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Evocation / Klara Min

Release Date: 03/01/2019
Label: Steinway & Sons Catalog #: 30096
Composer:  Olivier Messiaen ,  Alexander Scriabin ,  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Performer:  Klara Min Number of Discs: 1
Length: 0 Hours 49 Mins.

Turning away from the relentless control of daylight, poets have sought spiritual and poetic inspiration in the sublime darkness of mystery-inducing night. Klara Min’s album presents us with piano pieces intimating this ‘dark but dazzling’ night. Its title, “Evocation,” suggests night’s musical power to awaken and stir subliminal feelings hidden at the depth of our souls.

Album Credits:
 Recorded February 7, October 3 & 24, 2017 and October 3, 2018 at Steinway Hall, New York City.
Producer: Jon Feidner
Engineer: Lauren Sturm
Assistant Engineer: Melody Nieun Hwang
Editing: Jon Feidner and Renée Oakford
Production Assistant: Renée Oakford
Mixing and Read more Mastering: Daniel Shores
Piano Technician: Lauren Sturm
Piano: Steinway Model D #597590 (New York)

Executive Producers: Eric Feidner and Jon Feidner
Art Direction: Jackie Fugere
Design: Cover to Cover Design, Anilda Carrasquillo
Cover Photo of Klara Min: Marco Borggreve

Review:
Pianist Klara Min is a strong addition to the roster of the Steinway & Sons label, which specializes in piano programs that have the charisma, and general appeal, of those of the piano's golden age. Here, she offers a program of pieces on the age-old theme of night. The album's title "Evocation" doesn't exactly put this across, and the connections of some of the pieces with the theme are tenuous (the birds of Messiaen's Catalogue d'oiseaux are not specifically night birds, for example). However, Min devises an effective sequence of events. The program takes you from twilight into deep darkness, with the Piano Sonata No. 9, Op. 68 ("Black Mass"), of Scriabin as a quite intensely rendered climax. Along the way, Min manages a dramatic Mozart Fantasia in D minor, K. 397, somehow making it sound a bit like Scriabin. She's an impressive Scriabin pianist, delivering the full virtuosity of the Piano Sonata No. 2 in G sharp minor, Op. 19 ("Sonata fantasy"), but keeping the music in touch with Chopin, as well as Liszt. Steinway furnishes its usual excellent sound from New York's Steinway Hall, and all in all, one is left wanting to hear more from Min on this label.

-- AllMusic Guide

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