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Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe

& Other Selected Piano Works

Robert Gross composer
Stefan Wolpe composer
David Burge composer
Jean Ahn composer

Koeun Grace Lee piano

Release Date: February 10, 2023
Catalog #: NV6496
Format: Digital
20th Century
21st Century
Solo Instrumental
Piano

Very few genres are as difficult to interpret pianistically as that of contemporary serious music: it often requires a superhuman degree of both virtuosity and patience, and the potential pitfalls of expression are ever-present. Enter Korean pianist Koeun Grace Lee, who zestily breezes through the most varied contemporary repertoire imaginable, with a level of self-assurance and musical competence that borders on being a revelation.

While also featuring folkloristically-inspired works by David Burge and Jean Ahn, the heart of VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY STEFAN WOLPE is the similarly-titled work by Robert Gross, spanning no less than twenty variations on a theme by Stefan Wolpe, the German-American interdisciplinary modernist. Sprawling yet precise, decisive yet eclectic, it’s the perfect canvas for Lee, and the resulting symbiosis is mesmerizing.

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Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: THEME: Stately Stefan Wolpe Koeun Grace Lee, piano 0:57
02 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 1: Frenetically. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 2:14
03 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 2: Easily. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 4:21
04 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 3: Savagely. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 1:20
05 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 4: Like a Baroque Fugue. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 1:43
06 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 5: Skittishly. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 2:03
07 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 6: Like a Baroque Prelude. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 2:39
08 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 7: Like a Ragtime. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 1:27
09 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 8: Delicately. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 2:22
10 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 9: Incredibly Intensely. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 2:45
11 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 10: Song Without Words. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 9:00
12 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 11: Off Kilter Waltz. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 1:31
13 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 12: Like a Baroque Fugue. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 1:55
14 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 13: Freewheeling. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 2:22
15 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 14: Gently and With Great Serenity. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 3:16
16 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 15: Rhapsodically. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 2:19
17 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 16: Like a Baroque Fugue. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 1:44
18 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 17: Moodily. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 3:45
19 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 18: Ethereally. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 1:18
20 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 19: Freely (But Not Too Much Freely). Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 2:00
21 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: Variation 20: One More Fugue, Nicely and Slowly. Robert Gross Koeun Grace Lee, piano 3:05
22 Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe: THEME (Retrograde): Stately Stefan Wolpe Koeun Grace Lee, piano 0:57
23 Go-Hyang (Ancestral Home): I. Inyon (인연, Fate [Karma]) David Burge Koeun Grace Lee, piano 2:44
24 Go-Hyang (Ancestral Home): II. Jaejalgawrim (재잘거림, Children’s Chatter) David Burge Koeun Grace Lee, piano 1:24
25 Go-Hyang (Ancestral Home): III. Mokrohjujom (목로주점, Old Inn) David Burge Koeun Grace Lee, piano 3:58
26 Go-Hyang (Ancestral Home): IV. Chang-gu (장구, Korean Drum) David Burge Koeun Grace Lee, piano 0:52
27 Go-Hyang (Ancestral Home): V. Mudang (무당, Shaman) David Burge Koeun Grace Lee, piano 1:10
28 Go-Hyang (Ancestral Home): VI. Go-Hyang (고향, Ancestral Home) David Burge Koeun Grace Lee, piano 2:35
29 Folksong Revisited: I. Nil-lili Jean Ahn Koeun Grace Lee, piano 2:29
30 Folksong Revisited: II. Song of Mongeumpo Jean Ahn Koeun Grace Lee, piano 2:31
31 Folksong Revisited: III. Ongheya Jean Ahn Koeun Grace Lee, piano 3:05

Recorded July 12, 2022 in Ganz Hall at Roosevelt University in Chicago IL
Recording Session Producer, Editing Engineer Aaron Gottl
Mixing & Mastering Engineer Shelby Lock

The theme Modulation as Process by Wolpe is used by permission of the Stefan Wolpe Society, Inc.

Executive Producer Bob Lord

A&R Director Brandon MacNeil

VP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas Paquette

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Patrick Niland, Brett Iannucci

Artist Information

Robert Gross

Composer

Robert Gross’s 2021 album Chronicles was hailed as “fresh and exciting” by Klang New Music; they were “wholly impressed with what Gross and his collaborating musicians and engineers accomplished.” Gross received his D.M.A. in music composition at University of Southern California where he also received a graduate certificate in Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television. He also received an M.A. in Music for Film, Television and Theater from the University of Bristol, an M.M. in Music Composition from Rice University, and a B.M. in Music Composition from Oberlin Conservatory. He has taught graduate and undergraduate level music theory at Rice University.

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Koeun Grace Lee

Pianist

A South Korean native, Koeun Grace Lee is an avid performer of contemporary piano repertoire. Chicago Classical Review praised Lee’s performance of selected variations of Robert Gross’s Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe, the central work of this album: “Lee brought technical precision and thoughtful shaping to each movement, with particular care given to the childlike second variation, ‘Easily,’ and the third, ‘Like a Baroque Prelude,’ whose rhythmic figurations gesture winkingly to Bach’s Prelude in C Major.”

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Notes

Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe is music composed to make essentially two points: first, that the demarcations between tonality and post-tonality are extremely fluid and not mutually exclusive; and second, post-tonal hierarchization exists, because without it, post-tonal variation in theme-and-variations would be impossible.

I found Wolpe’s short example Modulation as Process in a dissertation by Barry Wiener on the subject of Wolpe’s student, Ralph Shapey. I recognized immediately its great importance in demonstrating in nine short measures what I had believed in ideologically since I was a freshman composition major in 1991: the rejection of aesthetic partisanship. The idea of writing a set of variations on Wolpe’s nine measures gave me the ideal situation in which to explore the gradual blurring of lines between tonality and post-tonality.

However, I soon realized that if I simply went from C major to post-tonality in every variation, I would have a shape problem: the shape would be tonality / post-tonality / hard reset / tonality / post-tonality / hard reset, etc. So I decided that odd-numbered variations would be a variation on Wolpe’s theme in retrograde, and even-numbered variations would be a variation on Wolpe’s theme going forward.

The scope of the piece is approximately 50 minutes and is modeled on Rzewski’s Variations on The People United Will Never Be Defeated, a piece I have admired for a long time.

— Robert Gross

The legendary American composer and pianist of contemporary music, David Burge (1930-2013), presents Korean musical and cultural references through the prism of contemporary Western techniques in Go-Hyang (Ancestral Home). The work contains six movements to be performed as a single work without pause. Each movement highlights extended pedaling techniques, consonant post-tonal language, and elements of Korean traditional music and culture.

— Koeun Grace Lee

A San Francisco-based Korean composer, Jean Ahn (b. 1976), wrote Nil-lili for solo piano for the Korean Music Competition of Sejong Cultural Society in Chicago and won the first prize in 2005. Ahn composed two more Korean folksong arrangements for piano thereafter, Song of Mongeumpo and Ongheya, and put the three pieces in a collection entitled Folksong Revisited. Each movement presents a Korean sentiment from different regions that spotlight Korean rhythms, modes, and timbres blended with the Western scales and rhythmic complexity transferred into a pianistic idiom.

— Koeun Grace Lee