Isang Yun

[springrite]

I have those and a few more. There's a couple of rare ones on Attaca and Ars Musici...

Yea, impressive line-up!

I do tend away from singing Symphonies. I would make an exception here.

Yea, I better not get too excited here!

After all that you can go for the chamber music which for me is very interesting.

[Mirror Image]

I have those and a few more. There's a couple of rare ones on Attaca and Ars Musici...

Yea, impressive line-up!

I do tend away from singing Symphonies. I would make an exception here.

Yea, I better not get too excited here!

For me, the last movement of Yun's Symphony No. 5 is one of the most touching moments in his entire symphonic cycle. What I love about Yun is the fact that his music never really comes to resolution and leaves many things unanswered. His symphonies are like spiritual journeys. Never fully arriving at their destination but always the more compelling for the fact that they don't arrive anywhere.

[springrite]

For me, the last movement of Yun's Symphony No. 5 is one of the most touching moments in his entire symphonic cycle. What I love about Yun is the fact that his music never really comes to resolution and leaves many things unanswered. His symphonies are like spiritual journeys. Never fully arriving at their destination but always the more compelling for the fact that they don't arrive anywhere.

You summed that up so beautifully, so eloquently and so... so... in line with oriental thinking, that for a moment I almost forgot that you are in Georgia.

[Mirror Image]

You summed that up so beautifully, so eloquently and so... so... in line with oriental thinking, that for a moment I almost forgot that you are in Georgia.

Thanks, Paul.

[TheGSMoeller]

So, it turns out I own a little Yun myself, his Chamber Symphony no.1 to be exact, and it's coupled with, get ready for it... Haydn's No.39 and No.45...





Here is a little information from ArkivMusic. I really enjoy Yun's piece, I've only listened to it twice, will have to replay it this evening.

Perhaps I could get a little compare and contrast to the rest of Yun's output as compared to his Chamber Symphony No.1 from some of you.

[Mirror Image]

So, it turns out I own a little Yun myself, his Chamber Symphony no.1 to be exact, and it's coupled with, get ready for it... Haydn's No.39 and No.45...





Here is a little information from ArkivMusic. I really enjoy Yun's piece, I've only listened to it twice, will have to replay it this evening.

Perhaps I could get a little compare and contrast to the rest of Yun's output as compared to his Chamber Symphony No.1 from some of you.

That would be great if you could do that, Greg. We'd all appreciate it! Is this the only work you've heard by Yun?

[Mirror Image]

Personally, I think you would be making a big mistake shying away from Symphony No. 5 just because it had singing in it, snyprrr. Here's the last movement that someone uploaded on YT:

http://www.youtube.com/v/m4Bd4DzLRPA

[Mirror Image]

Here's an interview with Yun:

http://www.bruceduffie.com/yun.html

[snyprrr]

String Quartet No.6 (1992)

I think this is maybe the second to last work. With the ultra refined distillation of his ethos, and the homogenity of texture provided by the strings, Yun here achieves a union between procedure and joyousness. Many of the Composers of High Modernism mellowed in the Late Works, but Yun is simply refining his already trademarked sound: all here is melismas and trills and tonal sliding in canon, suggesting a sublime Korean court music as filtered through a static... pond... Tartovsky... In a way, if Xenakis had ended his career with the writing of Tetora (1990) for SQ, the effect of Yun's piece is similarly static yet moving, and severe, though more supple. Indeed, the two piece could stand comparison on ascetic grounds alone.

SQ No.5 is the single movement equivalent of his Symphony No.3, and I certainly consider it a masterpiece of the single movement string quartet. No.6 is in the classical four movements. Its supremely reverent and court-like, pastel colored and slightly spicy atmosphere embody Yun's native tongue in a formal setting that I'd have to attribute to Haydn, it's that to the point in terms of its movement (yea, I don't know what I just wrote either, so there!).

For those who have been enjoying Yun lately, the CPO series that stretches into his Chamber Music is maddeningly diverse and hard to get. I have the disc with the 2 Clarinet Quintets and the SQ 6, an actually quite stark experience that leaves a slightly piquant aftertaste. Denisov and Yun make good musical friend compares, both having a blooming Late Phase. Enjoy!

[GioCar]

Just realized that two days ago (September 17) was Yun's centenary 

A belated celebration with Réak (1966), from this recording



From "The Dragon from Korea" by Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer

Réak is a work of self-discovery with respect to the stratification of the sound and the thinking in families of sound. In the vertical dimension of the composition, the harmony, Yun emulated the chordal structures and the tonal character of the East-Asian mouth organ. This main work of the 1960s is, on the one hand, a "composition of instrumental colors," that is to say, a piece of post-serial music for which the breathing, articulated organization of sound surfaces is characteristic. On the other hand, the Korean title has to be translated as "ceremonial music"; also compositionally, Yun's Réak points to the ancient Korean royal shrine music Chongmyo-cheréak.

[snyprrr]

How did you know I had been staring at this pile of Yun CDs yesterday? hmmm... maybe God was telling me about Yun's milestone...

He has suuuch a specific soundworld; I really have to be prepared for a Yun-a-thon...

[snyprrr]

So, it turns out I own a little Yun myself, his Chamber Symphony no.1 to be exact, and it's coupled with, get ready for it... Haydn's No.39 and No.45...





Here is a little information from ArkivMusic. I really enjoy Yun's piece, I've only listened to it twice, will have to replay it this evening.

Perhaps I could get a little compare and contrast to the rest of Yun's output as compared to his Chamber Symphony No.1 from some of you.

Listened to the Naxos Chamber Symphony No.1, surely a charming work. At @28mins., it luxuriates in the kind of Villa-Lobos meets Korean Darmstadt thick garden forest textures. Yun's music here is natural and complex, interweaving like vines- the garden of tones.

In the middle, all of a sudden, I was listening to some quite rare sonorities. I was a little disappointed the last time I checked out the Symphonies 1-4 (check my Post above), but it may have just been my mood. MI is always hawking the ending of S5, maybe we'll try that.

I think it's SQ5 that is the masterpiece for me, and this Chamber Symphony has the same hand.

[snyprrr]

Symphony No.2

Again, why does it remind me of Nielsen? I find this such a life affirming work, very positive and bustling with garden energies, very floral.

[André]

Bump.

Cross-posted from WAYL2:

From disc one, the 1976 Cello Concerto, played by Matt Heimovitz with the Linz Bruckner Orchestra under Dennis Russel Davies. Recorded in 2017.

My, oh my ! This is quite the thorniest opus I've heard from Yun's pen. He usually composes rather short works, often in sparse instrumentation, although his symphonies are also rather big in scope. The concerto is in a single 30-minute movement and undergoes many moods on this epic journey. Cellist Matt Heimovitz writes of the 'controlled chaos' of Yun's work. He considers that 'the concerto deserves to stand alongside those of Dutilleux and Lutoslawski in the pantheon of the genre's late twentieth century innovations' .  It is quite a ride and I'll have to give it a few more listens to get the full picture. Performance and sound are outstanding.

I've now listened to the whole of disc 1 three times. The other works on it are:

Interludium A, for piano (11:28)
Glissées, for cello solo (16:05)
Fanfare and Memorial, for orchestra (16:33)

A very varied programme, then.

Interludium from 1982 is a study on the note A. That note represents harmony, purity and perfection for Yun (as per the booklet notes). « This piece is an illumination of this note in varying contexts. Next to Ravel's Le gibet and Scriabin's piano sonata no 10 this is probably the strictest treatment of a single note in the piano oeuvre ». Far from being monotonous or repetitive, it is a wonderful piece, full of shadings and contrasts.

Glissées was composed in 1970. It has become standard repertoire for today's cellists. This is my 3rd version of this fascinating work. It's a set of 4 studies where « new playing techniques emerge. Each piece exhibits a symmetrical design and yet is continued in the piece immediately following: a drama of intensification forms the overarching structure of the cycle ». This has become my favourite solo work by Yun. It's an astoundingly varied work that holds me attentive from first note to last.

Fanfare and Memorial (1979). Yun uses a 5 measures long theme, a highly unusual feature in his work (Yun is, one might say, a 'vertical' composer, not an 'horizontal' one). That theme is subjected to all kinds of transformations, broken up, rebuilt, dissected as it were. The structure is that of a symphonic movement with harp obbligato, subdivided in 5 sections characterized by their dynamics (volume): loud/soft/loud/soft/loud. There is an important solo cadenza for the harp. Even after three hearings though I couldn't always detect the theme. Once the piece starts, I set aside attempts to spot it.

[not edward]

Necromancing this thread to note that I've been listening to the 1st symphony quite a bit of late and ... wow. Is a performance of it by a truly high-end orchestra too much to ask for?

I think anyone who enjoys the symphonies of Karl Amadeus Hartmann would really enjoy this one (& Henze's 7th is, to say the least, blatantly modelled on it).

[Maestro267]

I chanced upon an affordable copy of the CPO Complete Symphonies box, so I'm looking forward to diving into that later today.

[Maestro267]

Interesting works with fascinating sound colours. I need extra listens to fully grasp these works. Quite a short time span for them too, with all the works in this 4-disc set being composed in the 1980s.

[Maestro267]

Anyone got anything to say about these symphonies? It doesn't help that he leaves his movements untitled. Where's the symphonic forms?

[KevinP]

You might expect him to be more well known here, but he's really not. While flipping channels many years back, I did see a documentary on him, though of course it was entirely in Korean. I think some people here are aware that there was some composer a while back who was imprisoned, but that's about it.

[KevinP]

Not technically on-topic, but as a resource and perhaps springboard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_list_of_Korean_classical_composers