Credit: Ralph Lauer
In 2017, South Korean born Yekwon Sunwoo won the prestigious Van Cliburn Competition and is receiving a good deal of attention for playing that is both sensitive and opulent. Sunday night he was featured soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of the South Bay (COSB) under Frances Steiner in Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto, Op. 58 at the Norris Theatre in Rolling Hills Estates. The cozy 450 seat venue was filled with loyal subscribers and listeners interested in hearing COSB’s season opening concert with Steiner, who has conducted the ensemble since 1974.
One might call her a trailblazer who broke through the so-called glass ceiling in studies and performance. Her distinguished career began as the youngest cello student at the Curtis Institute of Music, flourished at Harvard University, Marlboro Music Festival and the University of Southern California. She served as Assistant Principal cellist of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and gained recognition as the first women to conduct a major orchestra at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles - in addition to other posts with the Maracaibo Symphony, Long Beach Symphony and the Carson-Dominguez Hills Symphony.
Through the years, COSB’s programming has presented repertoire of mainstream, contemporary and American composers with a roster of guest artists such as Glenn Dicterow and Nazek Hakhnazaryan. This concert was all about the classics in Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert and all about Yekwon Sunwoo. Now 82 years old, Steiner walks to the podium straight as an arrow and still has a commanding presence in the way she gets the musical message across with an economy of arm and hand gestures that communicate a sense of unfiltered musicianship to an ensemble of which many players have been in for years. The consistency of COSB is not only impressive but reassuring, which is kind of like knowing the sun will rise in the east every morning and Starbucks will open at 6 am.
The Overture to the Marriage of Figaro by Mozart was the program’s opening work and it sparkled with a quality one might associate with a Kit Kat bar; crisp, clean and had the right amount of attacca bite. The ensemble offered another somewhat longer tidbit in Schubert’s 6th symphony, D. 589 the so-called Little C Major as compared to this composer’s massive 9th symphony in the same key. The group infused the upbeat piece from beginning to end with an effervescent amount of precise, manicured passagework and finely balanced exchanges between winds (flutes) and strings, particularly in the Andante and final movement.
Although COSB was front and center, the evening belonged to Sunwoo who gave Beethoven’s fourth concerto an interpretation of sublime introspection and brilliance. The opening hymnlike melody that precedes the orchestral entrance tests a pianist’s ability to look inward to the music’s subtle side. He drew out the sequence in a delicate hush and all that followed was played with a silky smooth touch and flowing buoyancy that permeated every arpeggio, quasi-scale and allowed notes to spin through the air like a butterfly in flight.
His stylistic approach has the markings of classic understated elegance, perhaps an influence from studies with Richard Goode and Bernd Goetzke in Germany, himself a student of Michelangeli. It seemed especially appropriate in partnership with a downsized orchestra that was the industry standard in Beethoven’s time. Of course, the 30-year-old Sunwoo is in total technical command of the keyboard as shown in the first movement cadenza but his playing also contained many moments where delicate articulation and sustained pedaling created a dreamlike effect in the Andante con moto where he lingered and shaped phrases with beautiful flexibility. How cool it is that this developing artist is exploring the aesthetics and not just the pyrotechnics of a work.
The on stage musical interaction between Sunwoo and Steiner provided a sweet visual image but the ensemble’s accompaniment had some ragged moments which vacillated between dramatic jubilance and metric lethargy, which didn’t however detract from the overall effort. After several curtain calls, Sunwoo went to the bench and made a few gracious comments about which encore he would offer, then began Rachmaninoff’s super well-known Prelude in G minor, Op. 23, No. 5 - a work this composer was often asked to perform in concert of which he reluctantly agreed because it became an endless request.
Sunwoo dove into this piece with authoritative exuberance, rapid octaves and melting romanticism which certainly confirmed The Cliburn Competition’s decision to give him the gold – should there have been any doubters. COSB’s next concert on November 10 will feature Los Angeles Philharmonic concertmaster Martin Chalifour playing Beethoven’s violin concerto, gearing up for this composer’s 250th birthday celebration next year.