““Anyone can play the right notes!” protests the clumsy pianist in Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan. Certainly, not everybody can play the right notes of Chopin’s B♭-Minor Sonata and Beethoven’s op. 111. Even the people that can, the great names, like Yuja Wang or Daniel Barenboim, might play those right notes, but as they seem to be offered as merchandise in exchange for checks and cheers, the great message of the two monumental works eludes them. But Jimin Oh-Havenith, a pianist of virtuosic qualities who can also play the right notes, does indeed tell us much about Chopin’s broad landscape of the human heart, and Beethoven’s dialogue between man and the Being to whom he prays.
[…] These two sonatas presented here are drastically dissimilar in temperament. Jimin Oh-Havenith has pronounced ideas about them, ideas deep and well thought out. They are stated with authority […] The incisiveness of her phrasing is quite remarkable, as is the transparency she brings to the structure of the second movement [of Beethoven´s op. 111] with its complexities of rhythm and dramatic shifts.
Recordings are, of course historical documents, and we now have a century of readings by the greats. Jimin Oh-Havenith holds her own among these offerings. Not since Pollini or Ashkenazy has there been such a profound, or truthful, or beautifully shaped performance of Beethoven’s last sonata. I still prefer Rubinstein’s aristocratic version of the Chopin B♭-Minor Sonata, and Pollini’s performance of opus 111, but I place Jimin Oh-Havenith on the shelf next to their recordings, and listen carefully to the wonderful things she has to say.” (Raymond Beegle | Fanfare Magazine| Issue 43:5 (May/June 2020)
