THE GRAMOPHONE:
Immersing oneself in Szymanowski’s piano music is an exhilarating and exhausting experience. And it takes a pianist of Sinae Lee’s uncanny expertise to clarify music which, in lesser hands, can easily make you feel as if imprisoned in a hothouse. But whether in early Chopin-inspired Romanticism, the second period’s fin-de-siècle opulence, or the extremes to which Szymanowski takes Scriabin’s later experiments,

Lee is formidably equipped. Rubinstein himself quailed before the Second Sonata’s Reger-like thickets of notes, but even here Lee’s command and lucidity are unfaltering.

Elsewhere she is as true to the spirit as to the letter of very exotic and complex bar. She captures all of the early Prelude’s angst, where the shadows of both Scriabin and Wagner erase much sense of derivation, and she whips up an awe-inspiring virtuoso storm in the Brahmsian fugue concluding the Op.3 Variations. There ss charm and affection, too, in the Christmas-tree sparkle of the First Sonata’s Minuet and a complete identification with the elusive, bittersweet world of the Mazurkas, with their teasing mix of sophistication and primitivism. The Op. 33 Etudes form a flashing lexicon of Szymanowski’s later style and, once again, their demands are met with unflagging brio and refinement.

For the record, Sinae Lee is a Korean-born but Glasgow-based pianist and her astonishing achievement is a rich compensation for the absence of Krystian Zimmerman’s long-awaited Szymanowski disc. At the same time, her finely recorded four-disc set complements highly distinguished recitals by Piotr Anderszewski and Marc-André Hamelin.
Bryce Morrison

ALL MUSIC GUIDE:
"To collect [folksongs] without a phonograph - until there's something
better - is mad and criminal." - Percy Grainger, 1907

It's startling how music that no one knows gradually enters the repertory and becomes part of it - in the 1960s, the piano music of Polish composer Karol Szymanowski was considered quite exotic fare and very little of it was recorded. In the 1970s, pianists such as Martin Jones, Carol Rosenberger, Felicja Blumental and others made a number of pioneering efforts on his behalf. By this writing (July 2007) pieces such as Four Etudes Op. 4, Masques and Metopes are practically mainstream and his "complete" piano music has been recorded at least three times before young Korean pianist Sinae Lee has ventured forth, on her own dime, in a three year project to record them all herself. Undertaken between 2002 and 2005 in order to realize her doctorate in piano performance - what a doctoral thesis! - this is now released by the Divine Art Record Company for the public to enjoy.

Lee's set is more "complete" than the others by virtue of three minutes; namely a never before recorded Prelude in C sharp minor from 1901. This is a startling find, as Szymanowski's relatively modest known output for piano has been established for some time and, while the existence of other, particularly early, pieces has been postulated his worklist has proven stubbornly intractable to expansion. Szymanowski's piano music covers his entire 35-year career as a composer and moves with, and at times, a little ahead of, the stream of musical developments current in his time. Lee moves right along with the composer - she is luxuriantly romantic in the early works, free flowing and dynamic in the Scriabin influenced middle works (check out what a wonderful job she does in "Calypso" from Metopes) and pithy, tart and perfectly timed in the more acerbic, whimsical late works.

While the "new" prelude is very attractive, you should get this set because it is such a terrific survey of Szymanowski's works overall, a highly significant cycle within twentieth-century piano music. Lee's sensitive and probing performances of Szymanowski provide a marvelous, fulfilling and informative way to spend four hours, and chances are the listener will not want to limit one's exposure to Karol Szymanowski: The Complete Piano Music to just that.
David Lewis

PIANIST:
Sinae Lee chooses as her recording debut a performance of the complete piano music by Szymanowski. Here Hamelin is sovereign in his single CD of the complete mazurkas, but if you want the complete piano music (and I can see no reason for not owning every single piece of Szymanowski), Lee is the choice between Martin Jones on Nimbus and Martin Roscoe on Naxos. Lee got her PhD on the topic of Szymanowski piano music and her fingers are as clever as her brain – none of the tricky passages in the daunting sonatas or studies startles her. Martin Jones is not helped by an over-reverberant piano and Martin Roscoe is solid, sturdy and, in the best sense of the word, playing safe. But Sinae Lee’s is the complete version to have.
Marius Dawn

MUSICWEB (1):   (Disc of the Month November 2006)
For all readers interested in Szymanowski, this astounding set is as essential a purchase as the acclaimed Simon Rattle/EMI recordings of the orchestral works, and it is the most important collection ever to have been released of Szymanowski’s piano music.

These fine recordings were brought to my attention before the decision to license them for release was taken by Divine Art. I have been listening to them frequently during the six months preceding their official date of issue. In May I was sent copies of the recordings by the company and was asked to offer an opinion, though I was not told who the performer was, nor was I given any biographical information. I wrote back with enthusiasm, speculating that the intelligence and logic of the playing indicated that the anonymous artist was a scholar-pianist who probably combined playing with Ph. D study – and so it proves, as the booklet notes tell us that the Korean pianist Sinae Lee prepared her performances in conjunction with a Ph. D on the composer’s piano music. This is her debut commercial recording.

Miss Lee’s achievement can be best appreciated in the context of the standard of previous recordings of this repertoire. Amongst her piano teachers is Philip Jenkins, whose own thoughtful LP recording of Szymanowski’s Third Sonata was issued in 1980 (Gaudeamus KRS37); this masterpiece has also been well served in a recent recording for Virgin Classics by Piotr Anderszewski. Unfortunately, with the honourable exception of a handful of recordings such as these, the discography of Szymanowski’s solo piano music over the decades has been undistinguished, and a major loss is that there have been no recordings of this repertoire by some of the great pianists who have expressed enthusiasm for it (such as Vladimir Horowitz, Vladimir Ashkenazy, John Ogdon). The weakness of the Szymanowski solo piano music discography has not been apparent to the general public as the true state of affairs has been inadvertently covered up by well-meaning reviewers who have assessed recordings without the benefit of a score to check whether the pianists in question are observing professional standards. Most recordings have either been tentative and cautious due to the pianists’ lack of assimilation of the music’s complexities, or inaccurate due to the omission (or blurring) of many of the notes in order to keep up the momentum. In some instances what has been presented for public consumption on CD has been little more than amateurish bluffing. In Martin Jones’ 4 CD set of the complete piano music for Nimbus Records (inferior to his previous Argo recordings on LP), it sounded as though these recordings needed further preparation. Despite some laudatory reviews in the musical press by critics, these recordings constitute a misrepresentation of some of the most refined piano works in the twentieth-century piano repertoire.

Karol Szymanowski himself was evidently aware of the difficulties involved in playing his music, as he tolerated simplifications in performances by Artur Rubinstein, an artist whose advocacy he valued. The composer Andrzej Panufnik knew Szymanowski personally, and when I visited Sir Andrzej at his home in 1989, he told me that in the late 1920s or 1930s he had heard a performance by Rubinstein of the Third Sonata - though I suspect it was more likely to have been a performance of the Second - with, as Panufnik put it, ‘30% of the notes missed out’. Apart from two recordings of the Sinfonia Concertante for piano and orchestra, the only recordings extant of Rubinstein playing Szymanowski are his 1946 and 1961 versions of nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 from the Mazurkas op. 50. These strongly characterised performances are incomparable and the only performances in Sinae Lee’s set where I felt characterisation was lacking were her accounts of these mazurkas. Nevertheless, taking second place to Rubinstein in Polish music is hardly a fate to be ashamed of.

There are no simplifications in Miss Lee’s recordings. A distinctive feature of her set is that each composition has been prepared with an attention to detail which is often lacking in ‘complete’ editions of any composer’s music. Sometimes when an artist is recording a composer’s entire piano output an element of production-line learning can be perceived in the resulting interpretations, with the works homogenised. In the Divine Art set there is no suspicion of this, as each work is presented as a individual musical experience, and there is no doubt that each piece has been as carefully prepared as it would have been had Miss Lee been recording that single work alone. Given the complexity of much of the music, the amount of preparation time which this will have necessitated is daunting. Sinae Lee deserves our respect for having shown the integrity to approach her Szymanowski project with such painstaking observance of detail.

Technically, Miss Lee offers playing which is difficult to fault even by the most uncompromising technical standards. Readers who admire the high-quality finish of such contemporary master pianists as Stephen Hough, Marc-André Hamelin and Leif Ove Andsnes will be fully satisfied with the standards on offer here, as there is a comparable sense of the difficulties of the often dense textures being mastered to such an extent that the complexities are no longer a barrier, so that the attention of the performer can be focused entirely on imaginative interpretation. The subsidiary elements of the texture are controlled as carefully as the more prominent aspects of the keyboard writing. This is often not the case with recordings of late-Romantic repertoire, though it is a flaw rarely remarked upon by critics, even by the self-styled ‘piano specialists’ who write with what they consider to be authoritative judgement for the glossy reviewing magazines.

There are only a handful of minor criticisms which I would make of the set. I was bothered by the occasional use of the old-style ‘left hand before right’ mannerism (especially in the C sharp minor prelude of 1901, receiving its world premiere recording here), but this affects only a tiny proportion of the total playing. Also noticeable is that Miss Lee evidently has small hands as she often has to arpeggiate large left-hand chords in an upwards direction, so sometimes the bass line is lost as a result of the sustaining pedal being changed at the end of the upward arpeggiation, by which time the bass note of a chord has already been released in order for the left hand to reach the top note. Occasionally there are some insignificant wrong notes or places where the articulation is not quite precise (such as in the introduction to the fugue of the Second Sonata, where the right hand chords are reduced to plain octaves in the passage immediately preceding the silence at 13:28). There are worse errors in all other commercial recordings of Szymanowski’s piano music that I have heard (including my own, issued in 1999) and a direct A/B comparison with other recordings is always to Sinae Lee’s advantage. The sound quality is vivid, and it is to the pianist’s credit that even in such fearsomely intricate pieces as the Op. 33 studies her playing is precise enough to withstand the scrutiny of the relatively close-up microphone positioning. The sound is analytical enough even to document her subtle pedalling by faithfully reproducing the sound of the felt of the dampers touching the strings - by contrast, the excessively resonant acoustics of the Nimbus recordings help to blur and cover over some of the worst aspects of the playing.

Readers unfamiliar with Szymanowski’s idiom may wonder whether the music will appeal to them and will want to know what his music ‘sounds like’. Ultimately, Szymanowski’s music is too individual to sound like that of any other composer, so it is facile to try to compare his style to those of other composers. If one is absolutely determined to search for influences the most feasible are Chopin (in the early works), Scriabin (in the middle period pieces), with occasional suggestions of the tough, abrasive folk-quality of Bartók in the late mazurkas. The nature of the virtuosity required may remind one of the demands of some of Ravel’s piano music (Gaspard de la Nuit in particular), but these vague comparisons are merely to give readers a flavour of the music. One must not press parallels too closely as Szymanowski’s style is unique. To generalise further, any listener who reacts positively to late-Romantic piano music or to French composers at the start of the twentieth-century cannot fail to enjoy this set. A great deal of the piano music is accessible on first hearing and newcomers to Szymanowski’s music would do well to start with this set, beginning by exploring the earliest works on CD 1 and gradually progressing to the later ones; they should also hear at least some of the Simon Rattle recordings on EMI with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, priority perhaps being given to the Third Symphony, the Fourth Symphony (also known as the Sinfonia Concertante) and the violin concerti, recorded with Thomas Zehetmair as soloist.

I would urge readers who are already familiar with recordings of Szymanowski’s piano music to buy this set, as many of the keyboard textures are here rendered transparent in a manner not achieved in other recordings, and the performances maintain an ideal balance between relaxed atmospheric playing and the impulsive drive and energy which is necessary if these elaborate works are not to sound directionless. I have not considered it necessary to discuss individual performances in this review because it is difficult to indicate which are ‘highlights’ of this set when all of the performances are of equal quality.

If this 4 CD set had been offered as four separate discs at full price it would still have been well worth the financial outlay, so as a budget-price ‘four for the price of two’ issue it becomes an amazing bargain, comparable in price with the cheap Naxos recordings, but superior to them. Divine Art’s presentation is first class, the four CDs being housed within two slimline cases contained within an outer cardboard slipcase. The booklets feature extensive informative notes (in English language only) by Alistair Wightman, a leading Szymanowski expert and the author of highly-regarded books on the composer. This product is fully comparable in quality with the standards we are accustomed to from larger companies such as Hyperion, Chandos or the multinationals.

The supporting team involved in making the recording is a strong one. The pianist Philip Jenkins (mentioned earlier) is the producer, and it is an obvious advantage to have a pianist with personal experience of the challenges of playing Szymanowski assisting the recording process. Mastering and post-production has been taken care of by Paul Baily, best known for his work on EMI reissues and one of the most exacting and precise sound technicians I have had the good fortune to work with. Good sound quality has been achieved by the recording engineers, Graham Kennedy and Kim Planert. Listeners may be interested to learn that the concert hall in Glasgow used for this recording is identical in every detail to the West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge which was designed by the same architects and which has been used for a number of piano recordings by the large multi-national companies.

I suspect that many professional pianists will be mightily impressed by these recordings. Sinae Lee’s release sets new standards for the performance of Szymanowski’s piano music, and her quest for accuracy has not in any way inhibited her playing’s wonderful sense of spontaneity. I am confident that any listeners responsive to late-Romantic music who buy this superb set will share my enthusiasm for it.
Raymond Clarke

MICHEL TIBBAUT (RADIO BELGE):
(approximate translation of original review in French from Res Musica.com (original version copyright)

Karol Szymanowski, the admirable Polish musician whose work (and not a moment too soon!) I am just beginning to discover, was initially influenced by his compatriot predecessor Chopin, then, through Rachmaninov and Scriabin, found a language uniquely his won, in order to express the complex meanderings and secrets of his tormented personality. The piano was his instrument, so it is not surprising that a great deal of his output as devoted to it: by the age of twenty, Szymanowski had written a large quantity of piano music, of which the Nine Preludes and Prelude in C sharp minor were only recently (in 1996) discovered and which are included in world premiere recordings on this complete survey of his piano works. The influence of Chopin lessens dramatically as we move on to the Four Studies of which the third became very famous and was orchestrated by composer and conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg (1879-1953),founder of the National Symphony Orchestra of Radio Poland and a great friend of the composer.

The Second Piano Sonata, written for Arthur Rubinstein in 1912, is probably one of the most accomplished of Szymanowski’s works; however it is only from the short cycle of Métopes that the true style of the composer begins to show, extremely influenced by French impressionism, with echoes of Ravel and even visions of the still-to-come “Polish School” of composers such as Serocki. The Twelve Studies are, of course, a specific homage to the Études of Chopin, but the influence of Ravel is always present, with echoes of Scriabin and Prokofiev. In the same way, in the Mazurkas, Szymanowski leaves the model of Chopin to lead to a very characteristic personal style in which we can discover new sound worlds, in the proper sense of the term.

Few pianists dare to venture into the subtle and complex musical universe of Szymanowski, because to do so requires a faultless technique allied with an intense and refined sensibility, without all of which the interpreter is at peril. In 1994 Nimbus Records offered us an extremely honourable interpretation of the complete piano works by Martin Jones, but which was sullied in places by misinterpretation. To hear the sound universe of Szymanowski in all its splendour, one needs the love and sensitivity of Korean pianist Sinae Lee, who offers this new performance in a brilliant recording on Divine Art, which gives the impression that there is no intermediary between pianist and listener. It is impressive that a pianist from a culture at first sight a long way from ours musically can immerse herself so well in this sound universe; even more extraordinary in that it is her début recording, made while she also completes a doctorate on the subject of … Szymanowski’s piano music! It is not surprising that her playing has attracted wide commendation . The result, quite simply is that everything here runs admirably right from the beginning and is quite simply extraordinary.
Michel Tibbaut (trans. Stephen Sutton)

MUSICWEB (2):
It was about 1983 when I first heard of Szymanowski. I’d been at a concert at the Festival Hall in London and on the way out I was given a tape of his music by a publicity agent. It was entitled ‘Karol Szymanowski, the last romantic’. Whilst there’s no denying his music is extremely romantic – more so than many who came before him, there are plenty of other contemporaries of his who outlived him who could easily be classed in the same way – Medtner for example. What is certain, however, is that Szymanowski’s music is highly individual in style and fiendishly difficult to play well enough to do it the credit it indisputably deserves. However, there is no such issue in this case as Sinae Lee is simply jaw-droppingly good with a delivery that is staggering in its ability to bring out the nuances within the music. And when you consider that this is her debut recording then I for one cannot wait for more from her. I freely admit that I am not a pianist and therefore cannot comment on the mechanics involved in bringing works like these off. I would refer readers to the excellent and far more detailed review by pianist Raymond Clarke, whose own recording of the three sonatas was justly highly praised. He has said everything about these recordings that can be said and when you listen to the music whilst reading his review you can hear what he means and this enhances the listening experience even more. I make my comments as a lowly listener who is struck by Sinae Lee’s wonderful and seemingly effortless control, immaculate phrasing and beautiful colouration, resulting in performances I’ve never heard equalled. I have to share his disappointment with Martin Jones’s recording of the complete piano works for Nimbus which I enjoyed well enough until the present set came my way. In many ways it’s like hearing them completely afresh as if a veil has been lifted and the works take on a new meaning. As Raymond Clarke says this music has obviously been meticulously prepared in an individual way that allows each piece to show its own value whilst remaining part of a complete body of work. Lee prepared these performances as part of her Ph.D. - just imagine how the tutors felt when presented with work such as this! If there are any lovers of Szymanowski’s music who have not yet bought this set then I can assure them that there is no excuse for hesitation as they will find it a truly rewarding experience. The same goes for anyone who enjoys late romantic piano music but is yet to discover the unique sound world of this genuinely original composer.
Steve Arloff

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE:
To take on such a mammoth task as the recording of Szymanowski’s entire piano output required a performer of exceptional ability, one that can accommodate the huge technical demands of the music whilst elucidating the dramatic changes in his style with clarity and conviction. The journey is indeed challenging, moving from the passionate Romanticism of the early works to the exploratory mysticism of the middle-period Masques, Métopes and Third Sonata and culminating in the more austere folk-like idiom of the late Mazurkas.

On the evidence of these discs, the Korean Sinae Lee certainly has the necessary technical ability to master this repertory; the most testing passage-work in the 12 Studies Op.33 and the fugal Finale of the Third Sonata pose few difficulties for her. Likewise, in the early Preludes and the First Sonata, she projects the music with a real sense of forward momentum and intensity, at the same time managing to bring welcome transparency of texture to the involved contrapuntal layering of works such as the Second Piano Sonata.

Divine Art’s very immediate piano sound emphasises this drive for clarity, but is perhaps less helpful in some of the more ethereal sections of the middle-period works where Lee’s tonal variety is never quite as mercurial or imaginative as that of Piotr Anderszewsi, whose recording of the Masques and Métopes on EMI remains peerless. In the other repertory, matters however are more even. I marginally prefer Lee’s heart-on-sleeve approach to the early works in comparison with the more reserved conception of Martin Roscoe (on Naxos), whilst Martin Jones (Nimbus) is especially convincing in the Second Sonata, Unfortunately the recording quality of both the Jones and Roscoe discs is somewhat muffled, although this enables Roscoe in particular to effect a more atmospheric quality in the reflective sections of the music.

While Anderszewski remains the obvious benchmark for the middle-period works and Marc-André Hamelin delivers irresistibly alluring accounts of the Mazurkas on Hyperion, making a clear choice among the complete sets is by no means so straightforward. Roscoe’s natural musicianship and Naxos’s bargain price is certainly enticing, and there is much to savour in Martin Jones’s playing. However, the better recording and Lee’s passionate advocacy of the early music winds the day, if only just.
Erik Levi