79e CONCOURS DE GENÈVE INTERNATIONAL MUSIC COMPETITION
Programme note “Dreamscapes for Viola” Starting with Rebecca Clarke’s Morpheus, this recital invites the audience into a journey of dreams, a space where imagination, memory, and emotion blur the boundaries between reality and illusion. Clarke’s Morpheus, named after the Greek god of dreams, opens the program with a sense of floating reverie. Composed in 1917, the work reveals Clarke’s remarkable sensitivity to colour and atmosphere. Its long, unfolding phrases and shimmering harmonies evoke a vision that seems suspended in time, as if the viola itself were narrating a dream before awakening. For me, this piece feels like entering a private, luminous world that hovers between consciousness and stillness.
throughout the piece, an impossible moment of beauty shines through the harsh reality. It reminds us how beautiful our dreams can be, like distant memories from childhood. For me, this movement reflects our actual lives in this world. And reminds us that every wonderful dream has to come to an end as we wake up.
The recital closes with Franz Schubert’s Sonata in A minor, D. 821, known as the Arpeggione Sonata. Though written for an instrument that has long vanished from use, the work has found an enduring voice in the viola. Its music sings with tenderness and quiet melancholy, unfolding with a natural lyricism that seems to suspend time. Every phrase feels as if it belongs to a world both real and imagined, so transparent and moving that it feels almost too beautiful to be true. Schubert’s dream is one of grace, simplicity, and transience, a reflection on beauty Ondřej Štochl’s Il sogno fragile (The Fragile that fades even as we reach for it. Dream) continues this exploration but turns it inward. Written in 2022 and commissioned Through these works, I wish to explore how the by the 74th Prague Spring International Music viola can speak in the language of dreams— Competition, the piece experiments with an sometimes radiant, sometimes fragile, someextraordinary range of sounds, including the times filled with realistic struggle, yet always human voice, whistling, and fragile gestures suspended between imagination and real life. that often seem to dissolve into silence. I first Together, they form a journey that moves beencountered this piece during the competition, tween wakefulness and wonder, reminding us and it has remained very personal to me ever that music itself may be the most vivid dream since. Its language feels vulnerable yet sincere, of all. as if constantly searching for balance between sound and the moment it disappears. Since Eric Seohyun Moon then, I have performed Il sogno fragile in many concerts, and each time it reveals something different, a reminder of how fleeting and human our dreams can be. Paul Hindemith’s Sonata for Solo Viola, Op. 11 No. 5 presents a completely different kind of dream, one that emerges from discipline and struggle. The Passacaglia, the fourth and final movement, begins in a tragic and almost matter-of-fact expression. It shows us the harsh and complex reality, as present in Hindemith’s time as it is today. Yet within its tragic theme