Fragments and Reflections On William Youn’s Recital Program
Katy Hamilton
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?” This famous incantation (and its original German version, “Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand, wer ist die Schönste im ganzen Land?”) has been recited in bedtime stories across the world for more than 200 years. This evening’s program functions around an “axis of reflection”—works by Saunders and Ravel that deal specifically with magic mirrors of one kind or another. And mirror images, fragments, and reflections are also to be found in the remainder of the repertoire, by Mozart, Grieg, and Schumann. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall is one of Rebecca Saunders’s earliest published compositions. Completed in 1994, after several years of study in Karlsruhe with Wolfgang Rihm, it is a score as notable for its silences—the white emptiness on the page—as for the mysterious and colorful sounds that Saunders conjures from the piano. Saunders has spoken compellingly about the freedom of open spaces as a means of allowing the composer to find the perfect answer, the absolutely correct dots to add to the manuscript paper; and she is also fascinated with the timbral possibilities that can be drawn from a given instrument. Mirror, Mirror makes use of cluster chords, silently depressed keys, and several different percussive sounds derived from the operation of the sustain pedal. But each and every application of these feels utterly precise—a deliberate gesture, not a special effect. The result is remarkably dramatic: the movement of the pianist’s hands does not necessarily indicate that sounds are
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