Sebastian Claren (b.1965) - "Sex" for solo piano (1995/6), performance video from a few days ago here in Seoul! It was a challenge and honor to learn and perform every note of this rich and complex work by Sebastian Claren, who I first got to know a decade ago through our shared interest in Korean traditional music. Sebastian's work with Korean instruments is quite different from my own, but it (along with mine, I hope) is some of the most interesting, critically/historically engaged work a Western composer is doing interfacing with that tradition. However, this solo piano work from the '90s is inspired from another of our shared interests: a love of historical early 20th century "Romantic" pianism. Here, the title "Sex" is an allegory for the pianist's touch; specifically, the timbrally and expressively diverse touch of early 20th century piano gods like Hoffmann and Busoni. Twice as long as his much more extroverted, fiendishly difficult work "Alkan" composed around the same time, the difficulty of "Sex" is sonic, in its approach to tone and atmosphere, and psychological, as many sections contain extremely minute details of sound and rhythm, conceived as a kind of "Romantic" rhythmic flexibility, under a powerful microscope.