Beethoven Piano Sonatas - Jae-Hyuck Cho
"I think sound recordings and photographs are a lot alike," says Korean pianist Jae-Hyuck Cho. "Be it aural or visual, the moments are captured and preserved. The moments immediately become a part of the past just as soon as they are captured, so recordings could never truly capture and represent the artistry of musicians as it’s always changing and evolving. But for the same reasons people take pictures to capture and document moments of their lives, I also wanted to take up the opportunity when it came to me, to do the same with music. Leaving a record, looking back in the past could be a good thing on many levels."
Read more…"I couldn’t come up with a quick answer when I was asked about what I wanted to put on the album since the piano repertoire is truly vast. Then I had a thought. It would be a great chance for me to take a moment to look into myself, into my musical world, and the answer came to my heart in the form of Beethoven’s sonatas. I find that one of the astonishing aspects of Beethoven’s piano sonatas is their diversity. The composer left us 32 piano sonatas, and every one of them is unique! The three sonatas included in this album are no exception: the dark and heavy atmosphere of the ‘Pathétique’; deep human emotions building up inside a pressure cooker that’s about to explode until it finally does in the ‘Appassionata’; an unprecedented and strange beginning of the ‘Waldstein’! I chose these three sonatas for special personal connections I have with them. I didn’t realize when I was making choices, but it turns out that I have learned all these sonatas as a young child and I formed specific memories for each of them. Perhaps I was driven subconsciously by my inner child, but in a good way. If that were true, I could treat this album as snapshots of my childhood memories of music, filled with innocence, sense of wonder, and enchantment that are granted during the childhood."