Maki Namekawa (JP), Cori Olan (AT)
Two birthdays constitute the background to the selection of these pieces—the 100th birthday of Insang Yun, the Korean composer who died in 1995, and Phillip Glass’s 80th. Interludium A was created in 1982, two years after the democracy movement in Gwangju was crushed. This was a matter of profound concern to Isang Yun, who in the late 1960s, had himself been victimized by the political despotism of the military regime in power at the time.
“A composer cannot view the world in which he lives with indifference. Human suffering, oppression, injustice . . . all that comes to me in my thoughts. Where there is pain, where there is injustice, I want to have my say through my music.” – Isang Yun, 1983
The real-time visualization of this piece has its point of departure in visual associations with the sheet music, and rises up into a complex geometric structure, the individual elements of which are then infused with dynamic movement by parameters derived directly from the live sound of the piano—like a huge high-rise complex or construction plans for a futuristic urban machine that, with passages becoming softer and softer, descends into a dark nocturnal mood, from the depths of which tonal colorations and elements evocative of Asian calligraphy repeatedly emerge. Three of Philip Glass’s 20 Etudes for Piano will be performed as a sort of teaser for the big solo concert on Monday.
