A young pianist's year in sound, words and imagery
For Kim Song-hyeon, the act of making an album is never limited to sound alone. A versatile pianist with a long-standing love for reading, writing and photography, Kim chose to bring all of these worlds together in his second album, "Timescape," a carefully constructed project that traces the emotional flow of a year, month by month.
The 23-year-old pianist, the second prize winner of the Isangyun Competition in 2023, said he selected pieces not simply for contrast, but for how each could embody a particular sense of time, atmosphere and emotional weight.
The project began with Keith Jarrett’s arrangement of “Be My Love” by Sammy Cahn and Nicholas Brodszky, which appears as the December track on Kim’s album. The piece comes from an album Jarrett recorded at home during a long period of illness, originally made as a Christmas gift for his wife. Hearing it sparked Kim’s desire to create a similarly intimate album, shaping both the concept and the repertoire. Because of its origins, the piece naturally came to represent December.
“Variations for the Healing of Arinushka” by Arvo Part appears as the March selection. "The work begins in A minor, unfolding through three variations, before shifting into three further variations in A major. To me, this progression evokes a vivid transition from a world frozen in stillness to one that slowly thaws and moves toward spring, capturing the subtle emotional shift of the season," Kim said during a press conference on Tuesday in Yongsan-gu, Seoul.
Kim places Sibelius’ “The Spruce,” with its evocation of snow-covered Nordic landscapes, in January, while Faure’s “Sicilienne,” where imagery of water gently comes to the fore, is assigned to June.
What distinguishes "Timescape" is that its musical arc is accompanied by the pianist's own prose and photographs.
“By pairing music with short texts and images, I hoped listeners might more clearly grasp the emotional landscapes I encountered within the music,” Kim noted.
He recorded the music first and wrote the texts later. Rather than attaching detailed stories to each piece, he chose to keep the writing open and impressionistic, concerned that too strong a performer’s perspective might distract from the music itself.
He focused instead on moods and images, leaving room for listeners to form their own responses. Musically, he paid close attention to key relationships and transitions, keeping pauses between tracks to a minimum so that the 12 pieces flow as a single, continuous cycle rather than separate episodes.
“Since childhood, reading and writing have felt just as much a part of me as music,” he added, tracing that affinity back to his early school years, when both his first- and second-grade teachers were poets.
For Kim, performing and writing are fundamentally similar acts. Both, he says, are means of expressing the self, refined through repetition and revision -- practice in music, rewriting in prose. Reading, too, plays a crucial role in his musicianship. Through books, he encounters emotions, lives and places he has never experienced firsthand, expanding the emotional range he brings to the keyboard. To make unfamiliar worlds feel personal in music, he believes, a musician must cultivate a deep understanding of life beyond sound.
An album release recital is scheduled for March 16 at Lotte Concert Hall in Seoul.
In April, he is set to participate in the main round of the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition as one of 42 pianists selected from more than 500 applicants.
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