Moving piano music could be heard from Walker Recital Hall last week, as the D’Angelo Department of Music presented the first of this year’s Faculty Recital Series.

The faculty member featured this month was Mercyhurst College’s Assistant professor of Piano and-artist-in-residence Dr. Shirley Yoo.

The recital took place last Thursday at 8 p.m.

Yoo picked impressive and moving repertoire which set an exciting mood of anticipation for the remainder of the concert series. Sophomore Adam Ferrari said, “from start to finish my attention never wandered from the magic Dr. Yoo created.”

The night started off with three sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti titled, “Sonata in D minor, K.9; Sonata in A major, K.101; and Sonata in A major, K.212.” All three sonatas were up tempo with a dance-like feel, putting a smile on the face of many audience members.

Next on the program was a piece by Cesar Franck titled, “Prelude, Fuge et Variation, op. 18.” This work was written by Franck for organ and was later arranged for piano by H. Bauer. Yoo did an incredible job of mimicking the big organ sound in this dramatic piece.

An interesting addition to the recital was the Korean composer Geonyoung Lee’s, “variations on a Korean Peasant Tune.” This modern composition explored a Korean farming folk song by creating interesting variations.

Next in the program were two pieces by Debussy titled, “Etude pour les quartes and Etude pour les octaves.” Junior Omar Roy described these pieces as, “both technically and musically astounding.”
Concluding the beautiful evening, Yoo played a large intense Schumann piece titled, “Etudes Symphoniques, op. 13.”

This was just the first of this year’s faculty recitals. The next Faculty Recital Series concert will be Thursday, Oct. 21, at 8 p.m. in the Walker Recital Hall at Mercyhurst College. Performing will be League of the Unsound Sound (LotUS).

Yoo is a founding core member of LotUS. She describes the group as “a chamber group dedicated to performing contemporary and experimental music.”