SongYi Choi Press

SongYi Choi attracted the attention of Manawatu concert audiences in 2023 when she was the featured soloist for the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Manawatu Sinfonia. This is her first concert as part of the Globe Sunday Matinee series. She will be accompanied by well-known local pianist Guy Donaldson.

The Concert opens with Brahms sonata for clarinet and piano in Eb. By 1890 Brahms vowed to retire from composing, but his promise was short lived. In January 1891 he was captivated by the clarinet playing of Richard Muhlfeld in performances of Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No. 1 and the Mozart Clarinet quintet. His beautiful tone inspired him to begin composing again less than a year after he retired. In July 1894 Brahms completed two clarinet sonatas which were first performed by them both privately in September of that year before their public premieres in January 1895. The form of the clarinet sonata was largely undeveloped until after the completion of these sonatas. They were the last chamber pieces Brahms wrote before his death and are considered two of the great masterpieces in the clarinet repertoire.

Guy Donaldson follows this sonata with Robert Schumann’s Arabeske in C major. In the autumn of 1838 Schumann left Leipzig for Vienna when his relationship with Clara Wieck had reached a point of no return. Her father vehemently opposed anything that might interfere with his daughter’s career as a pianist and strongly disapproved of Schumann as a possible son-in-law. He was able to communicate with her only through letters and in his own music. This has been proposed as an explanation for the piece, which alternates passages of wistful longing, with more robust, declamatory episodes.

Malcolm Arnold’s Sonatina for clarinet and piano is an exciting piece with a wide tonal range for the clarinet, and often jazzy off-beat chords in the piano. The first movement is vigorous, the second wistful and the third movement is described as furious. The concert concludes on a beautiful note with the second movement from Mozart’s clarinet concerto. As with the Brahms this represents the peak of the composer’s mature years.

SongYi Choi graduated with a Master of Music at Ewha Women's University, Korea in 2012. She was a clarinettist with the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra in 2021, and from 2022 with the Manawatu Sinfonia. In 2023 she performed the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Manawatu Sinfonia. She is currently teaching clarinet in the City.
Guy Donaldson learned piano from Maurice Collier in Whanganui, and then with Maurice Till at Canterbury University. In 1984 he studied piano accompanying in London with Paul Hamburger and Roger Vignoles, and was a senior lecturer in music education at Massey until 2004. He remains active in the Manawatu as a teacher, adjudicator, piano soloist, accompanist, and chamber music, and was for 30 years music director of the Renaissance Singers up to 2018. Guy is the convenor of the Globe Sunday Matinee concert series. On December 3 of 2024 he received a Civic Award for his services to music in Palmerston North.
Admission is by donation, recommended from $5.