Étude B

“In midsummer 2017, Youngwoo Lee, a pianist and a good friend of mine, told me that she had participated in Everything about Étude (Tout sur les Études), a project that commissioned twelve Korean composers and twelve Korean pianists to compose twelve contemporary piano études. Recollecting études by Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff that I was asked to perform for competitions or auditions when I was a student, I wondered what skills the contemporary composers had required the contemporary pianists to be proficient in. At the same time, I ruminated over the techniques I had demanded from the performers who collaborated with me for my films and performances in recent years.”