A new Mozart?

A new Mozart?

Like the famous composer, piano phenom Ji-yong started young and plays with flair

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
A new Mozart?

When told he could be compared to a youthful Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, an ordinary artist would modestly deny it. But Ji-yong, 21 and for a decade now one of the most interesting pianists of his generation, simply shrugged it off. Because he is anything but ordinary.

The comparison was not to Mozart the composer, but Mozart the pianist. From the age of six, travelling round the European royal houses, Mozart had a passion, not only for performing but also stylish clothes, dancing, and living with undisguised joy.

And Ji-yong? Born 8,000km from Mozart's Salzburg, in Seoul, South Korea, he showed his astonishing ability at the age of six, travelled to the US and won top prize at the New York Philharmonic Orchestra's Young Artist Competition _ at just 10 years old, he was the youngest pianist ever awarded that prestigious prize.

One year later, he made his debut with the NY Phil, playing (appropriately) a Mozart concerto under the baton of Kurt Masur. Masur is extraordinarily youthful himself _ but he happened to be seven times the age of Ji-yong. The collaboration was apparently unusually exciting. Since that time he has performed around the world, from Seoul to St Petersburg.

Bangkok is set to be astonished by the gregarious artist on Saturday. He will inevitably show an exuberance, an enthusiasm, and a sense of the stylish in his stage presence.

Ji-yong's music, though, is a serious business. As serious, in fact, as, well, as his social life. Just as the teenage Mozart loved his wine and sweets, dancing and billiards, so Ji-yong makes no excuses about his life of clubbing, partying, modelling (for Calvin Klein) and simply enjoying whatever he is doing.

In fact he relishes the reply given to a New York Times reporter who asked what music meant to him. "Without thinking too much, I said, 'Music is like partying'. And it still is."

His early life in Seoul was surrounded by music. Like most middle-class homes, a piano was in the living room, and he cannot remember a time when he wasn't playing. First for his own enjoyment, and then for others. After winning first prize in two piano competitions, Ji-yong and his family moved to the US where he was enrolled in the Music Preparatory Division of Mannes College, and later at the famed Juilliard School.

From the age of 10 to about 16, life was a joyride of plaudits for Ji-yong. Then things changed.

"Music was entertaining," he said. "But around the age of 16, I came upon a wall. A wall where the music wasn't the same. I could move my fingers, but my mind was blocked. I couldn't speak with anybody about this, but had to come out of my problem alone. It was rather scary."

When he reached 19, Ji-yong came to be (as he says) "re-enlightened".

"I started looking and playing music with my whole mind. Now I want to do more than Liszt and Mozart. I want to do more contemporary music. And I would love to start commissioning pieces from modern composers."

His recital in Bangkok is indicative of his multi-faceted outlook. The Beethoven Waldstein sonata is not so much introspective as outward, highly romantic, supremely emotional. The Bach Partita is not the religious Bach, but the Bach who looked upon dances of his time as great art. The second half of Chopin's Nocturnes, Preludes, a Ballade and the A-flat major Polonaise show Ji-yong's innate romanticism. Busoni's arrangement of Bach's great Chaconne is like the Everest of music. Absolutely foreboding, incredibly challenging _ yet with the most extraordinary views from first measure to last.

The concert halls of the world show one side of Ji-yong's talents. While he lives in New York City, he frequently goes back to Seoul, where he and a group of fellow young artists known as Ensemble Ditto perform around the country to adoring _ and very young _ fans.

"We're a classical group, but our shows sell out. Girls come like we're a boy band. We try to do something like what the Backstreet Boys did for the pop industry. Koreans are always so very hungry for artistic experiences, and I am so happy to be part of this."

At times, Ji-yong does the almost unthinkable. Out on the streets of Seoul, he might take his painted piano, sit down and dash off some music by Mozart or Liszt.

One particular video shows the style. He sits down in the middle of the street with his piano and doodles a little Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to curious bystanders. Soon he improvises the melody, working into it the most intricate variations, stunning the crowd as it gets larger and larger accelerando.

And obviously Ji-yong loves it. Joshua Bell once played his Stradivarius in the Washington subway system, but only to see if anyone recognised him. Ji-yong performs on the street for the sheer joy of it.

Historically, Ji-yong seems like an original. But his "eccentricities" go back hundreds of years. His brightly painted pianos are like the early 18th century instruments which had elegant colouring and designs. His street performances are very much like the 17th century street musicians of Italy, or the Gypsy and Jewish fiddlers of Russia whose genius produced artists like Menuhin, Heifetz and Oistrakh.

As for his flamboyance, Ji-yong' s heritage goes back to the very first pianist who took advantage of being "The Artist Incarnate", Franz Liszt. Ji-yong could be the Korean equivalent. Exuberant, entertaining, happily showy, he is the opposite of the austere artist.

One can see this on his YouTube recordings of Liszt. Typical is the video where he performs Liszt's arrangement of Schubert's The Erlking, about an evil creature that carries off people to their death.

Part of it is at the keyboard, but he sets it in a strange meadow, where an "art demon" in the form of a goat, haunts the forest and the music itself.

More conventional is another Schubert-Liszt song set in an art gallery and it is suitably artistic.

"Artists try to break away from what people stereotypically consider as correct," the pianist said. "And it's not always easy. But we always go back to that art demon," because we love it so much.

He has another face, though. In 2007, Ji-yong started The Ji-yong Foundation to help combat homelessness, poverty and HIV/Aids. In fact, Liszt's Consolation on the piano, he confesses, "is to offer 'consolation' to those in need". Suitably, Ensemble Ditto has offered many charity concerts for the Foundation.

What will Ji-yong be when he reaches that ripe old age of 25, still years from now. He could end up like Liszt, who relished performing for swooning ladies to his very last days.

More essential is Ji-yong's enchantment with his own life. During an interview before a concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, he was asked to describe himself in one word.

Without hesitation, he answered, without arrogance but with sheer delight: "Ji-yong." To the applause of the audience, he stated: "Ji-yong is Ji-yong."

Do you like the content of this article?
COMMENT