Shu and shen

Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra at the Orchestra Festival

At the Festival of World Symphony Orchestras in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions, where this time the musical art of Asia is presented, the Seoul Philharmonic, predictably the main one in the festival program, performed with the authoritative conductor Myung Woon Chung.

The performance attracted the first full house at the festival and was virtually flawless: programmatically coherent, neither long nor short, neither entertaining nor boring, stylistically precise and succinct in sound. The Seoul Philharmonic manifested itself with a dense sound, strong spirit and convincing content, like a weighty, well-aimed and easily flying cannonball.

This flight was charming and disappointing at the same time. The superb orchestral sound held the audience in awe from the first notes - Olivier Messiaen's early orchestral piece (1930) "Forgotten Offerings" (about "Cross", "Sin" and "Holy Communion"). But, marveling at the gorgeous balance of the groups, deep timbres and clear, soft articulation, the audience, even listening closely, could hardly have been surprised by Messiaen’s lapidary visionary - his “symphonic meditation” appeared rather as a slow technical study, however, performed with unstudent calm and brilliance.

The Korean orchestra made the 20th century Francophone the basis of the program, and this choice looked spectacular and successful: European music, exquisitely hovering between classical and avant-garde, allowed the Seoul Philharmonic to demonstrate its capabilities in colors: the weighty elegance of sound and style, without quickly flying over the hall, turned in different ways sides.

Well hidden in the deceptive softness of the phrasing, steely technicalism adorned the main piece of the concert - a suite from the music to the ballet Pelléas et Mélisande by Debussy. The deep perspective of ensemble balance and obedient imposingness in movements, dexterity of dynamics, ease of reaching climaxes made Ravel’s “La Valse” restrainedly cheerful.

The only surprising thing is that the excellent depth of sound of the groups and ensemble remained on the plane of interpretation, like a mark on transparent glass. On the other side of the surface - into the utopian wraith of Ravel, into the symbolist clear twilight of Debussy, the orchestra did not end up, quite possibly, without even striving for this.

The encore included Debussy's The Sea, and again the brass section delighted with balanced, skillful brilliance. Again it seemed that the brass, without shouting or forcing, was secretly playing the role of first violins in the orchestra, that the strings were demonstrating a very intelligible ensemble, that the orchestra and conductor were still very deft in their ability to pass through the sea without wetting their pants. There are performances in which one can hear that Debussy is suggesting drowning here, but the Seoul Philharmonic was indifferent to the overtones of unrest.

Only once, and not too much, did the orchestra deviate from the Francophonie, when it elegantly and warmly demonstrated the possibilities of Korean modern music: Shu, dedicated to the Egyptian god of air - Concerto for orchestra and an ancient sheng (a tall pagoda made of a bunch of bamboo tubes on a metal bell) of the Korean composer Eunsuk Chin recalled the sophistication of the writing of Chin's teacher, the Hungarian master György Ligeti, and sounded like a manifesto of the stylistic cosmopolitanism of Korean music and symphonic style. The God of Air (aka Sheng) here spoke in the voice of postmodern accordions and the first generations of symphonic rock electric organs. And the unobtrusive ethnocultural motif gently dissolved in the transparent textures of European equipment.

Virtuoso performer Wu Wei, who knows how to extract a wide variety of sounds from a three-thousand-year-old sheng, received a standing ovation (the violinists who played echo effects on the back wall behind the listeners also shouted to him) and encored with a joyful ethno-jazz solo. It stood out a little from the general highbrow of the intellectual program, but did not change the fact that the performance of the Korean orchestra, in one way or another, in different words, spoke in Moscow about its inclusion in the world musical context - satiated, but still greedy for nuclear virtuosity, cannon freshness and relaxed flights.

Yulia BEDEROVA