A piano competition should not feel this tense, but the new K-drama Four Hands, Two Sonatas somehow manages to make every performance feel like a high-stakes confrontation. The pressure on these students goes well beyond getting the notes right or beating the person sitting across from them. Music is tied to their families, their insecurities, their pasts and, for some of them, their entire sense of self-worth. Even when nobody is performing, there is a constant feeling that something could go wrong. Six episodes in, the tvN and Netflix drama has settled into an absorbing coming-of-age story, using the demanding world of classical music to explore what happens when young people are expected to grow up before they are ready.
Directed by Park Hyun Seok and written by Shin Yi Won, the drama takes us into an elite arts high school where being talented is only the beginning. Song Kang plays Kang Bi Oh, a piano prodigy who has grown up under the relentless pressure to be perfect. For him, music has never simply been something he loves. It is an expectation he has been carrying for years. Lee Jun Young plays Choi Jeong Yo, a gifted pianist who walked away from music after a painful childhood made it difficult for him to return to the piano. Jang Gyu Ri plays Hong Jae In, a viola student with a history with Jeong Yo, adding another layer to the relationship that develops between the three characters as their lives gradually become intertwined. The drama tells us almost immediately that this is not going to be a conventional high school story. The very first episode opens on a disturbing flash-forward, with a bloodied piano, panic and someone desperately trying to escape. We have no idea yet how the characters end up in that situation, but the sequence instantly gives the story a sense of danger. From there, the narrative goes back to the beginning and slowly starts putting the pieces together. Bi Oh initially looks like the student who has everything under control. He is a gifted pianist, disciplined and constantly expected to remain at the top. But the more we see of his life, the clearer it becomes that very little of it is actually his choice. His mother and grandfather have tied his success to his value as a person, turning music and perfection into something he must constantly prove himself through. Years of that pressure have left him guarded and increasingly disconnected from his own emotions. The music is an important part of this show. The classical pieces are not there just to give the drama a polished or sophisticated feel. They actually become part of the storytelling. Rachmaninoff, Bach and Beethoven reflect what Bi Oh and Jeong Yo are dealing with at different points, whether it is the pressure they carry, the anger they struggle with, the fear underneath it all or their growing need to step away from the lives their families have planned for them.
Song Kang plays Bi Oh with a kind of quietness that works really well for the character. Even when he is angry, he rarely lets it show completely. There is always this feeling that he is stopping himself from saying or doing what he actually wants. As the story moves forward, it becomes clearer that Bi Oh has been controlling his emotions for so long that he does not really know what to do when something gets past that control.
He has spent most of his life being told what to do, how to behave and how good he needs to be.
