KARL AMADEUS HARTMANN – CENTER

The South Korean pianist Yeseul Moon (*1992) released a CD on MDG on 10.02.2023 in which she recorded works by Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Gilead Mishory and Christopher Tarnow. In particular, she interprets Hartmann’s three-movement Piano Sonata “27 April 1945” as well as an early version of the Scherzo from the Piano Sonata “27 April 1945”.

Congratulations to Yeseul Moon for this fantastic recording!

For more information and to purchase the CD, please visit:

https://www.mdg.de/moon-ghetto-lullaby

Excerpt of reviews:

Klaus Friedrich (in CLASS: aktuell-Magazin 2023/Nr. 1, p. 6): The crime of the Holocaust and the world war remains inconceivable. In a poignant new recording, Yeseul Moon explores three very different artistic approaches to horror. The piano works by Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Gilead Mishory and Christopher Tarnow get right under your skin, even without a pointed finger.

Hartmann himself was an eyewitness: the harrowing sight of a trek of survivors from the Dachau concentration camp was the occasion for the composition of the piano sonata “27 April 1945”, which takes up what he saw with indescribable intensity and can be heard here in the revised version. In the touching “Funeral March” he quotes the workers’ song “Brothers, to the Sun, to Freedom”.

Gilead Mishory’s “Escape Pieces” interpret the award-winning novel of the same name by Anne Michaels. The story of the boy Jakob Beer, who loses his entire family in the Holocaust, is interlaced many times in place and time. Mishory takes up these complex images with the help of associative motifs and quotations – a grandiose interpretation of the poetic template!

Christopher Tarnow also takes his cue from a literary model: Hermann Hesse’s texts express an extreme sadness, which Tarnow translates musically in very different ways – as a simple melody or as a “sunken” song. Yeseul Moon audibly takes personal consternation to heart with grandiose expressiveness.

With the Scherzo from the early version of Hartmann’s Sonata, which quotes the “Internationale”, she succeeds in a brilliant conclusion to this programme, which is as fascinating as it is very intense to listen to.

More reviews of the CD:

https://klassik-festival.de/musikalische-trauerarbeit (Martin Demmler)

http://www.opushd.net/article?article=3264 (french: Jean-Jacques Millo and translated into english by Lawrence Schulman)

http://www.klassik-heute.de/4daction/www_medien_einzeln?id=24305&CDS30 (Martin Blaumeiser)

Brigitte Helbig, born in Munich in 1991, began playing the piano at the age of four and later studied in Munich, Paris and Vienna. For her interpretation of contemporary music, she received a sponsorship award from the IBK (Internationale Bodensee Konferenz) and a music scholarship from the LH Munich. Since 2017, she has also been working on the premiere recording of the complete piano works of Hans Winterberg (Toccata Classics), a Holocaust survivor. In addition to contemporary solo repertoire, she is particularly dedicated to the works of female composers (concert series “Starke Frauen – Starke Stücke”). As a founding member of our ensemble hartmann21, she also regularly interprets modern as well as contemporary chamber music. We are looking forward to further exciting concert evenings with her at the Karl Amadeus Hartmann-Gesellschaft.

Congratulations, Brigitte Helbig!

„Funkelnde Sterne am bayerischen Musikhimmel“: Kunstförderpreise 2022 in der Sparte „Musik“ (bayern.de)