Sueye Park - Goldmark: Violin Concerto & Sibelius: Works for Violin and Orchestra - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

rich, impressionistic, exotic, erotically charged even, Karol Szymanowski's music appears as a world in it's own right, a refuge from the harshest aspects of reality, but also a place in which, paradoxically, the dreamer can find the strength and solace needed to cope with the real world and is drawn into an alternative, heightened state of consciousness. Sueye Park and Roland Pöntinen take us on a journey through the Polish composer's works for violin and piano. While the early Violin Sonata in D minor already shows Szymanowski's precocious talent in writing for violin, the Romance in D major and the Nocturne et Tarantelle indicate the emergence of a feverish and exotic atmosphere as well as the musical expression of physical intoxication, a characteristic of the composer's mature works. Mythes (1915) represents Szymanowski at the zenith of his artistry, creating 'a new mode of expression for the violin' and through this an other-worldly musical language. La Berceuse d'Aïtacho Enia concludes this disc in a dreamy yet troubled mood, as if the pains of the real world had ultimately found a way to reach us.

At the end of a career spent between his native Korea and Germany, during which he produced works that span the musical traditions of both countries, Isang Yun expressed a wish to limit himself 'to what is substantial, in order to transmit more peace, more goodness, more purity and warmth into this world'. With Silla (1992) the composer pays tribute to the origins of Korean culture and philosophy, to the court music introduced from China, and to the period when Korea's political unity was established (676-935 AD). Describing it's mood, Yun provided such keywords as 'nocturnal, festive... mirthful but also melancholy'. From the same year, Violin Concerto III was composed after a stay in hospital, and Yun once described it as a birthday present to himself. At the age of 75 he no longer felt the need to take contemporary currents, aesthetic trends or technical restraints into consideration. The work holds in store a wealth of musical occurrences that could perhaps be deciphered in the context of it's composers own life, and is here performed by the young South Korean violinist Sueye Park. Closing the disc is Chamber Symphony No. 1 from 1987, a work in one movement but with three distinct sections. In it, Yun combines instruments that forge changing musical alliances while engaging in rivalry or complementing each other. The mood is evocative of an, at times, animated conversation.

Sueye Park is no stranger to solo violin recitals. After herrecording of the Paganini Caprices (BIS-2282) and arecital entitled Journey through a Century (BIS-2492),both critically acclaimed, she brings us another soloproject, Echoes of Exile, an undertaking that finds it'sraison d'être in today's very turbulent times.Park offers us different perspectives on the topic of exilewith works composed between the 1920s and 1950s, bygreat composers who left their country as a result ofpolitical circumstances as well as by others who wentinto their own inner exile. Two pieces by composers wholeft their native lands for artistic reasons, Enescu andYsaye, frame three substantial and very contrastingworks by composers forced into exile, either becausetheir existence was threatened or because of a feeling ofalienation within their respective countries. The works ofBartok and Ben-Haim show composers who, in theirlonging for their homelands, succeeded not only inemphasising the value of their culture even morestrongly, but also in anchoring it within the environmentinto which they had entered. Zimmermann's sonata,with it's unique expressive language, evokes theconcerns of a young composer in the devastatedGermany of the post-war period.