VCHpresents Chamber: Bomsori Kim in Recital

BOMSORI KIM IN RECITAL 18 APR 2021, 4PM VICTORIA CONCERT HALL

PROGRAMME Bomsori Kim, violin Lim Yan, piano

J.S. BACH Chaconne from Partita in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004

15 mins

BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major, Op. 24 “Spring” I. Allegro II. Adagio molto espressivo III. Scherzo. Allegro molto IV. Rondo. Allegro ma non troppo

26 mins

WAXMAN Carmen Fantasie

10 mins

In addition to winning the 62nd ARD International Music Competition, Bomsori has won prizes at the Tchaikovsky International Competition, Queen Elisabeth Competition, International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition, Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition Hannover, Montreal International Musical Competition, and Sendai International Music Competition. Bomsori won Second Prize, Critic’s Prize, and nine additional special prizes at the 15th International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition.

BOMSORI KIM violin Bomsori’s expressive and personal communication with the audience through her interpretations has been recognized by the world’s finest orchestras and eminent conductors.

In the 2020-2021 season, Bomsori returns to the Rheingau Music Festival as focus artist in seven concerts, and to the Gstaad Menuhin Festival as Menuhin’s Heritage Artist. Bomsori also makes her debuts at the Philharmonie Essen, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the Philharmonie in Cologne, and in Asia, she will perform with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony and Tokyo Symphony Orchestras.

As a soloist, Bomsori has appeared at numerous venues worldwide, and performed with a multitude of illustrious conductors and orchestras.

She made her New York Philharmonic debut in February 2019, performing the US Premiere of Tan Dun’s violin concerto, Fire Ritual.

In 2017, Warner Classics released Bomsori’s debut album featuring Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No.2 and Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No.1. Her second album with pianist Rafał Blechacz, featuring works by Fauré, Debussy, Szymanowski and Chopin, was released in February 2019 by Deutsche Grammophon, with whom she has signed an exclusive recording contract in 2021.

With the support of Kumho Asiana Cultural Foundation, she currently plays on a 1774 violin by Joannes Baptista Guadagnini.

LIM YAN piano 2006 NAC Young Artist Award recipient Lim Yan was a student of Ms Lim Tshui Ling in Singapore before pursuing further music studies in Manchester, UK, at Chetham’s School of Music; and subsequently graduating from the University of Manchester as well as the Royal Northern College of Music, where his tutor was Ronan O’Hora.

Yan has performed extensively in Europe and Asia as a recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician and collaborative pianist. He has been part of the piano quintet series Take 5 since 2007, and has a long-standing collaboration with violinist Lee Shi Mei. He has also performed with violinist Ning Feng and cellist Wang Jian during their visits to Singapore.

Yan has been an adjunct faculty at the School of the Arts since its inception in 2008, and is a full-time faculty member of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music as a Senior Lecturer in Collaborative Piano. He is also the current Artistic Director of the Singapore International Piano Festival.

PROGRAMME NOTES J.S. BACH (1685 - 1750) Chaconne from Partita in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004 The chaconne is a set of dance variations based on a four-bar harmonic progression. Originally the xacona, a suggestive and fast Latin American dance of African slaves, it tamed and slowed as it reached Europe, becoming the Italian ciacona, still considered vulgar and inappropriate and hence all the more desirable to the fashionable younger crowd. Then it reached France and became the respectable chaconne, a favourite slow dance of high society.

Bach’s Chaconne is a set of variations of increasing complexity like an arabesque, going through 33 minor-mode statements, 19 major-mode statements, and finally 12 minor-mode statements, giving an infinite variation of feeling over the unvaried harmonic ground.

Pushing the violin to its limits, Bach makes use of implied polyphony to give the impression of multiple independent voices, far more in this movement than in the rest of his solo violin works. Why did Bach give so much attention and effort to this particular movement, which is longer than the rest of the Partita added together?

Analysis has revealed motifs embedded throughout the various variations – dozens of tunes from hymns and sacred works meditating on death, such as the Easter hymn ‘Christ Lag in Todesbanden’ (Christ

Lay in the Bonds of Death), ‘Den Tod niemand zwingen kunnt’ (The Death none could subdue), ‘Jesu meine Freunde’ (Jesus, my joy), and ‘Auf meinen lieben Gott’ (In my dear God I trust). A musical meditation on death, but whose?

The most likely candidate is Bach’s first wife, Maria Barbara, mother of his first seven children, who died suddenly while Bach was away. He returned to find her not only dead, but buried a week before his return. She had been in perfect health when he left. The Six Solo Works for Unaccompanied Violin, of which the Chaconne was part, appeared later that year in 1720. The Chaconne stands revealed as a tombeau, a musical tombstone.

In this light, looking past the hardworking composer, the dutiful widower raising four small children alone, we see Bach the man, grieving privately, expressing his faith in the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting, and the relentless tortured intensity of the Chaconne makes sense.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770 - 1827) Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major, Op. 24 “Spring” I. II. III. IV.

Allegro Adagio molto espressivo Scherzo. Allegro molto Rondo. Allegro ma non troppo

Around 1800, Beethoven participated in musical evenings at the Vienna home of Count Moritz von Fries, a skilled amateur violinist who had been a subscriber to his Op.1 trios some five years earlier.

In September 1801, the Wiener Zeitung advertised ‘Two Sonatas for Pianoforte with a Violin’, dedicated to von Fries. The nickname ‘Spring Sonata’ was not from Beethoven, but seems to fit Beethoven’s first violin sonata in four movements.

The opening melody suggests fresh, blossoming birdsong, carried primarily by the violin, while the piano plays the part of the bubbling brook to complete the scene. The flowing spontaneity and gentle radiance in this Allegro is reminiscent of Mozart, who had shaped the Classical violin sonata, and his towering influence can be felt distinctly.

The Adagio molto espressivo second movement begins with an opening theme that would not be out of place in a Mozart opera, but gently Beethoven continues with the Alberti bass, a rippling figure familiar in Mozart’s piano music, but which he would abandon later in his quest for freedom from forms.

Here it harks back to the past, poignant yet serene, unassuming and submissive to the lyricism of

the violin, but even in that window to the past we see reflections of Schubert and Schumann to follow. The briefest Scherzo follows where piano and violin play cat and mouse, including even a concise trio, but everything ends in just over a minute – one imagines Beethoven smiling as he watches his surprised listeners.

The finale ends with a straightforward conversation, a theme passed graciously back and forth between the partners. Full of amiable Viennese gemütlichkeit (cosiness, warmth), its sole Beethovenian feature is a false recapitulation in D major, which then cleverly and effortlessly slips back into F major for the concluding sections.

‘The original fiery and bold spirit of this composer… is now becoming increasingly serene’, wrote an approving (if over-optimistic) Leipzig critic.

FRANZ WAXMAN (1906 - 1967) Carmen Fantasie Bizet’s opera Carmen is full of melodies recognisable even by people not otherwise familiar with classical music. The tale of Carmen, the immoral gypsy seductress, and her lover Don José, has inspired the creative imaginations of composers and Broadway producers alike.

Carmen Fantasie was part of German-born Jewish-American jazzcomposer Franz Waxman’s score to the 1946 movie Humoresque, which received a Best Music nomination at the Academy Awards.

The piece appears in a scene when the film’s main character, Paul, was in rehearsal. A noted young violinist with a wealthy patroness named Helen in love with him, he receives a note that she was getting divorced and wanted to see him immediately, but his response is to crush the note and continue rehearsing the Carmen Fantasie. The film makes for interesting comparison with the opera: Don José and Carmen cannot be together - neither can Helen and Paul; Carmen is killed

by Don José at the end - Helen commits suicide.

flashy beginning that exploits the full five octave range of the violin.

Part I is the famous Habanera, sultry and seductive. Part II is the unsettled Carmen’s aria of resignation and resolve after seeing death in the tarot cards, Part III is the serene Entr’acte between Acts 3 and 4, and Waxman gives the violin some difficult continuous fingered octaves. Part IV takes Carmen’s seductive aria at the end of Act 1, tempting Don José with the delights of alcohol and carnality, with ascending glissandi, down and up slurred staccatos, and consecutive sixths representing José’s increasing desire. Part V takes us to the tavern in Act 2 where Carmen dances and sings lustily.

Notes by Edward C. Yong

The Fantasie is in a continuous form, with five clear sections, each with a short introduction, but with smooth transitions via solo violin cadenzas. The Introduction is taken from the festive Prélude, with a

SUPPORTED BY

PATRON SPONSOR