Still (2027)

STILL

Walking through the forest of stillness

Piano recital by Sinä Hwang

3 March 2027 · 7 PM

Space Oolim, Daegu, South Korea

Free admission · Voluntary donations

Still is a contemporary piano recital exploring the sounds of nature — birdsong, wind, water, resonance and silence — through music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The project grew from my interest in listening: not only to music, but also to the sounds encountered while walking. A bird calling from a tree, wind moving through grass, rain, or the resonance left behind after a sound disappears can all change the way we hear musical sound.

The programme brings together works by Henry Cowell, Tōru Takemitsu, Olivier Messiaen, George Crumb and Einojuhani Rautavaara. Each composer approaches nature differently. Cowell opens the piano to unfamiliar resonances; Takemitsu listens closely to water, space and silence; Messiaen transforms birdsong into intricate piano writing; Crumb expands the instrument through colour and extended techniques; and Rautavaara places musical instruments in dialogue with recorded Arctic bird calls.

Rather than presenting nature as a single theme, Still moves through several ways of listening to it: imitation, memory, transformation, resonance and encounter. The piano becomes at times a traditional keyboard instrument and at others a resonating body whose strings and interior can be touched and sounded directly.

The recital is also connected to my ongoing artistic research into birdsong and contemporary piano performance, particularly how natural sounds can be translated, transformed and physically explored through piano playing and extended techniques.

Still will take place in Daegu, the city where I grew up and first learned to listen to and make music. The concert is offered with free admission, with voluntary donations collected at the venue.

PROGRAMME

Henry Cowell (1897–1965)

Aeolian Harp (1923)

Tōru Takemitsu (1930–1996)

Rain Tree Sketch II (1992)

Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992)

Petites esquisses d’oiseaux (1985)

I. Le Rouge-gorge

II. Le Merle noir

III. Le Rouge-gorge

IV. La Grive musicienne

V. Le Rouge-gorge

VI. L’Alouette des champs

Intermission

George Crumb (1929–2022)

Selections from Makrokosmos

Voices from “Corona Borealis”

Dream Images (Love-Death Music)

Night-Spell I

Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928–2016)

Cantus Arcticus, Op. 61 — Concerto for Birds and Orchestra

arranged/adapted for piano performance

I. Suo (The Bog)

II. Melankolia (Melancholy)

III. Joutsenet muuttavat (Swans Migrating)

Pianist: Sinä Hwang

Contemporary Piano · Artistic Research · Cologne / Daegu