I Virtuosi Italiani featuring Kun Woo Paik

About the Event

In this highly‐anticipated concert, hear the mellifluous sounds of classical music by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Frederic Chopin at Verona's treasured and world‐renowned Teatro Ristori.

Kun Woo Paik is considered one of the most important pianists of his generation. On this evening he will perform two famous pieces by Tchaikovsky and Chopin's F minor concerto.

The Concerto No. 2 in F minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 21 was written in late 1829 and early 1830 (thus preceding by a few months what is referred to as Conceno No. 1, Op. 11) and was premiered in Warsaw on March 17, 1830 by Chopin himself, who also chose it for his Paris debut on February 26, 1832. It is dedicated to the Countess Delphine Potocka: to dispel one of the many reveries about Chopin, it must be remembered that, on the basis of some ardent and uninhibited but certainly apocryphal letters, this beautiful young aristocrat was falsely believed to be a lover of Chopin. If anything, the inspirational muse for this Concerto was Konstancja Gladkowska, a singing student at the Warsaw Conservatory of her Chopin wrote to a friend, “Perhaps, to my misfortune, I have found my ideal, to whom I have remained faithful, though without saying a word to her, for six months the one I dream of, to whom I dedicated the Adagio of my Concerto….” And indeed Chopin indulges in ardent melodramatic tones in the central part of the Adagio, but in the rest of the Concerto an elegant, melancholy, dreamy, intimate tone dominates.

In 1884, Tchaikovsky wrote an entr'acte for string orchestra entitled “A Grateful Greeting” as part of the celebration of the 50th year of artistic activity of Russian dramatic actor and theater teacher Ivan Vasilyevich Samarin. After the actor's death, this was published under the title Elegy, dedicated to his memory.
The genre of the Serenade‐the instrumental composition intended, in the late 18th century, for open‐air performances for purposes of pure entertainment‐was scarcely cultivated in the last century, except as a nostalgic regret of a lost era, that of classicism precisely. Tchaikovsky's Serenade for String Orchestra in C Major Op. 48 is no exception, a piece that reflects the composer's boundless reverence for the style of the late 18th century, filtered mainly through the idealized figure of Mozart.

In fact, the Serenade op. 48 is a work that is openly dissimilar to Tchaikovsky's symphonic rehearsals, as well as to the first three orchestral Suites, very challenging compositions structurally and conceptually it rather draws on the Fourth Suite, called “Mozartian” because it was based on material originally by Mozart, or the “Variations on a Rococo Theme” for cello and orchestra op. 33, both highly personal reinterpretations of the classical style.
In the Serenade op. 48, however, the homage to Mozart and classicism lies more in the serene and disengaged character of the piece than in the imitation of beloved models perhaps it was precisely this choice that made the composition particularly pleasing to the composer (“Whether it is because it is my last work or because it really is not bad, I am very much in love with this Serenade,” Tchaikovsky had to write). Written in 1880, it was performed the following year with great success, earning, among other things, the coveted appreciation of Anton Rubinstein, the feared director of the Petersburg Conservatory and the author's teacher.

Born in Seoul, Kun Woo Paik gave his first concert at the age of ten, performing Grieg's Piano Concerto with the Korean National Orchestra, and at the age of fifteen moved to New York to study with Rosina Lhevinne at the Julliard School, and then with Guido Agosti and Willhelm Kempff. He is a winner of the Naumburg Competition and a gold medalist at the Busoni International Piano Competition. His international career took off following his first New York appearance, during which he performed Maurice Ravel's complete piano works at Lincoln Centre, and then with his orchestral debut at Carnegie Hall. In 1974 Paik made his European debut and since then has collaborated closely with conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Mariss Jansons, Sir Neville Marriner, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Jiri Belohlavek, Mikhail Pletnev, Dmitri Kitaenko, James Colon, John Nelson, Eliahu Inbal, and Krzysztof Penderecki, and has played with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony, the BBC Symphony, the Paris Orchestra, the Berliner Symphoniker, the Hungarian National Orchestra, the Monte Carlo Philharmonic, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the RAI Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, and the English Chamber Orchestra. He is also a regular guest at music festivals such as the Berlin Festwochen, Aix‐en‐Provence, La Roque d'Antheron, Ravinia, Montreux and the Moscow Easter Festival. His repertoire extends from Bach to Stockhausen, Busoni to Scriabin, Liszt to Messiaen. He is the creator of a major musical event, consisting of a series of six recitals in London and Paris, and dedicated to the solo piano works of Franz Liszt. In 2005 Kun Woo Paik began a new project: the recording of all thirty‐two Beethoven Sonatas. The first volume (Sonatas No. 16‐26) was released in August 2005. In 2007, to celebrate the completion of his recording of Beethoven's masterpiece, Kun Woo Paik gave eight consecutive recitals performing all thirty‐two Beethoven Sonatas, in China and Korea. Kun Woo Paik lives in Paris and is Artistic Director of the Emerald Coast Music Festival in Dinard, France. In 2000, he was awarded the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.