Hyung-Ki Joo in Recital - Dreams and Nightmares

Synopsis

Pre-sale for SSO donors ($250 and above) and season pass holders: From 9 Mar 2026, 10am
Public Sale: From 12 Mar 2026, 10am

This programme unfolds along the fragile line between dream and nightmare, vision and reflection, shaped by music rooted in childhood across generations. It opens in an intimate world of lullabies and personal reverie, with pieces I wrote for my own children, before descending into the darker, hallucinatory imagination of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, where fantasy becomes unsettling and obsessive.

Bach stands at the centre as a composer whose music was once created in the moment and relied on the performer to improvise, personalise, and give voice to it—reminding us that what we now consider fixed was originally fluid and alive. Debussy’s childlike miniatures, written for his daughter, are reimagined by Gwilym Simcock, who reshapes this familiar material through a contemporary improviser’s lens while preserving its innocence and clarity. A parallel approach informs Leszek Możdżer’s transformation of Chopin, where Romantic intimacy is refracted through a modern, jazz-inflected language while remaining faithful to the composer’s essence.

Joo’s Five Pieces from Childhood reflect on his own early memories—wonder, vulnerability, longing, melancholy, and joy—moments both painful and precious that shape identity over time. The programme culminates in Ravel’s La Valse, conceived on the eve of the First World War, where elegance fractures into obsession: a glittering dream collapsing into delirium. Together, the works frame the pianist as interpreter, composer, and improviser, navigating the shifting boundary between memory and imagination, innocence and disquiet, nightmares and dreams. - Hyung-Ki Joo (United Kingdom)