Youth

They will be coming together from May 9 to June 7 at the Naru Art Center in Jayang-dong, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, for the center’s one-year anniversary performance, the “Post Romanticist” series.

It is a youthful and fresh performance, unbelievably flashy for a district culture arts hall. Among the performers, Kim Jung-won, Min Yu-kyung, Park Jong-hoon, Yang Go-un, and Jun Seung-hyun gathered at Café Ima at the Ilmin Art Hall in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, on April 25 to have a chat.

Marriage and Children, A Busy Life of Performances-

“I lived downstairs from Jun Seung-hyun while studying at Cologne, Germany. We were both students but at different levels. Seung-hyun had stood at the La Scala since he was a student, so everyone in Germany knew him if we mentioned ‘Attila Jun’.”(violist Yoon Jin-won)

Performers in their 30s these days reside abroad after completing their studies and give performances by going back and forth from Korea and their place of residence. Jun Seung-hyun is living in Stuttgart, Germany, pianist Park Jong-hun in Florence, Italy, while Kim Jung-won is living in Vienna, Austria.

Jun Seung-hyun will sing Wagner’s opera Aria as well as Schumann’s song cycle in his solo performance. He said, “My child was born two months ago, but I am scheduled to perform across Europe until next May, and I can’t go back home for almost a year,” and admitted, “I want to see my baby so much.” In this way performers are very much like other 30-somethings preoccupied with marriage and children.

Approaching the Audience-

“Park Jong-hoon wears leather pants and sits in front of the piano, but it doesn’t seem strange at all. If someone else did it we would think that he wasn’t being serious…” (Min Yu-kyung)

“Yu-kyung has her dress sponsored by Vera Wang? Yu-kyung can wear anything and still look beautiful, so she could dress casually like Jong-hoon and still give a performance.” (Yang Go-un)

Having received numerous prizes in a number of international concours, these performers in their 30s have changed performance trends for classical music. Song Young-hoon, first-chair for the cello at the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, pianist Kim Jung-won, and Park Jong-hoon are performers with a large number of fans due to their grace and features. Like pop musicians at a small live concert, they stand in front of the microphone and chat with the audience, creating a friendly atmosphere.

“The audience likes it when the performer personally informs them of the title of the music before the encore performance. The audience wants to hear the performer’s voice. That we break from tradition is not because we play crossover or New Age music, but because we deliver the traditional and classic music in a ‘casual’ way.”(Kim Jung-won)

Price: 22,000 to 44,000 won. 02-2049-4700

Seung-Hoon Cheon raphy@donga.com