Review from Gramophone 2018.Nov

I’ve been enjoying William Youn’s way with Mozart’s keyboard sonatas and this latest recital is on a similar level. He explains the thinking behind the programme in the booklet: born in South Korea, he moved first to the USA and then to Europe aged 18, whereupon he discovered Vienna, a city that immediately fascinated him and which links all the composers on the disc.

He begins with Schumann’s Humoreske, composed in Vienna in 1839, and captures its changeability with absolute conviction. The opening combines surging joy with moments of poetic inwardness; the second number is, in Youn’s hands, slightly more urgent than Anderszewski, who instead dwells on its more quizzical qualities. If no one can quite match Lupu’s gently beseeching way in the third’s outer sections, Youn dispatches the torrent of notes in the fifth number with fervour and strikes the right note of ardent majesty in the sixth. Though Youn’s final number is full of regret, he doesn’t quite plumb the depths of Lupu or Anderszewski.

From here we move to the gemütlich world of Schubert’s Valses sentimentales, Youn presenting a selection that ranges from simple charm (No 12) and longing (No 23) to unexpected vehemence (No 8); in a waltz as well known as the 13th, his experience with Mozart allows him to keep things outwardly simple, to alluring effect. In addition to pure Schubert we have his songs as viewed through the prism of Liszt the transcriber. Here modern-day pianists seem to have an inbuilt disadvantage, for few seem able to conjure the melody of a Lied such as ‘Auf dem Wasser zu singen’ with the glory of the pianists of yore Bolet springs to mind, among others; Youn is sensitive but feels a little reined-in. Similarly, while there are good things in the much-recorded ‘Ständchen’, especially in the more inward moments, he doesn’t own it in the way the greats, from Rachmaninov down, have done.

But leaving that aside (and I mean it as a compliment to be mentioning Youn in the same breath as such giants), the Clara Schumann/Liszt transcriptions – real rarities – have a charm that is immediately engaging, with ‘Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort’ being particularly lovely. Clara’s fiery Second Scherzo is full of dramatic panache, though I could have done with even more sense of the music driving through the bar lines in the outer sections. Youn ends with another rarity, the Albumblatt by Zemlinsky, to which he brings an abundant sense of yearning.