"Refined Pleasures": Korean music at Musicon

The last concert in the Musicon Festival of East Asian Music featured Korean music performed by the impressive ensemble Jeong Ga Ak Hoe. What a contrast with the preceding Chinese music. One can hardly call the piri oboe 'soft', but it was lyrical, playing in the lower octave in a slow sedate manner to start off the concert. And the haegum fiddle, unlike the Chinese erhu, did not play an easily discernible melody but long, drawn-out, plaintive notes also in the lower octave. 

Piri soloist in the Durham Town Hall
Musicon Festival of East Asian Music 2012

The four pieces in the first half of the concert  had been court or aristocratic entertainments. Consistent with the Confucian observation that "good music makes good politics", music always played an important part of traditional elites' lifestyle. 


The second half included two pieces composed specifically for the group. The opening piece stood out for me: "Soaring Towards Absolute Solitude" by US-based Korean composer Yoon Hyejin. It was inspired by the "Heroic eagle painting" of the late 19th century, depicting an eagle standing on one leg on a stone in the sea. Here, the haegum excelled, with other instruments following along in periodic changes of single notes (like the single leg), in the manner of modern minimalist music.


A lovely flute solo (sanjo) apparently derived from shamanistic ritual music and another modern composition (based on the fusion of a traditional ensemble piece with a boat song) concluded the concert. 


Eight musicians were flown in from Korea specifically for this concert; it was well worth their effort and very enjoyable for us – including the forty members of a Korean student society who gathered from Durham and Newcastle just for the concert. We were also encouraged to learn that the musicians were all aged between 25 and 40, meaning young people are actually learning the traditional musics to carry them on into the future. Consummate musicians, all. 

From left to right: the piri oboe, daegeum flute with a vibrating membrane,
and the saenghwang mouth organ