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Kyung Wha Chung returns with UK recitals and 20-disk retrospective

Kyung Wha Chung box set

Kyung Wha Chung returns to the concert platform in the UK this month for the first time in over a decade, with sonata performances in Liverpool (22 November), Perth (27 November) and London (2 December). Simultaneously a boxed set of all her Decca recordings (together with a couple from the Deutsche Grammophon catalogue) is being released in the UK, with an international release scheduled for early 2015. At only £57.20 for 19 CDs and one DVD, it works out at a bargain £2.86 a disk. The collection includes most of the big concertos, though it excludes the Brahms, which Chung recorded for EMI after her Decca years.

Gramophone magazine’s James Jolly “especially like[s] her in the 20th-century concertos – the Berg, Bartoks, Prokofievs, Stravinsky and Walton – where she captures the angularity and rhythmic life perfectly but never ignores the works’ lyricism.”

Available via Presto, and (once they get their stock levels sorted out), Amazon. You can preview the tracks on the Decca website.

The two recitals feature accompanist Kevin Kenner and the following programme:

Mozart: Violin Sonata in G, K.379
Prokofiev: Violin Sonata No.1 in F minor, Op.80
JS Bach: Chaconne from Partita No.2 in D minor, BWV.1004
Franck: Sonata in A

The South Bank Centre has done a little video to celebrate the occasion:

Update:

Reviews of the Festival Hall concerts were dominated by the coughing incident:

Guardian music blog | Evening Standard | BBC

Kyung Wha Chung makes a statement in response to the controversy in the Guardian music blog.

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