Mit Myrten und Rosen (Complete Works for Cello and Piano)

On the invitation of the House of the Cultures of the World in Berlin the Isang Yun Ensemble Pyongyang (North Korea) was the guest of the Federal Republic of Germany with seven concerts in May 1999, resulting in headlines like "Musical Bridgehead", "Reconciling Light", or "Isang Yun as the Hero and Saint of Music". The lively and spontaneous but not aestheticized interpretations of the chamber music works of Isang Yun - born in South Korea, living and working mostly in Berlin - by the Isang Yun Ensemble Pyongyang are captured on this recording from one of the performances from this fascinating tour.

When the Korean composer Isang Yun died in Berlin in 1995 at the age of 78, there still was a touch of the exotic in his oeuvre which was characterized by the cultural fusion between Asia and Europe. Isang Yun has become known primarily as a composer of five symphonies, numerous orchestral works and five operas. Amongst his musical oeuvres, however, his almost 50 chamber music works occupy a central position. Yun has composed chamber music virtually all his life, where, in addition to traditional genres such as the string quartet, he has experimented with unusual combinations. This aspect and Yun's affinity for the accordion, whose capability for sound modulation strongly attracted the composer, have played an essential role in the selection of works for this CD. The accordion is present in all of these pieces as a connecting link. In the "Concertino" and "Intermezzo" it is heard from beginning to end. In "Pezzo fantasioso per due strumenti con basso ad libitum" the performers have decided in favour of violin, accordion and cello. In the case of the "Duo" for viola and piano, the piano part was transcribed by Stefan Hussong for accordion. "I cut out a piece of the cosmic stream." (Isang Yun)

The great Scottish-American actress and voice teacher Kristin Linklater dedicated her life to the poet Shakespeare. For the first time on CD, she tells of the joys and sorrows of love with a selection of 23 sonnets, detailing the turbulence of youth, the shame of betrayal, the wisdom of maturity. The flute joins the song in the middle of the concert of passions: The exiled Korean composer Isang Yun (1917-1995) contemplates the drama of life from the East. His Chinese Images masterfully played by Martin Gonschorek and the epic song of Sori unite Eastern tradition with Western modernity. This atmosphere gives way to turmoil and tranquility with music and language side by side - it is as if the composer suddenly began to speak and the poet burst into song.

YUN: Chamber Symphony I / Tapis / Gong-Hu

Isang Yun’s works are inconceivable without the East Asian philosophy of the Tao. The more than one hundred works composed by Isang Yun in Europe combine national tradition with international modernity. Yun found his way to an individual sound in Europe through the reminiscence of Chinese-Korean court music. Furthermore, the oeuvre is characterized by the flexible, lively tone of the traditional music of his home, by the art of the flowing transition from the spirit of the Tao. The chamber music occupies an important role in Yun’s oeuvre; the composer experimented with not only the most diverse and also unusual combinations of instruments, but also continued to compose in traditional classical genres. The present release features his East-West-Miniatures, his Quartet for Oboe and String Trio, and more.

-----

REVIEW:

Yun radically cut sections from his 1991 Sonata for violin and piano shortly before its premiere, ostensibly to reinforce the transparency of the violin part. In Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer’s view this was a mistake, and here Egidius Streiff and Kaya Han deliver a majestic performance of the original version in what is its first recording. By Yun’s standards the opening is rather conventional, with the expressive violin singing over the piano’s chordal, punctuating accompaniment but this soon develops more unpredictably, with a rapid piano episode echoed by the violin in lively, almost neo-classical vein. Essentially the first part of the work is mercurial and turbulent, at times almost Bartokian. But the second part is slow and, reflective. There is a magical passage at 15:00 which is prayer-like in its simplicity, whereby Streiff’s violin almost seems to speak. The sonata’s conclusion is profoundly affecting as the work evaporates into nothingness.

It is largely down to CPO, ECM and Capriccio (three German labels) that Isang Yun’s legacy is primarily being maintained and reinforced. Connoisseurs of the finest modern music have much to thank them for.

– MusicWeb International

At the end of a career spent between his native Korea and Germany, during which he produced works that span the musical traditions of both countries, Isang Yun expressed a wish to limit himself ‘to what is substantial, in order to transmit more peace, more goodness, more purity and warmth into this world’.

With Silla (1992) the composer pays tribute to the origins of Korean culture and philosophy, to the court music introduced from China, and to the period when Korea’s political unity was established (676–935 AD). Describing its mood, Yun provided such keywords as ‘nocturnal, festive…mirthful but also melancholy’. From the same year, Violin Concerto III was composed after a stay in hospital, and Yun once described it as a birthday present to himself. At the age of 75 he no longer felt the need to take contemporary currents, aesthetic trends or technical restraints into consideration. The work holds in store a wealth of musical occurrences that could perhaps be deciphered in the context of its composers own life, and is here performed by the young South Korean violinist Sueye Park. Closing the disc is Chamber Symphony No. 1 from 1987, a work in one movement but with three distinct sections. In it, Yun combines instruments that forge changing musical alliances while engaging in rivalry or complementing each other. The mood is evocative of an, at times, animated conversation.

REVIEW:

This is a superb disc of wonderfully expressive, thoroughly accessible music, and is immensely welcome for several reasons. Firstly, for turning a spotlight on the music of the composer’s last decade, which includes some of his most powerfully communicative compositions. Secondly, it is heartwarming to hear the late flowering of a composer of utterly assured compositional expertise, writing the music that flowed spontaneously out of him from a situation of creative and personal freedom – not complacency, but with nothing to prove, no particular school or doctrine to follow – after a lifetime of personal and musical turmoil and searching re-invention...The final race to the finish [of the Chamber Symphony] is as exciting and robust as anything in the Romantic literature.

-- Records International

“A composer cannot view the world in which he lives with indifference. Human suffering, oppression, injustice… all that comes to me in my thoughts. Where there is pain, where there is injustice, I want to have my say through my music.” (Isang Yun) This new release features works by Isang Yun performed by Dennis Russell Davies, Matt Haimovitz, Yumi Hwang-Williams, Maki Namekawa, and the Bruckner Orchester Linz. Isang Yun was born on September 17th, 1917 near Tongyong, South Korea, and received his first musical training (cello and composition) in Korea and Japan. Active opposition to the Japanese occupation resulted in his being imprisoned until the end of World War II. After gaining his freedom, he spent a period teaching music at Korean high schools und universities. He was a member of the Hamburg and Berlin Academies of Arts, and a honorary doctor at Tübingen University and honorary member of the ISCM, also member of the Academia Scientiarum et Artium Europaea, Salzburg, among other distinctions (Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz).

-----

REVIEWS:

Matt Haimovitz is the superb soloist in the fiercely confrontational, single-movement Cello Concerto from 1976, surely one of the finest works for cello and orchestra of the last 50 years, while Yumi Hwang-Williams is equally accomplished in the more lyrical solo writing of the first of Yun’s three concertos for violin.

– Guardian (UK)

Excellent new recordings of two of Yun’s most gripping major scores - the Cello Concerto and the Violin Concerto No. 1. The powerful Cello Concerto (1976) was a watershed. The western concerto structure and harmonic relationships lend themselves to confrontational dialog, while subtle evocations of the timbres, melodic contours, and microtonal inflections of Korean traditional music leave one in no doubt of the arena in which the drama is being played out. The larger — 40 minute — Violin Concerto is even more firmly based in the western tradition, with some wonderfully opulent orchestral tutti that even distantly evoke Richard Strauss.

– Records International

Pulitzer Prize winner Du Yun's collaboration with the International Contemporary Ensemble traces back to the group's formation at Oberlin Conservatory and the composer's budding early years. This new release on ICE's Tundra imprint chronicles that fruitful relationship with dynamic ensemble works, solos with and without electronics, and improvisations. Dinosaur Scar captures the synergy that can only come as a result of musicians who have absorbed a composer's language over many years, and a composer writing specifically with specific performers in mind. Du Yun writes: “It feels as though I grew up with the International Contemporary Ensemble. It has been 20 years that I have known many of them individually, half of my lifetime. Friendship ebbs and flows like the river. It washes and takes you over. Perhaps more than that, it transfigures and defines you in a subtle, intense and poignant way. There are so many metaphors about water as the method of being reborn in life. For me, ICE and I are like that flowing river, from the streaming start, the dramatic gorges, and to the currents that flood into the ocean. And this album is, precisely, a testament to that.”