South Korean native Young-Ah Tak made her recording debut in 2005 with works by Judith Lang Zamont (Albany). Since then, she has recorded a mixed recital (Haydn, Schumann, Liszt, Kirchner) for MSR (7/12^US) and Beethoven sonatas for Steinway. This is her second Steinway recording. Tak was trained at Juilliard and the New England Conservatory, and graduated from Peabody with her doctorate under Leon Fleisher. She teaches at SUNY Potsdam.

The A minor Sonata of 1823 is among the more hazardous of Schubert’s sonatas. Its elemental drama unfolds with an extraordinary economy of means, leaving the player exposed almost throughout. Efforts to link the piece to Schubert’s syphilis diagnosis seem inconclusive, but few would argue with Elizabeth McKay’s description of the sonata as the grimmest music he’d written up to that point. It’s not often played in public, but when it’s done well, the effect can be overwhelming. I remember Radu Lupu’s performance sweeping him to the Gold Medal at the 1966 Van Cliburn Competition. For a piece rich in suggestion, innuendo and nuance, Tak’s approach is rather straightforward. In the opening Allegro giusto, Schubert meticulously marks an accent over the first beat of many bars. Tak observes some of them; others she ignores. She opts not to repeat the exposition, leaving the movement slightly truncated. The exquisitely poetic yet succinct Andante alla breve states its principal theme piano, immediately interrupted by a whispered ornament marked ppp and with the soft pedal. This contrasting parenthetical qualification, occurring throughout the movement, is never delivered in the requisite hush Schubert indicates. The concluding Allegro vivace, which could be a flight from the Furies, juxtaposes textures of triplets flying over the keyboard with fortissimo chords. Tak plays the chords powerfully enough but equal in volume, as if two bars in three-quarter time required six chords of changing harmony to be given the same emphasis. The effect is stultifying.

Alas, the noble G major Sonata from 1826 abounds in chordal textures, though these frequently don’t change harmony but are simply repeated chords. Given Tak’s paucity of touch strategies, dislike of vivid dynamic contrasts and aversion to shaping textures, these chords yield their inherent expressivity to conjuring the regularity of the bars of a prison cell. One holds out hope for the vaguely skipping, dancelike accompaniment figures in some of the secondary material. By movement’s end, however, it’s clear anyone skipping or dancing wore lead shoes. There is nothing in the Andante that accompanying a hundred or so of Schubert’s lieder would not significantly improve, while similar antidotes for the Minuet and concluding Allegretto might be sought in some dozens of Schubert’s German dances, Ländler and waltzes.