Debut Solo Album by WT’s Choong-ha Nam Puts Spotlight on Schubert’s Piano Sonatas

Copy by Chip Chandler, 806-651-2124, cchandler@wtamu.edu

CANYON, Texas — A West Texas A&M University music professor’s debut solo album pairs two signature works that capture the scope of one of Western music’s greatest composers.

Dr. Choong-ha Nam, professor of piano in the School of Music in WT’s Sybil B. Harrington College of Fine Arts and Humanities, recently released “Schubert Piano Sonatas in A, D. 664 and D. 959,” featuring two of Franz Schubert’s most moving works for piano.

The album is available now on major streaming services.

“For my first solo album Schubert's sonatas were a natural choice as I felt affinity to his works and had been playing and performing them off and on throughout my professional career,” Nam said.

The album opens with Sonata in A, D. 664, an early work by the late-classical Austrian composer.

“The first movement portrays a sentiment that is wholly good in its main theme’s loveliness and beauty,” Nam said.

That pairs well with the final movement of Schubert’s Sonata in A, D. 959, one of the last works he composed before his death in 1828.

“I love the blissful, contented state that the main theme of the fourth movement, the rondo, exudes,” Nam said. “If the most content and satiated state of being can be expressed in music, it would be the opening theme of the last movement of the sonata.”

Nam envisioned a “cyclic layout” for her album.

“The bookends of the album, the first movement of the D. 664 and the last of D. 959, correspond to one another,” she said. “By the end, one is brought home where the journey started, but in an elevated state of being that reaches a triumphant ending in that large rondo movement.”

Fostering an appreciation of the arts is a key component of the University’s long-range plan, WT 125: From the Panhandle to the World.

That plan is fueled by the historic One West comprehensive fundraising campaign, which reached its initial $125 million goal 18 months after publicly launching in September 2021. The campaign’s new goal is to reach $175 million by 2025; currently, it has raised nearly $160 million.

About West Texas A&M University

WT is located in Canyon, Texas, on a 342-acre residential campus. Established in 1910, the University has been part of The Texas A&M University System since 1990. WT, a Hispanic Serving Institution since 2016, boasts an enrollment of about 10,000 and offers 59 undergraduate degree programs and more than 40 graduate degrees, including two doctoral degrees. The University is also home to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, the largest history museum in the state and the home of one of the Southwest’s finest art collections. The Buffaloes are a member of the NCAA Division II Lone Star Conference and offers 14 men’s and women’s athletics programs.

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