The conductor Myung Whun Chung returns to the instrument he started on, in his first solo recording and his first album for ECM New Series. Simply titled Piano, it gathers ten short, familiar pieces by Debussy, Chopin, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Schumann and Mozart. In his own note Chung presents the album as a gift for younger listeners and a thank-you to those who share his love of this music. The pieces follow one another as a single, gently flowing sequence that brings out their affinities.
Chung was born in Seoul in 1953 and made his debut as a pianist with the Seoul Philharmonic at the age of seven. He later studied with Maria Curcio, the last and favourite pupil of Artur Schnabel, and in 1974 was a prize winner at the Tchaikovsky Competition. Before conducting took over his professional life, he played piano trios with his sisters Kyung Wha Chung and Myung Wha Chung. The album was recorded in July 2013 at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, produced by Manfred Eicher with Rainer Maillard as engineer. The booklet has notes by Chung and by Paul Griffiths.
The recital opens with Debussy's Clair de lune, played slowly and with a noticeable elasticity of pulse, and ends with Mozart's twelve variations on Ah! vous dirai-je, maman, K. 265, which Chung takes with very free tempos. In between come the two Schubert impromptus from D 899, in E-flat and G-flat major, two Chopin nocturnes, Schumann's Träumerei and Arabeske, Beethoven's Für Elise and Tchaikovsky's Autumn Song. In the E-flat impromptu the running scales lose any trace of the étude, and the Schumann pieces are played plainly, without affectation. Throughout, Chung's touch and his range of dynamics cast these well-known pages in a new light.
Jeremy Siepmann, in BBC Music Magazine in 2014, heard an original, unconventional approach, with an almost Tchaikovskyan characterisation in the Mozart, and wrote that "beauty of sound and suppleness of inflection abound". Mark Tanner, in International Record Review, called the disc unpretentious and "a real joy to behold", and hoped for another recording to match its sensitivity and maturity.
CD edition of ECM New Series 2342, first released on 4 April 2014.
