December 14, 2020Library of Congress: Beethoven/Liszt Symphony No.9!During this crazy time, Ran and I were asked to move our originally planned concert to a virtual platform for the Library of Congress. It is one of the most challenging works I have ever had to put together, both emotionally and physically, but one of the most gratifying and moving as well. Please enjoy!READ MORE... February 12, 2020Soyeon Kate Lee plays Clementi with crystalline precisionNaxos has released a lot of Clementi piano sonatas, with a variety of performers. This latest release features Soyeon Kate Lee, who delivers some delightful performances. Clementi’s music pushed the limits of the then-developing fortepiano. But on a modern instrument, they can sound a little constrained and reserved.
Lee has a feathery touch that makes her hands seem to just glide across the keyboard with crystalline precision. She’s also sparing in her use of the pedal, which keeps the music sounding clean and transparent. Clementi’s music benefits from what I heard as good-natured, spirited performances.
The works themselves span almost two decades. Four of the sonatas come from Clementi’s Op. 1 publication of 1771. These are simple, two-movement works. Lee turns these modest works into charming miniatures.
The Sonata in F major, Op. 24, No. 1 was written over a decade later. The range of the pianoforte had expanded, and the action becomes more robust. Lee performs with authority, letting the strong dramatic contrasts set the tone.
Even more involved in the 1791 Sonata in F major, Op. 26. This sonata was published around the same time as Haydn’s and Mozart’s late sonatas — and just four years before Beethoven’s first set. The texture is much thicker, and what I would call more pianistic. The early sonatas were written for keyboard and lay equally well on a harpsichord or fortepiano. This work is strictly for the latter.
Muzio Clementi: Keyboard Sonatas
Op. 1, No. 6; Op. 1a – Nos. 1, 4 and 5; Op. 13, No. 4; Op. 24, No. 1; Op. 26
Soyeon Kate Lee, piano
Naxos 8.573922
READ MORE... Monday, December 16, 2019Brilliant Review of Soyeon Kate Lee's Cleveland Recital at the Gartner Museum!On Sunday, November 24 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the audience in Gartner Auditorium clustered to the left, embracing the asymmetry typical of a piano recital. Yet if one shape came to mind repeatedly during the program, it was the ultimate figure of symmetry: the circle. Soloist Soyeon Kate Lee would come full circle that day, playing Mozart sixteen years after winning the Mozart Prize at the 2003 Cleveland International Piano Competition.
Her program likewise traced a circular path, from one 20th-century master’s response to violence to another. And in Lee, one finds a pianist whose approach suits all periods and styles. Her powerful sound may best be experienced in the round, lid off.
Gartner Auditorium proved a cozy home for the crowd that attended the recital, part of Cuyahoga Community College’s Classical Piano Series. In addition to communicating strong feeling at the keyboard, Lee was a charismatic speaker, explaining last-minute program changes and the contexts of the added pieces with concision and expertise.
As Lee explained, Janáček intended 1.X.1905 as a sonata in tribute to a slain activist, but scrapped first the finale and, later, the entire project. Pianists have gamely adopted the remaining two-part elegy ever since a copy emerged in 1924. Lee made the composer’s grief-induced indecision palpable, ratcheting from a murmur to a plea, then a roar. From an impossibly light final chord, Lee moved on to bring expansiveness to the second movement’s gestures. A series of melodies, played in double octaves, bestowed grace on the lost protestor, a Czech patriot in Janáček’s eyes.
Applause rightly followed Lee’s rendition of the first movement of Chopin’s Sonata in b-flat. She brought drama to a conflict-riven piece, allowing spiky figures in the left hand to stand in contrast to a strange, soft right-hand melody. Aspiring pianists might consult Lee on how to play octaves, given the strength she poured into those of the second movement. The third involved an epic contrast between the opening bars — flat in affect but choking up rhythmically — and the thundering three-chord motive that shook the instrument later. The finale found Lee on a musical putting green, exercising care so that the final clink would feel all the more valedictory.
Mozart’s Sonata in E-flat, K. 282, opens with arpeggios, here decanted like cool, crisp wine. The first dance in the two-part second movement had a spring in its step, the second a feistiness for all its relaxation of tempo. Bursts of higher volume in the third movement had the quality of shiny spots on a matte surface.
Few pieces of piano music have calm beauty quite like that of “Bruyères,” from Debussy’s Préludes, especially when Lee plays it; few have the diabolical sweep of “La vent dans la plaine,” a tornado in her hands. The exaggerated dance rhythms of “Minstrels” can prod pianists to ham it up, but Lee chose to give the piece an air of mystery. “La puerta del Vino” showcased her ability to play chords as jarring tears or smooth ripples in the musical fabric, according to local context.
Ravel’s La valse revisits the grand waltz from a time when perfumed ballrooms of yore had yielded to the Great War’s poisoned trenches. Many pianists shroud the piece’s opening minutes in a thick fog, revealing its explosive chaos only later. Not Lee, whose propulsive reading launched left-hand attacks like exploding shells. Prepared to question the relentless tempo, I changed my mind when her speed slackened for the first and only time: just before the end, when a shred of melody from early on pealed forth unaccompanied, a scream in the dark. Go hear Lee the next time she returns, hopefully soon: her recitals run gamuts and gauntlets, with singular power.READ MORE... May 22, 2018New addition to the Lee/Dank Family and starting the summer concert season!Following the birth of our second child, Ella, I am getting back on the road this June, beginning with a recital at the Cleveland International Piano Competition with my husband, Ran Dank on June 7th!
February 24, 2016Naxos releases Soyeon Kate Lee's Scriabin: Piano Works worldwidePIANIST SOYEON KATE LEE RELEASES “SCRIABIN: PIANO MUSIC” ON NAXOS
All-Piano Album Features Scriabin Rarities
February 12, 2016, New York City—The brilliant young pianist Soyeon Kate Lee, winner of the 2010 Naumburg International Competition and the 2004 Concert Artists Guild Competition, has released an all- Scriabin CD on Naxos (NAXOS 8.573527) featuring some of the composer’s lesser-known piano works. “Scriabin: Piano Music” was recorded at the Performing Arts Centre of the Country Day School in King City, Ontario in June 2013.
April 7, 2014Soyeon Kate Lee joins the piano faculty of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of MusicCCM Welcomes Naumburg Competition Winner Soyeon Kate Lee to Piano Faculty
CCM welcomes Assistant Professor of Music in Piano Soyeon Kate Lee to its faculty. Her appointment begins in August of 2014.
CCM Dean Peter Landgren recently announced the appointment of pianist Soyeon Kate Lee to the faculty of CCM’s Department of Piano.READ MORE... July 27, 2013Great Review from Santa Fe Reporter. Click here for a few videos!"Soyeon Kate Lee’s piano recital at the second of the SFCMF’s noon concerts on July 18 featured works by Janáček, Scriabin, Beethoven and Stravinsky. The Czech composer’s furious, tragic Sonata, “Z ulice, 1.X.1905” (1906) commemorates a brutal bayoneting at a university demonstration. Lee’s persuasive command of the unique Janáček “voice” made powerful sense of the obsessive final movement marked “Death.”
Superbly pianistic accounts of two hyper-romantic Scriabin exercises followed. In the recital’s climax, Beethoven’s fathomless Op. 110 Sonata, Lee’s nuanced assurance and maturity of expression were a revelation. Her reading of Guido Agosti’s arrangement of Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite” brought the concert to a headspinning finale. "READ MORE... August 15, 2012Soyeon Wins First Prize at the 2010 Walter Naumburg Piano Competition!From the press: 'On Wednesday, June 24, 2010, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation held the final round of the 2010 Naumburg Piano Competition. Three finalists, out of a pool of 42 pianists from around the world, were chosen to compete in the final round. The first prize was awarded to Soyeon Lee, a native of South Korea, who has been hailed by The New York Times as a pianist with 'a huge, richly varied sound, a lively imagination and a firm sense of style.' She is the second pianist from South Korea to be awarded the Naumburg Piano Award following in the foot steps of Kun-Woo Paik who was the first prize winner in 1971. Her prize includes two fully subsidized concerts in New York City, one of which will be given on March 29, 2011 in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall; concert engagements with orchestra and in recital throughout the United States; and a cash award of $10,000.'
August 12, 2012Soyeon Kate LeeSigned to collaborate with veteran manager, Diane Saldick.READ MORE... August 29, 2011Lincoln Center TwoSoyeon Lee will join the roster of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two in fall 2012!READ MORE... January 12, 2011Glowing Review from the San Francisco Classical Voice for the Herbst Debut!
December 28, 2010Soyeon featured in the San Francisco Classical Voice Article!Formula One For Finding Talent...READ MORE...
First prize winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition and the Concert Artist Guild International Competition, Korean-American pianist Soyeon Kate Lee has been lauded by The New York Times as a pianist with "a huge, richly varied sound, a lively imagination and a firm sense of style," and by the Washington Post for her "stunning command of the keyboard.”
Highlights of recent seasons include appearances at the National Gallery, Library of Congress, Gina Bachauer Concerts, Purdue Convocations, Music@Menlo, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on tour, San Francisco Performances, Camerata Pacifica tour, Chamber Music Chicago, and the Cleveland Art Museum. She was a member of Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society’s Bowers program, and is a regular participant in numerous chamber music festivals including the Great Lakes, Santa Fe and Music Mountain Chamber Music Festivals. Ms. Lee has collaborated with conductors Carlos Miguel Prieto, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Jahja Ling, and Jorge Mester with the London, San Diego, Hawaii, Louisiana, Naples symphony orchestras among others.
She has commissioned works by prominent composers and has given world premieres of works written by Frederic Rzewski, Paola Prestini, Marc-André Hamelin, Alexander Goehr, Gabriela Lena Frank, Texu Kim, and Huang Ruo.
As a Naxos recording artist, her discography spans a wide range of repertoire from two volumes of Scarlatti Sonatas, Liszt Opera Transcriptions, two volumes of Scriabin, and Clementi Sonatas. Ms. Lee’s recording of Re!nvented under the E1/Entertainment One (formerly Koch Classics) label garnered her a feature review in the Gramophone Magazine and the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year Award.
A second prize and Mozart Prize winner of the 2003 Cleveland International Piano Competition and a laureate of the Santander International Piano Competition in Spain, she is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she was awarded the William Petschek Piano Debut Award at Lincoln Center and the Arthur Rubinstein Award upon graduation, and received her Doctor of Musical Arts from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her major mentors and teachers have been Richard Goode, Julian Martin, Robert McDonald, Jerome Lowenthal, and Ursula Oppens.
In 2022, Soyeon Kate Lee joined the faculty at the Juilliard School, making her the first woman of Asian descent to join the illustrious piano faculty. She was an associate professor of music in piano at the Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music from 2014 to 2022, where she received the 2021 University of Cincinnati Mrs. A.B. “Dolly” Cohen Award for excellence in teaching. During the summers, she serves on the piano faculty at the Bowdoin International Music Festival and resides in New York with her husband and their two children, Noah and Ella.
