There's more to Korean music than K-Pop. Young composers show how in L.A. Phil's Seoul Festival

K-pop. Oscar-celebrated cinema. Samsung successful the surviving room. Political urgency successful the press. However salient Korean civilization seems to be, determination is astonishing deficiency of sum of the classical country astatine large.

Already astatine 21, Yunchan Lim, victor of the 2018 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, has reached superstar status. Myung-Whun Chung, whose conducting vocation began arsenic an adjunct to Carlo Maria Giulini astatine the Los Angeles Philharmonic successful 1977, was conscionable selected, implicit a seasoned Italian conductor, to caput La Scala successful Milan with the blessing of Italy’s nationalist president, Giorgia Meloni.

And present the L.A. Phil has turned to the South Korean superior for an eight-day Seoul Festival arsenic a follow-up to its revelatory Reykjavik and Mexico City festivals. Unsuk Chin, today’s best-known Korean composer, is the curator.

She is, successful fact, today’s lone Korean composer who’s good known internationally.

Despite a seeming wealthiness of renowned performers, Korea remains a musically mysterious land. Most of what happens, adjacent now, successful Seoul’s classical euphony country doesn’t roam acold from Seoul. The mostly youngish composers and performers successful the archetypal L.A. Phil festival event, an exceptional Green Umbrella performance of caller euphony astatine Walt Disney Concert Hall connected Tuesday night, were each discoveries.

Korean euphony is simply a find for overmuch of the world. But California does person a caput start. Chin, whose euphony has a visceral immediacy, has agelong acceptable successful to L.A., championed by Kent Nagano astatine Los Angeles Opera and by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel and Susanna Mälkki astatine the L.A. Phil. Moreover, past Korean tribunal euphony and its instruments became an obsession with the echt-California composer Lou Harrison. Its noble gentility has been subtly adding to the DNA of the California sound.

Only 2 Korean composers earlier Chin person made an indelible content connected the satellite stage, and both, arsenic is Chin, became avant-gardist emigres. As outsiders, they person striking relevance.

Isang Yun ((1917–1995) had a shocking career. A superb pioneering composer who melded accepted Asian euphony with modern techniques, Yun had been concisely arrested for his information successful the Korean independency question of the aboriginal 1940s. He fled to West Germany, wherever helium became a salient composer earlier being kidnapped and returned to Korea. Imprisoned, tortured and threatened with a decease sentence, helium was yet freed acknowledgment to unit from a consortium of internationally influential musicians (Igor Stravinsky, György Ligeti and Herbert von Karajan among them) and returned to West Berlin.

And past determination was Nam June Paik (1932-2006). Though famed for having been the archetypal large video artist, Paik was a classically trained pianist and composer who began his vocation pursuing successful Schoenberg’s footsteps by penning 12-tone music. His way to video was an erratic 1 that began erstwhile helium fell nether the spell of John Cage and became 1 of the much outrageous members of the anarchic Fluxus creation and show movement. I erstwhile asked Paik, who taught concisely astatine CalArts erstwhile it opened, astir whether helium ever considered himself a composer. He said lone a yuppie — “you know, those radical who enactment successful a slope during the time and lone spell to concerts astatine night” — would deliberation helium wasn’t.

The Yun and Paik zeitgeist of going your ain archetypal and expressive sonic mode portion ever being alert of tradition, whether embraced oregon rejected, pervades Chin, 63, and the procreation of Korean composers who came aft her and whom she has invited to the festival. Chin herself near Seoul to survey with Ligeti successful Europe. The Hungarian composer’s music, acknowledgment to Salonen’s advocacy, is besides successful the L.A. blood. The orchestra has, of course, had a Ligeti festival.

Daegeum soloist Hong Yoo performs Sun-Young Pahg’s “L’autre moitie de Silence” arsenic portion of the L.A. Phil’s Seoul Festival.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

For the Green Umbrella concert, Chin revealed a large scope of approaches among the 4 exceedingly absorbing next-generation composers. She besides invited a dazzling array of soloists specializing successful Western and Korean instruments arsenic good arsenic the magnificent Ensemble TIMF, which joined the L.A. Phil New Music Group. All were making debuts alongside the luminous and poetic young conductor Soo-Yeoul Choi.

In the 4 pieces (each astir 15 minutes), Korean, European and American traditions tin service arsenic sources for reinvention. Juri Seo’s Concertino for Piano and Chamber Orchestra, fixed a dashing show by pianist HieYon Choi, consists of abbreviated movements that see a jazz fughetta and Schumann-esque romanticism. Sun-Young Pahg’s austerely ceremonial “L’autre moitié de Silence” for daegeum and ensemble featured Hong Yoo arsenic soloist bending notes and bending clip connected the bamboo flute utilized successful Korean people and accepted music.

In Yie-Eun Chun’s spritely Violin Concerto, which was commissioned by the L.A. Phil for the festival, scale-like passages got the Paganini attraction from soloist SooBeen Lee. Dongjin Bae’s “reflective — silky and rough” for modular occidental flute and spacey strings, different L.A. Phil commission, had an past consciousness with its silences and breathy solos played with enthralling absorption by Yubeen Kim.

Chin’s “Gougalon (Scenes From a Street Theater),” which ended the program, is simply a riotous evocation of Hong Kong. Rather than musically reproduce thoroughfare sounds and radical sounds, Chin transforms them into spectacular orchestral chatter. The effect is what their joyousness indispensable dependable like, what their meals indispensable dependable like, what their walking and talking and laughing and crying indispensable dependable similar successful a connection you don’t recognize due to the fact that exhilaration isn’t language.

All of this is euphony by chiseled personalities, each striving for thing sonically personal. Musically mixing East and West dispenses with regulations erstwhile crossing borders and becomes an an enactment of individuality and often resistance. Chun’s do-re-me scales go cockeyed earlier you grasp what’s happening. Bae’s silky flute, erstwhile unsmooth underneath, evoke the feeling you mightiness get erstwhile taking a interruption from Bach an instant earlier the world’s astir compelling composer overtakes your ain senses.

The conductor Soo-Yeoul Choi favors transparency and sensuality astatine the aforesaid clip with expressive gestures that look to magically mold sound. Each portion had antithetic instrumental combinations involving some L.A. Phil and TIMF players. Everything worked.

The festival continues with play orchestra concerts featuring antithetic mixes of 4 much caller Korean scores commissioned by the L.A. Phil, Chin’s 2014 Clarinet Concerto and a brace of Brahms concertos. A enclosure euphony performance with works by Schumann and Brahms played by Korean musicians is the closing lawsuit Tuesday.

Meanwhile, for a amended thought of what Unsuk Chin is up to, past period successful Hamburg Kent Nagano conducted the premiere of her caller opera, “The Dark Side of the Moon.” It is simply a philosophical reflection connected the narration betwixt quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung that profoundly reflects however ideas and traditions interact. It tin beryllium watched connected YouTube.