Sunwook Kim

Earlier in the week to the QEH to hear Mr. Kim do Bach's Partita No.2, Beethoven's Waldstein and Mussorgsky's Pictures.

No freebie concert in the foyer which was good. Maybe after the promised refurbishment, freebies and foyer will be separated which would also be good. And no loud powerpoint above the stage. Better and better. We declined the portmanteau programme on this occasion, that is to say one of those programmes which do all the concerts, in brief, for a season. Not very good value unless you are doing several of them. And not very many pictures to look at either.

A young man's playing, which I thought a little loud for the Bach, but which worked well for the Beethoven and even better for the Mussorgsky. No score, not even an electrical one. Lots of sustained reverberations from the strings of the Steinway.

Quite a lot of his compatriots had turned out for the occasion, some very young.

There was also a rather good and rather familiar encore. I hadn't got a clue what it was, despite the familiarity, but the knowledgeable looking chap whom I asked on the way out thought Lizst, not further specified. I thought that google would know by the morning and was so wrong that he doesn't even know this morning. We will see if the Southbank Centre customer support email address does.

A bonus was just catching a train home. No half hour wait.

A further bonus was that BH was able to answer a question about Mussorgsky's first name (Modest first then Petrovich in the middle) on Countdown yesterday.

Reference 1: http://www.sunwookkim.com/.