Born in 1999, Bernard Kim started studying piano at age 5 with Michèle Mary. Upon meeting Bernard d’Ascoli and Eleanor Harris he began studies at the Piano Cantabile academy in Aubagne in 2008, as well as at the Toulon Conservatory with Célimène Daudet, graduating with highest honors in 2011. The following year, he won the first prize at the Montrond-les-Bains International Competition in the under 17 category as well as first prize at the Nuits Pianistiques competition in Aix-en-Provence. 

In 2013 he was admitted to the Lyon National Superior Conservatory, where he studied with Florent Boffard and Laurent Cabasso. He earned his masters degree in 2018 and then went on to begin a Concertiste program at the Paris Regional Conservatory. Later that year he won the third prize at the Cziffra International Competition in Senlis. 

Kim has performed at the MuCEM in Marseille, at the Petit Palais in Paris for the Jeune Talents program, and at several festivals in the South of France. In April 2021 he was selected to join Gautier Capuçon’s concert tour, “Un été en France,” and soon after became the first laureate of the Fondation Gautier Capuçon, which helps launch the careers of promising young artists. With support from the Fondation, Kim recorded his first album, “Chopin, Debussy, Ravel” in January of 2022, which will be released on Warner Classics & Erato in summer 2022.

Piano

Kim Bernard

Chopin’s fourth and final Ballade in F minor has been viewed as a masterpiece ever since its creation in 1842. After a seven-bar introduction in A flat major, it tips into its famous, slavic-sounding F minor theme which – eventually joined by a rocking, chorale-like second theme in B flat major – is subjected to increasingly florid variations. The Ballade then concludes with a turbulent and highly virtuosic final coda, full of contrapuntal complexities. And all this via a narrative voice whose most beguiling quality, besides its melting lyricism and the passion of its heroic climaxes, is the way in which, in its reflectiveness, it appears to be frequently hesitating and turning back on itself.‍

Composed two years later, the Berceuse in D flat major is equally a series of variations. Sixteen of them, over a ground bass. Its own notable quality is that its dynamics remain soft throughout, the dramatic arc coming instead through texture and sonority.‍

Another ostinato-like bass underpins the Barcarolle in F sharp major, completed in 1846. While the barcarolle was a popular nineteenth century musical genre, evoking the lilting boat songs of Venetian gondoliers, Chopin’s took the form in revolutionary new directions through both its sophisticated and even dissonant harmonies, and a climax of almost oceanic drama and power.‍

Debussy’s ‘Reflets dans l’eau’ is the first of three pieces which make up his first book of Images, completed in 1905. A musical depiction of light reflecting off the surface of water, its harmonically complex ornamentations and fluidly shifting rhythms feel full of the influence of Chopin.‍

‘Masks of the commedia dell’arte, young women singing and dancing; everything culminating in the glory of the setting sun’ is how Debussy himself described L’isle joyeuse of 1904. Sparklingly energetic, with the whole-tone scale occasionally lending a more ambiguous note to its joy, it culminates in radiant and highly virtuosic waltz writing. ‍

Spontaneity and passion are equally present across the first movement of Grieg’s Cello Sonata, composed for his cellist brother in 1882/3. Also, subtle shades of his famous Piano Concerto in A minor, whose key it shares. 

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Kim Bernard, piano
Gautier Capucon, cello

Cello & Piano Recital

22.06.22

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