin critic described them as having a ‘tender, airy manner’.

The ninth of Beethoven’s ten sonatas for violin and piano is the grandest and most impressive of them all. It is also by far the longest and most difficult, contains the richest textures, and to a greater extent than any other, puts both musicians on an absolutely equal footing throughout. The subtitle refers to the sonata’s dedicatee, Rudolphe Kreutzer, whom Beethoven called ‘a good and amiable man’.

Robert Markow