Before beginning her performance last Saturday at NEIU’s recital hall, the Korean born pianist Soojin Ahn bowed humbly to the crowd. This acknowledgment of the audience was short lived, as she shifted her attention to the open Steinway grand and Hayden’s Sonata in E minor, Hoboken XVI: 34. The sounding of the first movement marked the beginning of the NEIU 2007-2008 Jewel Box Series, a set of Friday night concerts that, to the satisfaction of listeners throughout the Chicagoland area, are also broadcast live on 98.7 WFMT .
The debut began with a certain straightforwardness of movement and sound. With her emotion well contained, the scene was easily imagined as if glimpsing through a residential window at an anonymous musician. The subdued aura left the air pleasant and dry, allowing for the evaporation of contemplative thought without an uncomfortable emotional humidity.
Maintaining this objectivity, Soojin Ahn embarked upon her second musical journey of the night, this time through Franz Liszt’s Venezia e Napoli. Liszt’s visceral style ushered in a world of physical sensation that only his music can. The piece also gave Ahn a chance to display her skill, rolling through high register runs and tumbling down the keyboard in crescendos of exponential growth. At one point, while playing with a cross-armed technique, her abilities demanded meditation on the extraordinary physiological intricacies involved in musical performance.
The second half of Ahn’s performance began again with a bow but proceeded with a much different attitude. Taking her seat at the piano she bypassed any moment of deep thought and plunged into Messinere’s Regard de l’Espirit de joie.
Messinier, a French composer of the mid 20th century, is a challenge in all respects. His innovative style is certainly not easy listening and is difficult enough to dissuade many talented pianists from playing it. Ahn showed tremendous confidence, if not bravery, as she slammed through the piece, perfectly balancing the volcanic dissonance and hidden melodic beauty of Messinier’s composition. Nailing the piece shut with a growling final chord, Ahn solidified the moment as the peak of her performance, a notion affirmed by an immediate eruption of applause.
The milieu at the Recital Hall was electric, but unfortunately, the subsequent piece did not seem to provide the necessary spark for total ignition. Although beautiful, Granados’ El Amor y la Muerte: Balada could not match Messinier’s volatility and may have been better suited earlier in the set. Power was restored, however, with Ravel’s La Valse.
Sudden dynamic changes, along with glissandos spanning nearly all the points on the piano’s abscissa like plane of keys, accurately summarized her many abilities. Though the piece concluded the billed program, such a performance certainly warranted an encore and she obliged with an Impromptu by Schubert, displaying another yet unseen dimension of sheer elegance.
Ahn’s performance brings to light the musical happenings at NEIU. As a world-renowned performer and winner of many prestigious competitions including the International Chopin Competition and the Gilmore Young Artist Award, Ahn joins the list of notable musicians to take the stage at NEIU’s Recital Hall, a list that will continue to grow with this season’s line-up of Jewel Box Series concerts.
Information about upcoming performances is available at http://jewelbox.neiu.edu.