Heejae Kim made her debut at the Prodigy Concert Series of South Korea’s Kumho Asiana Cultural Foundation, and has concertized in Europe (Brussels, Leipzig, Paris, Barcelona), the UK, South Africa, and her native South Korea. She has won awards in ten national or international piano competitions, and in 2015 won the Terence Judd Hallé Orchestra Prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition, where her performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 made her the audience favorite. A British critic described her as “a pianist of passion and sensitivity.”

1. Op. 32, No. 1 in C Major (Allegro vivace)
2. Op. 23, No. 7 in C Minor (Allegro)
3. Op. 32, No. 5 in G Major (Moderato)
4. Op. 23, No. 5 in G Minor (Alla marcia)
5. Op. 32, No. 10 in B Minor (Lento)

1. Promenade
2. Gnomus (“The Gnome”)
3. Promenade
4. Il vecchio castello (“The Old Castle”)
5. Promenade
6. Tuileries (Children’s Quarrel after Play)
7. Bydło (“Cattle”)
8. Promenade
9. Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks
10. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle
11. Promenade
12. Limoges: The Market (The Great News)
13. Catacombs (Roman Tomb)—Con mortuis in lingua mortua (“With the Dead in a Dead Language”)
14. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga)
15. The Great Gate of Kiev

1. Durchaus phantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen (“Perform Very Imaginatively and Passionately”)
2. Mäßig: Durchaus energisch (“Moderate: Very Energetic”)
3. Langsam getragen: Durchweg leise zu halten (“Solemnly Slow: Play Quietly Throughout”)

When Bach composed The Well-Tempered Clavier, 24 preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys of the chromatic scale, he could have had no idea how that concept would haunt subsequent composers. One of those haunted was Bach himself—two decades later he wrote another cycle of 24 preludes and fugues in all the keys. A century later, when Chopin set out to write preludes, he composed 24 of them in all the major and minor keys as his Opus 28. Over the following two decades Alkan wrote 24 etudes in all the keys, and in the years 1888–96 the young Scriabin wrote works in all the keys in his 24 Preludes, Op. 11. At mid-20th century, Dmitri Shostakovich—just as haunted as his distinguished predecessors—also wrote a set of 24 preludes and fugues in all the keys. (Though Debussy wrote exactly 24 piano preludes, he made no attempt to employ all the keys.)

Sergei Rachmaninoff also wrote a cycle of 24 piano preludes in all the major and minor keys, but—rather than writing them all at once—he spread their composition out over nearly 20 years, and he appears to have come to that idea only gradually. In 1892, at age 19, Rachmaninoff achieved sudden fame with his Prelude in C-sharp Minor. He waited 11 years before composing the 10 preludes of his Opus 23 in 1903. Rachmaninoff then waited another seven before writing his final 13 preludes as Opus 32 during the summer of 1910, completing the cycle of keys in the process.

Rachmaninoff’s preludes are generally brief and unified around a melodic or rhythmic cell; many are in ternary form, with a modified return of the opening material. They encompass a wide span of expression and difficulty. Some lie within the abilities of good amateur pianists, but most are extremely difficult technically, with the music ranging from the brilliant and exuberant to the dark and introspective.

Heejae Kim opens this recital with five preludes drawn from Opp. 23 and 32. The brief but ebullient Prelude in C Major (Op. 32/1) rides along great washes of sound, but comes to a surprisingly restrained close. The Prelude in C Minor (23/7) whirls in perpetual motion from which bits of melody gradually emerge. This is complex music, full of hand crossings before the prelude arrives at its firm close. The Prelude in G Major (32/5) is all delicacy—here a limpid melody floats above rippling accompaniment, grows capricious, and finally comes to a shimmering close. Though Rachmaninoff is reported to have disliked Debussy’s music, there are moments here that evoke the music of that composer. The Prelude in G Minor (23/5) is one of Rachmaninoff’s most famous. Marked Alla marcia, it opens with an ominous vamp that is in fact the first subject; a dark and dreamy central episode leads to a gradual acceleration back to the opening tempo. The ending is particularly effective: the energy of the march dissipates, and the music vanishes in a wisp of sound. Longest of the preludes in Op. 32, No. 10 in B Minor, is regarded by some as the finest of the set. Rachmaninoff said that this music was inspired by Arnold Böcklin’s darkly evocative painting The Homecoming. Dramatic and full-throated, this prelude drives to its climax on chords built of pounding triplets.

In the summer of 1873, Modest Mussorgsky was stunned by the sudden death of his friend Victor Hartmann, an architect and artist who was then only 39. The following year, their mutual friend Vladimir Stasov arranged a showing of over 400 of Hartmann’s watercolors, sketches, drawings, and designs. Inspired by the exhibition and the memory of his friend, Mussorgsky set to work on a suite of piano pieces based on the pictures and wrote enthusiastically to Stasov: “Hartmann is bubbling over, just as Boris did. Ideas, melodies, come to me of their own accord, like the roast pigeons in the story—I gorge and gorge and overeat myself. I can hardly manage to put it all down on paper fast enough.” He worked fast indeed: beginning on June 2, 1874, Mussorgsky had the score complete only three weeks later, on June 22, just a few months after the premiere of Boris Godunov.

The finished work, which he called Pictures at an Exhibition, consists of 10 musical portraits bound together by a promenade theme that recurs periodically—Mussorgsky said that this theme, meant to depict the gallery goer strolling between paintings, was a portrait of himself. Curiously, Pictures spent its first half-century in obscurity. It was not performed publicly during Mussorgsky’s lifetime, it was not published until 1886 (five years after its composer’s death), and it did not really enter the standard piano repertory until several decades after that. The earliest recording of the piano version did not take place until 1942. Even early listeners were struck by the “orchestral” sonorities of this piano score, and in 1922 conductor Serge Koussevitzky asked Maurice Ravel to orchestrate it. Koussevitzky gave the first performance of Ravel’s version at the Paris Opera on October 19, 1922, and it quickly became one of the most popular works in the orchestral repertory. This recital offers the rare opportunity to hear this familiar music performed in its original version.

The opening Promenade alternates 5/4 and 6/4 meters; Mussorgsky marks it “in the Russian manner.” The Gnome is a portrait of a gnome staggering on twisted legs; the following Promenade is marked “with delicacy.” In Hartmann’s watercolor The Old Castle, a minstrel sings before a ruined castle, and his mournful song rocks along over an incessant G-sharp minor pedal. Tuileries is a watercolor of children playing and quarreling in the Paris park, while Bydło returns to Eastern Europe, where a heavy oxcart grinds through the mud. The wheels pound ominously along as the driver sings; the music rises to a strident climax as the cart draws near and passes, then diminishes as the cart moves on. Mussorgsky wanted the following Promenade to sound tranquillo, but gradually it takes on unexpected power. The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks depicts Hartmann’s costume design for the ballet Trilby, in which these characters wore egg-shaped armor—Mussorgsky echoes the sound of the chicks with chirping grace notes.

“I meant to get Hartmann’s Jews,” said Mussorgsky of Two Polish Jews, One Rich, One Poor, often called by Mussorgsky’s later title Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle. This portrait of two Polish Jews in animated conversation has the rich voice of Goldenberg alternating with Schmuÿle’s rapid, high speech. Listeners who know Pictures only in the Ravel orchestration will be surprised to find this movement followed by another Promenade; Ravel cut it from his orchestral version, which is a pity, because this appearance brings a particularly noble incarnation of that theme. The Marketplace at Limoges shows Frenchwomen quarreling furiously in a market, while Catacombs is Hartmann’s portrait of himself surveying the Roman catacombs by lantern light. This section leads into Con mortuis in lingua mortua: “With the dead in a dead language.” Mussorgsky noted of this section: “The spirit of the departed Hartmann leads me to the skulls and invokes them: the skulls begin to glow faintly”; embedded in this spooky passage is a minor-key variation of the Promenade theme. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs shows the hut (perched on hen’s legs) of the vicious witch Baba Yaga, who would fly through the skies in a red-hot mortar—Mussorgsky has her fly scorchingly right into the final movement, The Great Gate of Kiev. Hartmann had designed a gate (never built) for the city of Kiev, and Mussorgsky’s brilliant finale transforms the genial Promenade theme into a heaven-storming conclusion.

In 1835 the 25-year-old Robert Schumann learned of plans to create a Beethoven monument in Bonn and—fired with enthusiasm for the project—resolved to compose a piano sonata and donate all receipts from it to support the monument. He wrote to his publisher, suggesting an elaborate publication in which the score would be bound in black and trimmed with gold, and he proposed a monumental inscription for that cover:

Yet when Schumann began composing this music the following year, his plans had changed considerably. He had fallen in love with the young piano virtuosa Clara Wieck, and her father had exploded: Friedrich Wieck did everything in his power to keep the lovers apart, forbidding them to see each other and forcing them to return each other’s letters. The dejected Schumann composed a three-movement sonatalike piece that was clearly fired by his thwarted love: he later told Clara that the first movement was “the most passionate thing I have ever composed—a deep lament for you.” Yet the score, published under the neutral title Fantasie in 1839, contains enough references to Beethoven (quotations from the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte at the end of the first movement and from the Seventh Symphony in the last) to suggest that some of Schumann’s original plans for a Beethoven sonata remained in this music. And finally, to complicate matters even further, Schumann dedicated the score not to Clara but to Franz Liszt, who would become one of its great champions.

If the inspiration for this music is in doubt, its greatness is not: the Fantasie in C Major is one of Schumann’s finest compositions, wholly original in form, extremely difficult to perform, and haunting in its emotional effect. Schumann was right to call this music a fantasy—it may seem like a piano sonata on first appearance, but it refuses to conform exactly to the rules of sonata form. The first movement, marked “Fantastic and passionate throughout,” begins with an impassioned falling figure that Schumann associated with Clara. In the quiet middle section, which Schumann marks “In the manner of a legend,” the music moves to C minor; yet the conclusion does not recapitulate the opening material in the correct key—the music returns to C major only after the reference to Beethoven’s song from An die ferne Geliebte.

The second movement is a vigorous march full of dotted rhythms; Schumann marks it “Energetic throughout.” Curiously, Clara—the inspiration for the first movement—liked this movement the best; she wrote to Schumann: “The march strikes me as a victory march of warriors returning from battle, and in the A-flat section I think of the young girls from the village, all dressed in white, each with a garland in her hand crowning the warriors kneeling before them.” Schumann concludes with a surprise: the last movement is in a slow tempo—it unfolds expressively, and not until the final bars does Schumann allow this music to arrive—gently and magically—in the home key of C major.

The Fantasie in C Major is one of Schumann’s finest works, yet within years of its composition, Schumann himself was hard on this music, calling it “immature and unfinished . . . mostly reflections of my turbulent earlier life.” By this time, he was happily married to Clara and may have identified the Fantasie with a painful period in his life, yet it is precisely for its turbulence, its pain, and its longing that we value this music today.