Yun and Chin connect cultures at 2003 Edinburgh Festival
(August 2003)
The music of Korean-born composers Isang Yun and Unsuk Chin features in a concert at the Edinburgh International Festival as part of its Connecting Cultures theme, exploring the way in which composers from China, Korea, India and Japan have engaged with the Western classical tradition.
The late-night programme on 14 August 2003 at the Usher Hall includes Yun's Divided Night, East-West Miniatures and Distances, together with Chin's most widely-performed work Acrostic-Wordplay. David Porcelijn conducts the Nieuw Ensemble from Amsterdam, and Nicole Tibbels is the intrepid soprano soloist in the Chin work.
Isang Yun’s unique style rests on the flexible, vibrant tone of his native country’s traditional music, yet it is also rooted in the European tradition. Unsuk Chin’s modern and lyrical music is notable for its rhythmic imagery, orchestral colour and her acute ear for instrumentation.
Yun's music has featured prominently on disc over the past year. CPO issued a box set of all five Yun symphonies (CPO 689 06 90), praised by Gramophone: "Yun emerges, politically and artistically, as a composer of absolute conviction. There is a compelling sense here of a restless spirit coursing through an often appropriately rough-hewn musical fabric woven with pared-back concrete-hard orchestral resources and interlaced with Buddhist reserve and Zen-like economy... This is a real - and recommendable - discovery for the adventurous."
Click here to purchase the Yun Symphonies CD from Amazon
ECM has also featured Yun in two recent recordings: the first couples Gasa, Espace I and Images with music by Bach and Hosokawa, performed by Thomas Demenga, Heinz Holliger, and Aurele Nicolet (ECM 1782/83); just released is a disc offering Piri and Quartet paired with works by Elliott Carter, performed by Holliger, Demenga, Thomas Zehetmair and Ruth Killius (ECM 1848). The latter CD was described by the Times "Holliger's dexterity and breath control amazes, most of all in Yun's solo oboe piece Piri; other solo artists, Thomas Zehetmair (violin) and Thomas Demenga (cello), give equally committed performances... One of the best releases of contemporary chamber music for some time".
Photo of Isang Yun: J. Wellhausen
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