Piano Quintet No. 1, "Things people have said about death" by Soomin Kim published on 2022-09-13T20:58:35Z PERFORMERS: Jacob Schafer, violin Nathan Lowry, violin Catherine Chen, viola Otávio Manzano Kavakama, cello Derek Wang, piano PROGRAM NOTE: Piano Quintet No. 1, “Things people have said about death” is my attempt at processing and understanding grief through borrowing other people’s words. Or rather music. My grandmother passed away in March 2022. After her passing, I felt that sometimes my own words were not enough to express what I was feeling. The sorrow, the emptiness, and the anger were so much bigger than I could comprehend. So I decided to look at how the composers of the past generations that I admire dealt with death and grief in their music. In this piece, you’ll hear quotations of the funeral march from Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, and many other pieces in the canon that don’t necessarily have to do with death. But I realized all of the pieces I quoted are integral to my musical tapestry of right now, and it only made sense to bring in those pieces to talk about someone who is very important to me. MOVEMENTS: I. Soup II. March III. Dance PERFORMANCE HISTORY: Piano Quintet No. 1, "Things people have said about death" was commissioned and premiered by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble in Aspen, CO in August 2022. Genre Classical
