“Movement, progress, time. The interrelationship of these three essential components as defining our human condition – and that of nature as an ever-changing entity – determines my composing and is simultaneously its source of strength. In this, the piano music of my early years, at that time seeming to me to be clearer than more complex large-scale genres, is of particular importance. In each of the five earlier pieces on this CD, it opened a section of the work in which, generally speaking, questions of time – various aggregate states of time as well as subjects of time – were to come into focus to artistically test their possible musicalization. Every beginning of such a journey into a new section of a work was conceived, felt, and reflected upon from the ending, from an idea of what it would look like, how time would take shape. The journey thus began each time with a piano piece and, in the course of the group of works, often led via a creative process to results other than those originally felt and devised.” – Ernst Helmuth Flammer

The daughter of Korean parents, Kaya Han was born and grew up in Japan. At a very early age she had already won several prizes at various piano competitions in Japan and Europe. She studied at the Toho Gakuen Conservatory in Tokyo and at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg. She subsequently gave numerous piano recitals, chamber music and orchestral concerts in many European countries, in Canada and East Asia. As a soloist or chamber music partner with other renowned soloists and ensembles Kaya Han has performed at the world's most important festivals. Her repertoire included works by Bach and by many composers of our times. She was a lecturer at the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt and was a professor at the Karlsruhe University of Music from 1999. Kaya Han died in October 2021 at the age of 63.