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"Alpin Hong plays everything from Mendelssohn to 'Super Mario' in Gilmore for Kids show" Read the full article on "The Ultimate Special Effect with Alpin Hong" here! Kalamazoo Gazette April 22, 2008 "Alpin Hong: Classical for the iPod generation" Ocala Star-Banner October 2007 "...highly improvisational... articulate and sensual... [Hong] manages to punch and to coax enough multifarious colors from his instrument to engage and to seduce our feet to tapping and our heads nodding in sympathetic, stride rhythm. An auspicious CD debut, Mr. Hong." Audiophile Audition -Gary Lemco "Hong has a clear opportunity to do for the classical piano what Yo-Yo Ma did for the cello: make it hip." "The orchestra's ranks swelled for Maurice Ravel's Concerto in G Minor for Piano and Orchestra, with Alpin Hong on piano. Tall, lithe and elegant, Hong attacked the piece with a rare and assured hand. From the crisp clap that kicks off the concerto, Hong, Dunner and the orchestra highlighted the connection between soloist and orchestra, with the piano often underscoring and complimenting the strings and wind instruments at one moment, then thundering over them the next. The piece beautifully juxtaposed a classical sensibility with a jazz intension. Hong was especially brilliant on the melodious second movement, making it sound almost liquid. Then he attacked the third with flair and verve. The entire piece was breathtakingly exciting. After a standing ovation and three curtain calls, Hong returned to perform Sonata for Left Hand Alone by Alexander Scriabin. The piece was composed for pianist Paul Witkenstein, who lost his right hand during World War I.
Idaho Statesman October 2007 "Pianist Hong will amaze with his 'flying hands' Charm and virtuosity know no boundaries when Alpin Hong gets behind a piano." The Northwestern November 2006 “…a tour de force. Hong evoked a kind of Beatlemania when he came on stage....What a showman! What a musician!” Santa Barbara News Press
"Crystaline energy from a firebrand" "Mr. Hong kept the voltage consistently high... His ideas about the works at hand were clear and persuasive." "...remarkable... breadth and coloration" New York Times October 2001 (review of Hong's standing-room only New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.) "Stunning debut recital by Hong" "Scarlatti. Brahms. Debussy. Stravinsky. Listening to the debut recital on CD by Los Angeles-born, Jiulliard-educated Alpin Hong, an interesting picture came to my mind. I visualized the sort of feat a master juggler will sometimes set for himself, keeping four objects of dissimilar weight, shape, and texture - say, a rubber ball, an Indian club, a pineapple, and a bowling ball - in motion all at once. Without deciding which of our famous composers is going to play the role of the pineapple, I will say that Hong's range of interests as a young concert artist on the rise is likewise impressive. The two Scarlatti selections are a contrasted pair: the diabolical Sonata in D Minor, L422, with its rapid-fire repetitive keys, leaps, and hand-crossings, and the Sonata in B minor, L33, with its poignant intimacy that seems almost to anticipate the Romantic Era. The Brahms selections are likewise choice: the six Klavierstücke, Op. 118. While young keyboard artists are apt to make a name for themselves with a killer technical prowess, Alpin Hong's Brahms shows us that, at the highest level, technique and the inmost understanding of the emotion in a work of music, what we are pleased to call "feeling," are really inseparable. These pieces may be impassioned, like Intermezzo No.1, or exquisitely tender like the Intermezzo No. 2, marked Andante teneramente and unforgettable once you have heard it. Joy, sorrow, and longing are found in abundance in Op. 118, perhaps the most far ranging of all Brahms' collections of piano pieces. If you have never heard more of Claude Debussy's Suite Bergamasque than the famous third piece, Claire de lune (Moonlight), you owe it to yourself to hear an inspired performance such as we have here. The other three movements, titled Prélude, Menuet, and Passepied, seem like some idealized Baroque suite as seen through Hong's poetic sensibility. The final section of the recital, Stravinsky's Three Movements from Petrouchka, provides enough pianistic fireworks to show us why Alpin Hong was First Prize Winner at the 2001 Concert Arts Guild International Competition. With its powerful motor rhythms, complex counter rhythms, exotic harmonies, and orchestral-like writing for the piano, the Petrushka music writes a stunning finis to any recital. Hong really gets into the final movement, The Shrovetide Fair, eight of the most purely strenuous minutes in the pianist's repertoire!"
January 2005 |
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