PRESS

Back in 2015 (Fanfare 38:5) I reviewed and enjoyed Corey Hamm’s performance of Frederic Rzewski’s monumental set of variations. In that review I lay out the structure of the piece in some detail; it is a heady achievement on Rzewski’s part.

The piece is a set of variations on a Chilean chant of protest; and this recording on Navona has a special element of timing, given that its date of recording (2023) comes 50 years after the 1973 coup d’etat in Chile. Kevin Lee Sun’s eloquent booklet notes also point to two guiding spirits for his recording: the “unforgettable images” of Patricio Guzmán’s documentary The Battle of Chile, and Isabel Allende’s novel The House of the Spirits. As Sun puts it, “This recording seeks to balance Rzewski’s global parallels and Allende’s recreation of Chile’s struggle.” Rzewski’s call for the world to learn from its mistakes rings in Sun’s ears, and in ours, as we listen.

My point in the previous review of the plethora of fine recordings of this piece remains. What marks out Sun’s recording, though, is his ability to highlight the thematic bases of the most complex variations. Even when Rzewski is at his most pointillistic, the direction is clear, as is the underlying motivic skeleton.

Sun’s vision is phenomenally clear-sighted, therefore, and it is this that sets his account alight. It is like being guided by a master through the score. This is all the more impressive as Sun is hardly a household name. He won the silver medal at the Virginia Waring International Piano Competition in California (Sun is a native of Sacramento); he has also been recognized by the Berlin Prize for Young Artists. He has a diverse educational background (a B.A. in biology and classics, and three years at medical school) and this increased scope of awareness seems to inform his performance. The multivalency of Rzewski’s score, its ability to move easily from Stockhausen-like glissando and Boulezian pointillism to jazz, seems just to feed Sun’s imagination: He is like a piano chameleon. And talking of colors, that is quite some palette he has, all caught in a fine piano recording by Navona.

I would actually like to hear Sun play jazz, such is the pull of those particular variations; other passages compel me to seek out his Chopin (Variation 18, for example). Most surprising are the hints of Rachmaninoff that appear (Variation 20 is kind of post-Paganini Rhapsody); it is this element of surprise that Sun capitalizes upon. As the piece runs its course, it is as if Sun creates waves of excitement that ebb and flow, surely a reflection of his structural awareness.

The two sets of this that so far have topped the tree in recent years have been Hamlin and Levit; Sun offers an alternative that equals those two giants’ keyboard prowess, and which sometimes eclipses them in terms of imagination wedded to structural awareness.

Sun’s own booklet notes are eminently readable and well informed, while this remains one of Navona’s finest piano recordings. A final point of acclaim is the piano itself, perfectly prepared by an unnamed piano technician: The very top register is perfect. To sum up, this is a performance of great structural awareness, technical prowess, and wisdom.

One would never anticipate that a debut album might be devoted to Frederic Rzewski’s fierce hour-long set of variations, The People United, which exists in a parallel universe to Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. That was Rzewski’s chosen precedent for difficulty, monumentality, and thorniness, at which he abundantly succeeded according to devotees of his creation. There are well over a dozen recordings, which means that a recherché piece is now almost standard repertoire. A handful of prominent names stand out, beginning with Ursula Oppens, who commissioned the work, and adding two super-virtuosos, Marc-André Hamelin and Igor Levit.

Against this background (or one might say these heavy odds), the Sacramento-born pianist Kevin Lee Sun enters without fame or super-virtuosity, but the excellence of his performance speaks to other advantages. First is his remarkable intelligence. At Stanford he won top prizes in his double major of biology and classics along with the top prize in music, a side occupation. On his way to earning a doctorate in piano performance, he developed another side occupation, studying for three years at Stanford Medical School, after which he authored numerous peer-reviewed papers on subjects like adolescent psychology and Platonic philosophy.

Here Sun applies his intellect to penetrating the complexities of Rzewski’s tightly organized 36 variations on the Chilean protest song, “The people united will never be defeated!” The tune itself is a resolute, almost calm march like “We shall overcome,” from which Rzewski draws six groups of six variations, the final one in each group serving as a summation. He traverses a circle of fifths three times to arrive at key signatures. Although there are a few extended techniques like whistling and slamming the piano lid, Rzewski’s model was Romantic grandeur. Modernism enters when variations are based on spare, quasi-Webern abstractions like certain intervals, but Rzewski generally lifts elements from the original tune, whether melodic or rhythmic, that can be followed by ear, and there is always the music’s virtuosity to appreciate. It is remarkable that he composed the whole set in September and October of 1975.

Another advantage that Sun enjoys is his sincere dedication to Rzewski’s political idealism. As a protest chant (the final melody was later devised by Chilean composer Sergio Ortega), “The people united …” was popular between 1969 and 1973, at which point it became a memorial to Salvador Allende, the leftist, democratically elected president of Chile who was deposed in a military coup. The brutal repression of the Pinochet regime followed. Far away, Rzewski heard the song in New York when he attended a concert by a Chilean group in the company of his friend Oppens. Oppens premiered the completed score at the Kennedy Center in the bicentennial year of 1976, a moment of bitter irony, since Nixon and the CIA covertly undermined the Allende government as a Cold War and corporate threat.

Sun writes heartfelt program notes outlining the story, and this performance was recorded in 2023, 50 years after Allende’s ouster. The pianist points out that his performance is intended to support and continue Rzewski’s idealism—the music contains references to other socialist causes, and Rzewski saw his score having universal significance. Sun’s personal dedication is carried out musically by his full expression of the score’s passion and rapture. As intricately analytical as Rzewski’s structures might be, the music is meant to have the immediate emotional connection that Sun imparts with such sincerity.

Because Igor Levit is a super-virtuoso, he can perform remarkable feats in passages that he admits seemed unplayable at first sight. Yet Sun keeps up very well, at times with not as much flash, but considerably less often than I anticipated. Rzewski was a highly accomplished pianist in his own right, and The People United feels pianistic, which Sun digs into with total confidence and a powerful technique. I wish he had been given the richness of piano sound that Sony gives Levit, but what we hear is certainly satisfying and wide-ranging.

The People United has a discography that tends to attract remarkable performers, and Sun continues this legacy. He turned 30 only last year and currently teaches on the piano faculty at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. If he seems young to have accomplished everything he has so far, we’re talking about someone who performed the Goldberg Variations in public as an undergraduate. I imagine he has many aspirations yet to fulfill.

The young pianist Kevin Lee Sun has chosen the technically and interpretively demanding American masterpiece of Frederic Rzewski for his first commercial recording. Given his DMA from Eastman and piano studies with Thomas Schultz at Stanford University, he gave me in-depth and informative answers to my questions about Rzewski, and specifically his incredible set of variations on the Chilean song “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” by Sergio Ortega and Quilapayún.

This is your debut album release. Please tell us a little about your musical background.

I’m relatively new to music as a career. I was in medical school studying to be a child psychiatrist as recently as 2020. But since I was 5 years old, I have always been playing the piano. It is a necessary part of my life.

My childhood featured classical piano quite heavily, and I participated in competitions and summer workshops. But I practiced about two hours per day on average, which is not so much compared to child prodigies. The rest of my days were spent seriously studying literature, history, foreign languages, mathematics, and sciences in the very fine public schools of Sacramento, CA. Music was simply a part of my humanistic education growing up.

My musical experience at Stanford University turned out to be pivotal, and my piano studies with faculty member Thomas Schultz were very influential. He himself had worked closely with Frederic Rzewski and Christian Wolff, and he introduced me to countless composers I had never heard of. Thomas Schultz took me and a few other students to Vienna in 2014, to study and perform works of the Second Viennese School, and there I presented Hanns Eisler’s Third Piano Sonata, as well as four-hand works by Stravinsky and J. M. Hauer.

I earned my master’s degree at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music studying with Sharon Mann, and then my doctorate at the Eastman School of Music studying with Alexander Kobrin. I mostly studied works of the classical canon in those institutions, but at Eastman I did perform Frederic Rzewski’s Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, as well as works by the living composer Hyo-shin Na. Over time, I have been coming to find a balance between traditional masterworks and contemporary music, especially music that is humanistic and socially relevant. My interest in this kind of music led me to record Frederic Rzewski’s work The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (1975).

Rzewski died in 2021 and left us over 50 major piano pieces (some consisting of many individual compositions). These were written in many styles between 1953 and 2021. Would you speak about his importance in the history of American piano music?

I honestly have not been alive very long, so it is difficult for me to answer this question with much personal experience or hindsight. I really do not know if Rzewski’s music has been so influential in American compositional circles. It certainly is not as much played or celebrated as that of Philip Glass or Steve Reich, which is a real shame. Some young composers I have met had never heard of Rzewski. But I think The People United Will Never Be Defeated! has real staying power. Its global significance in combining its Chilean theme with Italian and German solidarity songs, its inclusion of all sorts of 20th-century styles from Minimalism to jazz, and its sheer technical demands, all make it a Mount Everest of sorts to climb in terms of American piano music. I hope my recording makes all these elements clear.

Rzewski has written many other fine piano pieces too, especially his four North American Ballads (1978–79), Four Pieces (1977), and De Profundis (1991–92). What makes these so important are their combinations of sociopolitical themes and variety of modern piano techniques, which are often used with heightened expressive intention.

Can you reflect on the technical difficulties in Rzewski’s piano writing, including his addition of optional vocal sounds and an optional improvised cadenza before the final statement of the Thema in The People United Will Never Be Defeated?

Rzewski’s piano writing for this specific piece is incisively clear. The textures are quite thin, and it is very common for each hand to be playing only one note at a time in the piece. The piece derives its expressive intensity more from its counterpoint, its dynamic range, and its rhetorical gestures than from traditional melody and harmony. This deviation from classical norms is really what makes the writing difficult to play, more so than the actual number of notes or the speed at which the notes must be played. Because the music is so clear and immediate, each gesture, no matter how small, must carry meaning, often independently of harmony. What this means technically is that the piece requires a wide variety of articulation, a huge dynamic range with sudden changes, and very careful pedaling technique. Through satisfying these requirements, the rhetoric of the music can be appreciated.

I do not perform the optional vocal sounds or the optional improvised cadenza in my album recording. I have found these elements to be far overemphasized by people who talk about the piece. The vocal sounds appear in four of the 36 variations, and in total they last no more than 20 seconds; my recording is 63 minutes long. I did not choose to make the vocal sounds because I believe they distract from what I am trying to do in my interpretation, which is to highlight the dynamic and timbral extremities of the piano, so that the suffering and uncertainty that Chileans felt in the 1970s become clear. The vocal sounds, in my opinion, support more of a geopolitical and protest narrative to the piece; this is not the primary motivation of my interpretation. I did not improvise a cadenza because the way I play the final variation, No. 36, is sufficiently disorienting yet summative, and because I play the final statement of the Thema in a way that slowly builds in intensity. In my interpretation, necessarily, the return of the theme slowly emerges from the fragments and memories of Variation 36.

Rzewski wrote that “there was no reason why the most difficult and complex formal structures could not be expressed in a form which could be understood by a wide variety of listeners.” Would you comment on how that thought pertains to The People United Will Never Be Defeated?

When I first heard my teacher Thomas Schultz perform this piece, I readily appreciated the structure of the entire hour-long set of variations. The 36 variations are set up in sets of six. The sixth variation of every set (Nos. 6, 12, 18, etc.) is a summation of the motives and characters of the previous five. In the final set of variations (Nos. 31–36), Rzewski employs a very interesting structure: No. 31, the first of this final set, sums up the first variation in each of the previous 5 sets (Nos. 1, 7, 13, 19, and 25). No. 32 sums up the second variation of each set, and so on.

While this sounds abstract, difficult, and complex, in practice, Rzewski has made this structure understandable because of how memorable each variation’s motif is, and because of his intelligent use of reminders every six variations. By the end of the piece, we have heard each variation’s main idea and character four times.

Rzewski’s music often incorporates social and political themes, as evidenced by The People United Will Never Be Defeated. What are your thoughts on his inspiration for this remarkable composition?

I hesitate to speculate about a composer’s inspirations and development. A person’s mind is very complicated, and I do not want to reduce Rzewski’s thinking into misleading statements. That said, Rzewski showed a clear interest in writing sociopolitical music after returning to New York from Italy in 1971. Works that deal with social themes include his Coming Together (1971) and Attica (1972), which are both settings of letters by the Attica State Prison inmate Sam Melville; and his Struggle Song (1973). It is no wonder then that when Rzewski experienced Inti-Illimani’s performance of “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” at Hunter College in 1974, he was primed both to appreciate it and to interact with it.

Rzewski’s classical training also contributed to this composition. He understood the greatness of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, so when he was asked by Ursula Oppens to write a companion piece to that masterwork, he knew what he was getting himself into. He also had studied Bach’s Goldberg Variations at Princeton University. In Gerd Conradt’s 2015 film Turn Your Eyes to the Present, which can be found online, Rzewski says, “I see myself actually as being in the mainstream of the classical tradition, because I am doing what Bach and Beethoven did. I’m creating a new music—doing something new with the tradition. So ever since I can remember, that’s what I do. I wanted to be like Beethoven—I remember that very clearly—when I was seven years old.” The combination of Rzewski’s vast geopolitical consciousness and long appreciation for the classical tradition is perhaps the most factual thing I can say about his inspiration for this piece.

You have medical training and have written about child and adolescent psychiatry. Do you have strong feelings about the benefits of musical training for young people?

I am not sure if musical training has unique benefits when compared with other forms of artistic training or even sports. But I do believe aspects of good musical training can be beneficial for a young person’s mental health. There is some relation between those elements and the four skills taught in dialectical behavior therapy: mindfulness, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and emotion regulation. Deliberate practice may improve mindfulness. Exposure to anxiety-inducing performance situations may improve distress tolerance. Working with teachers, peers, and collaborators open-mindedly may improve interpersonal effectiveness. And empathizing with the emotions in other people’s music, and then performing them, may improve emotion regulation. Just like almost any other aspect of a young person’s life, musical training requires a balance of positive strengths-based approaches, supportive and actionable feedback, and learning supports and accommodations in order for the above assertions to be true.

There also seems to be some relation between neurodiversity and music. Neurodivergent people—including autistic people, people with ADHD, and people with other conditions—are overrepresented in music, especially classical music and jazz. Describing music as “beneficial” for these neurodivergent people may be really selling short a lot of interest and talent in music that many of them have. If anything, the beautiful minds and incredible efforts of young neurodivergent people are of benefit to music.

With your teaching and performance schedules, what personal, extra-musical activities are you able to engage in?

I read Japanese manga daily to spark my visual and narrative imagination. I’ve been reading these pieces of art for almost 25 years now. I occasionally write poetry, though badly. And I am just now beginning to practice yoga in the evenings to calm my spirit. I was inspired to do so by the living composer Colin Kemper, with whom I’m currently collaborating, and whose music deals with mental wellness and emotional intimacy, among other things.

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Frederic Rzewski (1938–2021) composed in 1975 what is arguably one of the greatest American piano pieces, in “a white heat” over the course of two months. It was written in response to Ursula Oppens’s commission for a work to complement Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. She is the dedicatee of the work and gave its premiere. Since then, it has been recorded and played in concert by many pianists, despite its difficulty. Many have placed this huge set of 36 variations in a direct line with Bach’s Goldberg Variations (30 variations, published in 1741) and the aforementioned Diabelli Variations (33 variations, published 1823).

Rzewski wrote that “Two songs, aside from the theme itself, appear at various points: the Italian revolutionary song Bandiera Rossa, in reference to the Italian people who in the ’70s opened their doors to so many refugees from Chilean fascism, and Hanns Eisler’s 1932 antifascist Solidaritätslied, a reminder that parallels to present threats existed in the past and that it is important to learn from them. After the sixth cycle, the pianist is offered the option of improvising a cadenza.... The extended length of the composition may be an allusion to the idea that the unification of people is a long story and that nothing worth winning is acquired without effort.” It should be noted that both Bach and Beethoven incorporated some other tunes into their variations.

This disc is Kevin Lee Sun’s auspicious debut. He has a broad and impressive educational resume (see accompanying interview). His playing here is memorable, technically accomplished, and thoroughly in touch with Rzewski’s piano language. A good example of this is in the relatively simple Variation 9 followed by the fiendish Variation 10. Sun has the ability to stay in touch with the theme while sustaining the quietest slow chords, and then switching dynamic gears practically every beat of every measure while navigating the entire keyboard.

This is a well-recorded disc with good program notes by Sun. I have listened to it at least a dozen times in the past month and find new musical elements each time. Highly recommended. 

Kevin Lee Sun delivers an electrifying call to action in THE PEOPLE UNITED, a monumental set of 36 variations by the late American composer Frederic Rzewski. Its theme originated in Chile when composer Sergio Ortega heard the soul-stirring chants in Santiago, months before the 1973 Chilean coup d’etat. Inspired by Ortega’s music and Chile’s upheavals, Rzewski combined the chant with revolutionary songs from various cultures to deliver a clear message of solidarity in his 1975 hour-long masterpiece, eponymously named The People United Will Never Be Defeated!

Today, Kevin is our featured artist in the “Inside Story,” a blog series exploring the inner workings and personalities of our composers and performers. Read on to learn about the inspiration he draws from experiencing art made by friends, and the various aspects he hopes listeners will discover within his Navona Records release… 

If you weren’t a musician, what would you be doing?

I’ve always been interested in other cultures, ancient civilizations, and people whose customs are so different that it makes you rethink everything. So perhaps I’d be an archaeologist, a foreign affairs journalist, or a diplomat. (Although, I’m probably a bit too fiery for successful diplomacy!)

If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be?

I’ve had really fruitful collaborations already with my dear friend based in San Francisco named Angela Liu, who has immense talent in the visual arts. Her own interests and projects have often previsaged my musical concepts. But if it has to be someone else, it sounds a little basic but probably installation artists like James Terrell or teamLab, who could provide a different dimension to my music-making.

What emotions do you hope listeners will experience after hearing your work?

Uneasiness, searching, energy with a little freneticism, compassion, resolution — an emotional narrative of some sort, though not always a nice and pleasant one.

Where and when are you at your most creative?

Connections leading to creativity form spontaneously with no real ritual. But experiencing art made by friends whom I love is undoubtedly inspiring. Reading the news and absorbing others’ stories are processes that help initial ideas fractalize into musical programs and projects. Apple’s Notes app has been my conduit for all of these thoughts for years.

What are your other passions besides music?

Music is simply the medium that I chose to act on my larger passions of understanding other people, appreciating their differences, and helping them. For the same reasons, I’ve done research in child and adolescent psychiatry, and I’ve studied and written about ancient Greek pedagogical texts (Plato, Archimedes, etc.).

What musical mentor had the greatest impact on your artistic journey? Is there any wisdom they’ve imparted onto you that still resonates today?

That would be Thomas Schultz, my piano teacher at Stanford, and a real artist who has performed music by Cage, Stockhausen, Rzewski, Wolff, Hyo-shin Na, and so many other great composers of the 20th century. He opened my mind to music beyond the traditional canon, and guided me to appreciate the unusual. I learned just as much from his readings of poetry and his recommendations of films, as I did from his suggestions and demonstrations at the piano. Trying to encapsulate his wisdom as pithy aphorisms somehow feels almost antithetical to how he taught me to think and to question.

I've been to so damn many concerts recently that I can't keep them straight. But one stands out.

This past Monday I went to a harpsichord recital at a home in Orinda. Zach Weiner was there, and I asked him if he was going to hear Rzewski's 'The People United' variations at 405 Shrader on Friday. He didn't know about this and asked who was playing. I said someone I hadn't heard of - Kevin Lee Sun. The guy next to Zach spoke up and said "that's me!". Small world. Turns out they know each other from Stanford undergrad. Kevin went on to med school but left to to pursue music, and is now a music prof at Duquesne.

So on Friday Maryse and I went to hear Kevin play the variations. It was, for me, a wonderful and powerfully inspiring experience.

...

405 Shrader is a small room with a Grotrian 7' piano. The place was packed. I got a glass of wine and settled in.

Kevin's performance was absolutely great. He feels and expresses the volcanic power of the piece, and he has the chops to play it exactly as he conceives it. The proximity of the piano and its volume made it a visceral and almost overwhelming experience.

...

When the piece ended, there was stunned silence, then riotous applause that lasted a LONG time.

There was wonderful socializing afterward. I talked with Kevin's father, from Beijing and now living in Sacramento. He acknowledged having initial doubts about Kevin's career choice. I talked with Michael Milenski, the proprietor of 405 Shrader, an intense intellectual/radical who reminds me a lot of myself.

Wow! Great event. This is why I go to concerts.

...Sun’s program also accentuated the folk music idioms that factored into the works he played by Hyo-shin Na, Leoš Janáček, Frederic Rzewski, and Schumann. They serve as wayfinders for the emotional truths, such as the beer-hall irony of Pete Seeger’s “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues” barreling its way into Rzewski’s work of the same name, which Sun tore through with unfiltered frenzy. These mechanics complemented Na’s “Rain Study,” in which lyricism cuts through a stormy humidity like sunlight filtering through a diaphanous curtain, and the brute force and hellish rage of Rzewski resolved into a balm of two selections from Schumann’s “Gesänge der Frühe.” It was a tender, quiet relief that extended past Sun’s program into the other worlds...

#30Bach, Episode 11, Variations 22-24: Interview with polymath pianist Kevin Lee Sun. We discuss sources of joy in Bach’s life, and his ability to conjure joy, warmth, and humor in his music as an antidote to the tragedy that follows.

Kevin Lee Sun made quite a splash when he won the Grand Prize in the Carmel Music Society’s 2018 Biennial Piano Competition, and he reinforced this positive impression when he appeared as a recitalist on the Music Society’s regular concert season in January 2019. It was, however, noted in 2019, that Sun’s programming for this recital was odd. The most dramatic works that should have ended the program were scheduled in the first half so that the more problematic selections ended the program with a whimper rather than a bang. It so puzzled the audience that at the end of the program there was a weak standing ovation and no encore.

Well, in his recital yesterday afternoon for the Aptos Keyboard Series at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist, he certainly got the programming concept right this time. Starting off with a slightly neutral performance of the Bach Toccata in F-sharp minor, BWV 910, an early work, Sun informed us, that might have originally been conceived for organ and influenced by Bach’s trip (250 miles on foot) to spend some time admiring the craftsmanship of Dieterich Buxtehude. The Bach Toccata was followed by an intense performance of Schubert’s Sonata in A minor, D. 845. From its very first notes we heard elegant and sensitive shaping of song-like phrases as well as lots of Sturm und Drang in the more passionate sections. 

It was after intermission that Sun had his finest moments. The great surprise of the afternoon was his performance of a contemporary work, Rain Study, composed by Hyo-shin Na in 1999. Sun informed the audience that this work contained Korean idioms merged with western traditions and its central theme was the brevity of life — “Although the sun that sets will rise the next day, a life that passes will not rise again.” 

This work featured a weaving in and out of sonorities that were constantly interrupted by melodic fragments and dissonant clusters of notes. The lovely ending of this work gave us an uneasy serenity as its final moments drifted off silently into the ether.

The program ended with a passionate and large-scaled performance of Schumann’s Kreisleriana — I say “large-scaled” because there were some strident percussive passages that threatened to overwhelm the piano. But, Sun’s performance was focussed and artistic in its absolute control of the eight sections of this work, each with its own charm and magic.

Sun took us on a wild journey, and we enjoyed it.

THE WINNER of the 2018 Carmel Music Society piano competition, Kevin Lee Sun, redeemed his winning solo recital on Sunday afternoon with an oddly arcane program, a gutsy move to be sure since the audience thinned out considerably at intermission. Yet this young man, who played his entire program from memory, certainly has the talent, skills and multi-award-winning performance track record with which to make a career—unless he chooses in favor of medicine instead. (Nice to have so many choices on your plate at age 25!)  

Arcane though it was, Sun’s program followed a certain logic. The first prelude and fugue from JS Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, whetted the ear, to be followed immediately by the Fantasia after JS Bach by Ferruccio Busoni, concocted in 1909. The piece references Bach’s use of three chorales, including “Christ, du bist der helle Tag” and  “Lob se idem allmächtigen Gott.”  But the most immediately recognizable was the advent carol “Gottes Sohn ist kommen,” whose melody, sung every Christmas season in a version known as “In dulce jubilo,” dates to the early 14th century and, for Bach and his contemporaries, was frequently harmonized as chorales. However, this conflation of Bach and Busoni is a pretentiously muddled affair—16 minutes in a performance that felt like 24, though no fault of Sun—appealing primarily to hot-shot virtuosi like Marc-André Hamelin whose glitz alone often carries the water for otherwise neglected piano composers of yesteryear. Frankly it’s a hard piece to take seriously; Bach barely rescues Busoni from himself. Sun, who plays with probing seriousness, should build his career on a sounder foundation.

(Meanwhile, I was dismayed and distracted by ushers seating late-comers into the auditorium ten minutes into the Busoni with noisy whispering, and, in the following Schubert, patrons making high-held cell-phone videos of the performance. Apparently, Sunset Center’s previously stated policies are no longer being enforced.)     

Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy, D760, also a muddle of form as the musical term ‘fantasy’ usually implies—in this case sonata comingled with theme and variations—vacillates between major and minor. Nominally based on the composer’s earlier song, Der Wanderer, the 20-minute bluster sounds like a forced amalgam of Schubert and Beethoven and suffers from a near-inability to find which of the many suggested endings is the right one. As a great and loving fan of Schubert, I find this piece about as non-idiomatic of the composer’s natural style as one could get, though Sun muscled up big-time for the occasion.

Sun’s piano teacher at Stanford, Thomas Schultz, had every reason to take pride in his pupil, including the inclusion on the program of Variations (1990) by Hyo-Shin Na, Schultz’s Korean-born wife and a fine composer on her own terms. Absent program notes for the concert, one had to catch the piece on the fly. It was based essentially on an angular pentatonic theme of Korean or Chinese character, and arguably was the most truly confident performance by the pianist. A high point of the program it fed ears hungry for something fresh and, in modern terms, original.

Brahms’ early Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 9, of 1854—Brahms was 21—is based on a the fourth of Schumann’s Bunte Blătter, (Album leaves) , and precociously mourns the untimely loss of his principal mentor. To close his recital, Sun chose the Romance No. 2 from Schumann’s Thee Romances, Op. 28, love-letters to his soon-to-be wife Clara just before her 21st birthday. Clara wrote to him on 1 January 1840 ‘… as your bride, you must indeed dedicate something further to me, and I know of nothing more tender than these 3 Romances, in particular the middle one, which is the most beautiful love duet.” As Brahms reminds us over and again, Schumann’s was one of the most original voices of the “romantic” 19th century.

2018 Carmel Music Society Biennial Piano Competition winner Kevin Lee Sun appeared in recital yesterday afternoon at Sunset Center. It was, in retrospect, an oddly chosen program. The works on the first half, consisting of a Prelude & Fugue from Bach’s WTC II, the Fantasia nach J.S. Bach by Busoni and Schubert’s “Wanderer Fantasy,” were totally involving and demonstrated Sun’s ability to paint with a stunningly beautiful palette of colors while demonstrating a seemingly effortless total keyboard mastery. At the end of the first half, spontaneous bravos erupted from members of the audience, and he received a thunderous standing ovation.

These repertoire selections should have ended the program, because the works Sun performed on the second half — sets of variations by Hyo-shin Na and Brahms, plus a bland Romance by Schumann — were about as exciting as a firecracker on the Fifth of July. Although most artists would plan to end a recital, not with a whimper, but with a bang, both the Brahms Variations and the Schumann Romance faded away so quietly the audience seemed to be genuinely surprised when they were over, and not sure when to applaud. At the end of the concert there was a standing ovation, but the applause quickly faded, and there was no encore.

Unquestionably, Sun is a total musician from his toes to his fingertips, and his virtuosity knows no bounds. Most importantly, his virtuosity is often understated, since he uses it to serve and enhance the music and never for gratuitous display. His performance of the Bach Prelude & Fugue in C Major, BWV 870, was so natural and charming, you were genuinely sorry when it was over. His performance of Busoni’s Fantasia nach J.S. Bach was a revelation, for most of us in the audience were hearing this work for the first time and didn’t know quite what to expect. We heard homage to Bach with a definite romantic slant and a slight modern perspective. This performance pulled us into its spiritual core and immersed us in lovely, colorful solemnity until it finally reached a beautiful quiet ending that seemed inevitable and totally satisfying.

The greatest work on the program was Schubert’s mighty Wanderer Fantasie, Op. 15, one of the marvels of the piano literature. Although it is a work that some artists overplay and weaken with relentless pounding and excessive speed, Sun showed noble restraint that brought out the best moments in the setting of the the song that inspired the work, as well as in all the fiery Sturm und Drang that surrounds it. This was a gorgeous and masterful performance with beautiful cantabile and shaping of phrases. This was the best performance of this this work I have ever heard, and it was a performance I never wanted to end.

The novelty on the program was a set of variations by Hyo-shin Na, the wife of Kevin’s piano teacher at Stanford, Thomas Schultz. This was a 13-minute, well-crafted piece that began with an extended solo for left hand alone that bounced all over the keyboard while strongly favoring the bass register of the piano. The style was strongly rhythmic with punched out disjointed intervals that suggested a twentieth-century tone row on meth. Except for brief quasi-lyrical, moments of lyricism at four minutes and eleven minutes into the work, these variations pulled no punches. Although this is a challenging piece for the performer (and the audience as well), Kevin Lee Sun easily navigated his way through its thorny difficulties and managed to make it sound like a coherent and appealing work.

We would love to hear Kevin Lee Sun in a return engagement, and perhaps next time we could persuade him to play some Chopin. Speaking with him briefly after the concert, I asked him about Chopin. He smiled and made a dismissive gesture with his hand saying, “There is already too much Chopin.” I don’t agree with him about this. Alan Walker in his recently-published biography of Chopin says in his preface. “Wherever I am on earth, someone within a fifty-mile radius is either listening to or playing a work by Chopin.”

It was a grand occasion for local piano buffs yesterday when the Carmel Music Society held its 40th Piano Competition at Sunset Center. Six finalists competed from 10:30 am to 3:00 pm, each playing a half-hour solo program. At 3:30 Dr. Anne Thorp, Co-President of the Carmel Music Society announced that the judges had selected 24-year-old Kevin Lee Sun from Sacramento as the Grand Prize Winner, who, in addition to his cash award, will be returning to Sunset Center at 3:00 pm on Sunday, January 13, 2019 to perform a full recital on the CMS regular subscription series. Dr. Thorp then announced that 29-year-old Xiao Chen, who holds a Master of Music degree from Juilliard and a DMA from UCLA, was awarded Second Prize, and 19-year-old Christopher Richardson, a much lauded competition winner who is currently a pre-med student at UC Berkeley, was awarded Third Prize.

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After intermission we had an opportunity to hear Grand Prize Winner Kevin [Lee] Sun, who also seemed to have three different personas inhabiting his artistic soul. He played an elegant, extroverted Overture to Bach’s Partita No. 4, two lovely and expressive selections from Schubert’s Drei Klavierstücke, D.946, and finally an over-the-top performance of the Gigue from Schoenberg’s Suite for Piano, Op. 25. I normally wouldn’t go out of my way to hear any of Schoenberg’s piano works. But, I shamefully admit my prejudice was misguided, and it was Kevin Sun who showed me the error of my ways. His performance of the Gigue was an eye-opening (and ear-opening) experience. We will look forward to his appearance in January for the CMS.

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Every now and then one encounters a student recital so imaginatively conceived and so confidently executed that it burns its way into mind’s long-term memory. Such was the case last night in the Osher Salon at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where graduating senior Edward Luengo presented his end-of-term cello recital. With a repertoire that allowed for four musical partners and extended from the end of the eighteenth century to the first decade of the current one, Luengo provided himself with a richly diverse palette with which to exercise his technical and expressive skills, both of which were firing on all cylinders.

The major works in each half of the program offered a stimulating balance of the familiar and the unfamiliar. The second half was dominated by Johannes Brahms’ Opus 99 (second) sonata in F major. Separated by two decades, one might say (at the risk of sounding too reductive) that the first of the cello sonatas (Opus 38 in E minor) is highly introverted, while Opus 99 is vigorously extroverted. There is even an energetic buzz to the pizzicato passages in the second (Adagio affettuoso) that seems to invite the listener into what might have been taken as a private space.

The fact is that each movement has its own characteristic set of personality traits. Working effectively with accompanist Kevin Lee Sun, Luengo knew how to mine each movement for its own individual traits and then tie them all together in his journey through the sonata’s four movements. This was a delightful reminder that, no matter how many times one has previously encountered this sonata, there will always be fresh ways to enjoy the listening experience.

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