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.

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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

YUN: Chamber Symphony I / Tapis / Gong-Hu

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