Love

Sponsored by the Lewisville Lake Symphony in cooperation with the University of North Texas

Trinity Presbyterian Church (Map)
5500 Morriss Road, Flower Mound TX 75028
(Just south of Marcus HS, on the other side of the road.)

Debussy: Preludes

Ondine

Sounds and Perfumes Turning in the Evening Air

Fireworks

Debussy: L’Isle Joyeuse

Ravel: Jeux d’Eaux

Mozart: Duport Variations

Liszt: Don Juan

Pianist Min Joung Kim explores the complications of love through the music of Debussy, Ravel, Mozart and Liszt.

The program opens with a portrait of Ondine, the heroine of one of Debussy’s Preludes. According to legend, the seductive and amoral water nymph married a two-timing human with unfortunate consequences for both.

“L’Isle Joyeuse,” also by Debussy, was inspired by Watteau’s painting “Embarcation for Cythera” which caused an uproar at its first showing at the Académie Royal de Peinture et de Sculpture. The painting explores the preoccupation of French nobility with too much time on their hands. The Académie, in pragmatic French style, invented a new category in which fit the painting and thus undercut it’s scandalized critics.

Ravel’s Jeux d’Eaux (Water Games) draws a portrait of the elaborate mechanical fountains and water stairs in public gardens that surprised lovers and passersby with sudden jets and cascades of water.

Franz Liszt, who had a lifetime, Teflon ability to get out of romantic scrapes, took Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” turned it into his own perspective on Don Juan as well as a monument to his own pianistic skills and showmanship. The composition makes extremely forbidding technical demands, among them hair-raising passages in chromatic thirds, and one instance of rapid leaps in both hands across almost the whole width of the keyboard. Alexander Scriabin seriously injured his right hand by over-practicing this piece and wrote the funeral march of his First Sonata in memory of his damaged hand.

Min Joung Kim

Born in South Korea, pianist Min Joung Kim had her first piano lesson at the age of seven. By the age of nine she was already entering piano competitions and eventually won many significant competitions in Korea including the Sun-Hwa Arts school competition and the Sam-Ik national competition. She also appeared as soloist with the Pusan Philharmonic Orchestra and the Seoul Symphony Orchestra.

Sent to the United States as a teenager, Min Joung graduated from the Walnut Hill high school, preparatory school for the New England Conservatory. Studying with noted pianist Ton-Il Han, she graduated from Boston University with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree.

After returning to her country in 2002. Miss Kim embarked upon a career as a performer and teacher at several universities and music schools. She was a guest faculty member at the Tong Il Han Piano Institute, and has appeared at the MusicAlp festival in France, and as soloist with the Ulsan University Chamber Orchestra and the St. Petersburg Radio Orchestra.

Currently Miss Kim is a doctoral candidate at the University of North Texas, where she studies with Dr. Pamela Mia Paul

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The concert was originally to be performed by UNT’s Bancroft Quartet but the performance date came into conflict with a recording contract. The Symphony and UNT agreed that the recording was an opportunity for the musicians that should not be ignored. Ms. Kim has agreed to perform for the audience in their place.