Hear the Sound of a New Generation of South Korean Musicians

New York Times

02-06-2025

'Compare Korea to China or Russia,' the composer Unsuk Chin said in a recent interview. 'If you think how small the country is, it's amazing how many talented musicians are coming out.'
South Korean artists are prominent on classical music's most prestigious stages. The young pianists Seong-Jin Cho and Yunchan Lim sell out Carnegie Hall. The conductor Myung-whun Chung was recently named the next music director of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Chin's new opera, 'The Dark Side of the Moon,' premiered in Hamburg in May.
Now, to explore South Korea's creative output, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is presenting the Seoul Festival from Tuesday through June 10.
It is the latest in a series of themed Philharmonic events, including dives into Iceland and Mexico. Around 2018, the orchestra and its artistic leader at the time, Chad Smith, asked Chin to help plan a South Korean iteration, but the plans were derailed by the pandemic. About half of the original programming has made it intact onto this year's concerts.
'I really wanted to present the youngest generation of composers, conductors and musicians,' said Chin, 63.
That generation has emerged from what she called 'a very long cultural tradition.' The country's embrace of Western musical culture began around the turn of the 20th century, and a Western-style compositional tradition took hold with figures like Isang Yun (1917-95), who wrote avant-garde music for Western instruments — but with a style that attempted to translate old-school Korean techniques.
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