The resilient spirit: a performer's guide and recording project of Young Ja Lee's piano works

This Doctor of Musical Arts thesis and recording project culminates in a composer-endorsed recording of four seminal solo piano works by Young Ja Lee (b. 1931), one of the most distinguished Western music composers in Korea. The recording is the product of a multi-year collaboration (2023 2025) with the composer and her daughter, musicologist Nany Han (b. 1961), capturing artistic intentions and crucial oral performance guidelines. For decades, performers lacked access to this direct insight. This thesis with recording project rectifies notational ambiguities and presents an interpretation of the composer validated as interpreted and performed exactly to my heart.

The featured works Suite Romantique pour Piano (1967), Sonatine pour le Piano (1972), 8 Variations pour Piano '??? ???' ??? ?? ??? [Variations on a Korean Children s Song 'Om-ma-ya, Nu-na-ya'] (1996), and ???? ?? ? ?? ??: ???? ?? [Four Songs for Piano: Beautiful Dedication] (2022) reveal a musical language forged in the crucible of the Korean War. Young Ja Lee s music navigates emotional extremes to achieve a state of Hard-Won Equilibrium, identified in this study as the Aesthetic of the Mean. This aesthetic ideal is expressed through a masterful synthesis of Korean heritage, Eastern thought, and Western compositional techniques. Listeners will experience a transformed piano sound that blends contemporary techniques to evoke the percussive resonance of modeumbuk (Korean traditional drums) and the delicate ornamentation of the gayageum (Korean traditional zither), creating a sound world that is both innovative and deeply rooted in the subtle, understated elegance of Korean aesthetics.

More than just a performance, this project provides a vital resource for pianists and scholars, focusing on how to understand, interpret, and apply Young Ja Lee s piano works and her musical language in performance. It aims to secure Young Ja Lee s legacy by establishing a new interpretive benchmark, placing her powerful and deeply personal piano music firmly within the global concert repertoire.