Sumi Hwang in Recital
I want to sing myself to death, like a nightingale. — Schumann to Clara, 1840 · a letter from the 'year of song,' which poured out 138 songs in a single year
At a glance 🔭💭
People on stage and behind it ⏳🌊
- SopranoSumi HwangShe studied voice at Seoul National University and won the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2014 — continuing a line of Korean sopranos to take the prize after Hye-ran Hong (2011), a lineage that carries through to Tae-han Kim (2023), featured in this series' special July episode. She has been a member of the Bonn Opera in Germany since 2015, and hers is the very voice that sang the Olympic hymn at the opening ceremony of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Alongside the opera stage, she has steadily sung lieder (German art songs), making a program that moves between three languages, as it does today, very much her home ground.
- The poet of Frauenliebe und -lebenAdelbert von ChamissoA poet and botanist born into French nobility who fled to Germany to escape the Revolution. He wrote 'Peter Schlemihl,' the story of a man who sold his shadow, and was also a scientist who circled the globe aboard a Russian exploration ship. His 1830 poem cycle 'Frauenliebe und -leben' became song ten years later, when it met Schumann.
- The poet of On this IslandW. H. AudenThe leading English-language poet of the 20th century. Working alongside the twenty-three-year-old Britten at the GPO Film Unit on documentary scores (1936's 'Night Mail'), he left a decisive mark on the young composer. The poems of the five songs sung today come from his collections, and the song cycle takes its title from them as well.
- The poet of Mountain Flowers · Cannot ForgetKim So-wolA poet raised in Gwaksan, North Pyongan Province. With a single collection, 'Azaleas' (1925), he changed the rhythm of the Korean language, then died at thirty-two. He is the poet Korean art song has set to music most often, so it feels natural — as it does today — for two settings by different composers, Kim Sun-nam's 'Sanyuhwa' and Cho Hye-young's 'Motnijeo,' to share one stage.
I. Schumann — Frauenliebe und -leben · 1840
(year of song) In 1840, after a court battle with his father-in-law-to-be, who opposed his marriage to Clara, Schumann finally won and married her in September. Over that single year he poured out one hundred thirty-eight songs — an outpouring later generations would call his 'year of song.' 'Frauenliebe und -leben' was written in the thick of it, dashed off in one sitting in July, two months before the wedding. (eight scenes) Following Chamisso's cycle of poems, the eight songs move in turn through one woman's life: the moment of love at first sight, the conviction that he is the noblest man alive, the disbelieved proposal, the ring on her finger, the morning of the wedding, the confession that she is with child, the infant in her arms — and, in the eighth song, sudden widowhood. Each song's title is the scene itself, so knowing the story's order alone turns the stage into eight chapters of a short story. (postlude) The most famous moment in this song cycle comes after the singing has stopped. Once the voice falls silent in the final song, the piano alone slowly recalls the melody of the first — a postlude in which the widowed woman remembers the day she first fell in love. This page that sings without singing is the heart of the whole cycle, so carrying the first song's melody in your ear beforehand is the only way to recognize it at the end. (voice) That a woman's life was written by a nineteenth-century male poet remains contentious today — criticism of its submissive image of womanhood coexists with the defense that the music surpasses the text. Either way, it is the soprano herself who renders the verdict onstage. What temperature Sumi Hwang gives this woman is the thing to watch for in the first half.
A live recording (official KBS) of today's singer performing today's piece. Listen along as the scenes shift — meeting → ring → wedding → bereavement — and take note of the moment the first song returns in the final postlude.
- Song 1 — remember this melody (it returns at the end)
- Song 4, 'You ring on my finger' — the best-loved passage in the cycle
- After song 8 — what the piano's postlude says once the singing ends
II. Britten — On This Island · 1937
(twenty-three) In 1937, the year Benjamin Britten wrote this song cycle, he was twenty-three. It was the period when he was making documentaries with the poet Auden at the GPO Film Unit, which produced films for the Post Office — this set of five poems chosen from Auden's verse became his first formally published song cycle (Op. 11). Its premiere was a BBC broadcast that November. (five landscapes) The first song, 'Let the florid music praise,' opens with a Baroque-style fanfare — a young Englishman's greeting to his predecessor Purcell, two hundred years before. It moves on through falling autumn leaves, a seascape beneath the cliffs, and a nocturne, before the final song, 'As it is, plenty,' ends unexpectedly in a cabaret style — the deadpan, ironic tone of jazz sending up a comfortable life. This drop from a solemn opening to a wry close is the cycle's signature. (place) If Schumann represents the summit of German Lied, Britten marks a fresh start for twentieth-century English song. These five songs proved that English inflection and wit, not just German's long breath, could become song. Simply listening for how the two languages differ in texture during the first half will do half the work of preparation.
The five songs are short enough to hear in one sitting. The Baroque fanfare of the first song and the cabaret tone of the last — the drop between beginning and end is this cycle's signature.
- Song 1 — a greeting to Purcell, the voice like a trumpet
- Song 3, 'Seascape' — the piano paints the waves
- Song 5 — deadpan jazz, the wryness of twenty-three
III. Second half — songs in Korean
(Kim So-wol) The second half returns to Korean. Two poems by Kim So-wol meet composers from different eras — 'Sanyuhwa' is set by Kim Sun-nam, the most brilliant talent in Korean music around liberation, and 'Motnijeo' is set by the contemporary composer Cho Hye-young. It's a pairing that lets you hear, side by side, how the same poet's language splits into music across two generations. (April and the loom) 'Song of April,' Park Mok-wol's poem set by Kim Sun-ae, is the textbook favorite of the postwar generation — a song whose opening lines, with their magnolia and Werther, came to define what April means to Koreans. Ko Jung-hee's poem 'Song of the Loom' (set by Lee Won-ju) has a different grain. A poet from Haenam who wrote directly about women's labor and lives, she gave us a song in which the tradition of work songs sung at the loom crosses over into art song — a quiet counterpart to 'Frauenliebe und -leben' in the first half. (Arirang) The final two songs are folk songs. But these are not Arirang 'as sung' — they are art-song versions passed through a composer's hand: Lee Young-jo's 'Gyeongsang-do Arirang' and 'Miryang Arirang' in Jin Kyu-young's arrangement. This is the moment to weigh what changes when an oral melody takes on vocal technique and piano writing, holding it on the same scale as the Schumann and Britten before it. The whole recital turns out to be a single question — what is song? — asked in three languages.
The song that defined April for the postwar generation. Don't skip it for being familiar — heard on a soprano's formal stage, the distance between a popular tune and an art song becomes audible.
- Opening line — the ease with which the words settle onto the melody
- Between verses — the air of April the piano creates
Among the many settings of this same poem, Kim Sun-nam's 'Sanyuhwa' is ranked as the peak of Korean art song around liberation. Listen for how the music answers the poem's repeating structure.
- The poem's repetition — the harmony that changes each time the same words return
- Restraint — a Korean breath that deepens instead of rising
An official live recording (Sail Music & Culture Foundation) of the very piece on the program, sung by the very singer. Of everything in this preparation note, it is the single surest way to hear in advance what tonight's final block will sound like.
- Moments when the folk melody takes on vocal technique
- Piano — where it leaves traces of janggu rhythm
- The flavor of dialect — a texture of pronunciation different from standard-language song
IV. A route for preparation — poetry is half of an art-song recital
(order) Preparing for art song differs from preparing for instrumental music — **story and poem** need attention before melody does. A suggested route: ① Memorize the scene order of 'Frauenliebe und -leben's eight songs (meeting → conviction → proposal → ring → wedding → confession → child → bereavement). The titles alone will give you the plot. ② For Britten, listen in advance only to the first and last songs — plant the drop from Baroque fanfare to cabaret close in your ear, and the middle three songs will fall into place on their own at the hall. ③ For the Korean songs, read the poems first. Kim So-wol's two poems are short — read the originals once in the collection beforehand, and the songs will start to sound like a recitation of the poems. (in the hall) A song cycle is a single breath — there is no applause between the eight songs of 'Frauenliebe und -leben.' And even when the last song ends, the piece isn't over yet: the work lasts through the piano's postlude recalling the first song, and through the silence after it, until the singer's hands come down. Recognizing the first song's melody in that postlude — that is the final exam of this preparation. (contrast) Contrast is the key to the whole program. A lifetime's narrative in German, landscape and irony in English, poems and folk songs in Korean — how the same voice changes into the texture of three languages is the real substance of this recital. Listen closely for how pronunciation and breath shift each time the language changes.
A live recording of the 2014 winning performance. It's the point of origin for the voice you'll hear on tonight's stage — comparing the sound of competition tension with the sound of a recital is a pleasure left for the hall itself.
- Concentration in the soft passages — this singer's signature
- Switching languages — which one she sounds freest in
Glossary 📚🔎
Song cycle (Liederzyklus)
A group of songs bound by a single story or feeling. Convention holds that one does not applaud between songs, but listens through in a single breath — today's Schumann and Britten are both song cycles.
Lied
A German art song for piano and voice. Text and music stand as equals — so much so that the poem is said to be half the piece — with Schubert and Schumann bringing it to its peak.
Postlude (Nachspiel)
The passage where the piano carries on alone after the voice has ended. The final postlude of Frauenliebe und -leben, recalling the opening song, is the most famous postlude in the entire song literature.
Year of Song (Liederjahr)
1840 — the year Schumann married Clara and poured out 138 songs. Both Frauenliebe und -leben and Dichterliebe appeared this year.
Arirang as art song
An orally transmitted folk melody given harmony, piano writing, and vocal idiom by a composer to become a concert song. Today's Gyeongsang-do Arirang (composed by Young-Jo Lee) and Miryang Arirang (arranged by Kyu-Young Jin) represent the two approaches — original composition and arrangement.