Isang Yun 100: Chamber Concert

A portrait of Isang Yun with his chamber music: the programme brings together works of various arrangements and different periods in the composer’s life. The size of the ensemble ranges from solo (“Glissées”) to duos (“Gasa”), trios and quartets (“Images”, Quartet). The pieces were written over a long period. “Gasa” dates back to 1963, when Yun was still living in divided Korea; “Images” was composed during his imprisonment by the South Korean intelligence service; “Glissées” and “Trio” were conceived in the 1970s, and Yun’s final chamber work, the oboe quartet, was written in 1994 for Heinz Holliger. This musical path leads from his immediate inspiration by Korean musical instruments, methods of playing and fine arts, all the way through to the compositions in which the two forces – the traditions of his native country and the experience of European modernism – are united in perfect synthesis.