Recital Blends Music, Poetry

Covering an overseas report last week, I listened to Liszt’s “Years of Pilgrimage” performed by 40-year-old pianist Huh Seung-yeon on the train from Italy to Austria. The snow-topped villages peeking through the cedar trees outside my window reminded me of the beautiful vista that Franz Lizst saw during his stay in Switzerland.

The Hungarian-born musician Franz Liszt (1811-1886) wrote “Years of Pilgrimage” from 1835 to 1879. His inspiration for the piece was his love for the Countess Marie d’Agoult and the lovers’ journeys to Switzerland and Italy. In this piece, Liszt depicts the lovely lakeside in Switzerland and shows his fervor for the literary works of Dante and Petrarca, whom he met in Italy.

On January 21 at 8:00 p.m. at the Seoul Arts Center, an innovative concert will combine the Liszt’s “Years of Pilgrimage” with a poem recital. It features Huh Seung-yeon playing the piano and actor Yoo In-chon behind a desk reciting a poem.

Many authors influenced the making of “Years of Pilgrimage,” including Goethe and Dante, but only Byron’s epic poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” and Senancour’s “Obermann” will be read.

Pianist Huh Seung-yeon, currently vice president-for-life at the Swiss Zurich Music Conservatory and leading an active career in Europe, is performing in Korea for the first time in four years. Huh recently announced a new record, “Years of Pilgrimage,” that she had been working on those four years under the German music label Arsmusici.

Last September, Huh opened a uniquely-structured recital in Germany to rave reviews. Audiences went wild when theatrical actor Robert Bühler read aloud excerpts from books that influenced Liszt’s “Years of Pilgrimage” in between the songs. At the Bayreuther Festspiele, she played on a piano that Liszt’s son-in-law Wagner once played on, using a salon that Wagner once used as a backdrop. Playing along with this time travel theme, the poetry reader was perched on a table that once belonged to Liszt’s daughter, Cosima.

“It struck me at one point that Liszt’s music was inseparable from literature. So I blended a poem recital with a piano recital under the themes of ‘poems, music, and travel.’ I want to share it with all of you in Seoul,” Huh said.

Price: 20,000-50,000 won. For more information, call 02-780-5054.

Seung-Hoon Cheon raphy@donga.com