Cmaj7 | Isang Yun - Violin Concerto No. 1 (1981) @Cmaj7 | Uploaded March 2023 | Updated October 2024, 11 hours ago.
A sublimely beautiful work of Isang Yun's late "Taoist" style
00:00 I ("a challenge") [1:50 the luminous orchestration under the oboe imitating the Korean "piri" is amazing]
13:28 II - Adagio ("elegy and lamentation") [a haunting elegy with the solo taking on a "sijo" singing style]
26:21 III ("resignation, emancipation, and liberation") [a vigorous finale with the solo freeing itself from the orchestra with numerous virtuosic passages]
34:05 Cadenza
Composer: Isang Yun (윤이상 Yun Isang) (September 17, 1917 – November 3, 1995)
Violinist: Akiko Tatsumi
Orchestra: Frankfurt Radio Symphony conducted by Zdeněk Mácal
Score available from Boosey and Hawkes: boosey.com/pages/cr/catalogue/cat_detail?=&musicid=15830
Isang Yun's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 1, written as a commission for the Hessischer Rundfunk, was composed in the summer months of 1981. In its clearly delineated three-part form, it corresponds to the classical-romantic violin concerto. A relatively rapid opening movement is followed by a restrained, decidedly elegiac middle movement, which leads directly attacca into the final movement and brings the work to a close with a cadenza by the solo violin and a large-scale climax.
The violin part, while written in the spirit of the traditional concerto for a virtuoso instrument that contrasts with the orchestra, especially in the final movement, relinquishes its clearly dominant function in the first two movements. It is more integrated into the orchestral movement in that it prepares its course, guides the motion forward, rather than schematically emerging only where the orchestra merely accompanies and holding back where the orchestra has significant things to say. The violin thus dialogues with the orchestra and does not oppose it as in the traditional concerto. In the composer's image, the violin disappears into the orchestral stream and reappears from it. Just as the relationship between the solo instrument and the tutti is different from that in the tradition, the difference in the vocal conception of the solo violin also becomes apparent. In the solo part of the classical-romantic concerto, thematically bound melodic lines alternate with free passagework. Yun's music, on the other hand, does not know the rigid separation of thematically substantial tone and figuration. The play-arounds, the rhapsodic upswings that lead to the "single tone" are as central as the latter, because it draws its life only from the impulsively increasing, ascending gestures.
The differentiation of the relationship between solo and tutti, thematic line and seemingly improvisatory phrases corresponds to one in the "thematic" conception of the violin concerto. The three movements are not only held together by contrasting characters, but are linked to each other by elements that run through all the movements. Thus, sound types are indicated in the first movement, taken up by the second, and continued and heightened by the third: Standing sounds expand into static, but in themselves moving sound fields; individual ascending gestures condense into massive outbursts. This procedure of "thematic" associations is not limited to the violin concerto, however. As in the elegy of the second movement, it also refers to earlier works, to the mourning of the orchestral piece "Exemplum" from 1980, whose darkened low brass sounds are recalled here in the violin concerto.
—Martin Zenck
Description adapted from Yun Jeong Kim's "Isang Yun’s Violin Concerto No.1 (1981): A Fusion of Eastern and Western Styles, and the Influence of Taoism"
How I make my videos: github.com/CMajSeven/WorkflowTemplate
Program I develop for this channel: github.com/edwardx999/ScoreProcessor
A sublimely beautiful work of Isang Yun's late "Taoist" style
00:00 I ("a challenge") [1:50 the luminous orchestration under the oboe imitating the Korean "piri" is amazing]
13:28 II - Adagio ("elegy and lamentation") [a haunting elegy with the solo taking on a "sijo" singing style]
26:21 III ("resignation, emancipation, and liberation") [a vigorous finale with the solo freeing itself from the orchestra with numerous virtuosic passages]
34:05 Cadenza
Composer: Isang Yun (윤이상 Yun Isang) (September 17, 1917 – November 3, 1995)
Violinist: Akiko Tatsumi
Orchestra: Frankfurt Radio Symphony conducted by Zdeněk Mácal
Score available from Boosey and Hawkes: boosey.com/pages/cr/catalogue/cat_detail?=&musicid=15830
Isang Yun's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 1, written as a commission for the Hessischer Rundfunk, was composed in the summer months of 1981. In its clearly delineated three-part form, it corresponds to the classical-romantic violin concerto. A relatively rapid opening movement is followed by a restrained, decidedly elegiac middle movement, which leads directly attacca into the final movement and brings the work to a close with a cadenza by the solo violin and a large-scale climax.
The violin part, while written in the spirit of the traditional concerto for a virtuoso instrument that contrasts with the orchestra, especially in the final movement, relinquishes its clearly dominant function in the first two movements. It is more integrated into the orchestral movement in that it prepares its course, guides the motion forward, rather than schematically emerging only where the orchestra merely accompanies and holding back where the orchestra has significant things to say. The violin thus dialogues with the orchestra and does not oppose it as in the traditional concerto. In the composer's image, the violin disappears into the orchestral stream and reappears from it. Just as the relationship between the solo instrument and the tutti is different from that in the tradition, the difference in the vocal conception of the solo violin also becomes apparent. In the solo part of the classical-romantic concerto, thematically bound melodic lines alternate with free passagework. Yun's music, on the other hand, does not know the rigid separation of thematically substantial tone and figuration. The play-arounds, the rhapsodic upswings that lead to the "single tone" are as central as the latter, because it draws its life only from the impulsively increasing, ascending gestures.
The differentiation of the relationship between solo and tutti, thematic line and seemingly improvisatory phrases corresponds to one in the "thematic" conception of the violin concerto. The three movements are not only held together by contrasting characters, but are linked to each other by elements that run through all the movements. Thus, sound types are indicated in the first movement, taken up by the second, and continued and heightened by the third: Standing sounds expand into static, but in themselves moving sound fields; individual ascending gestures condense into massive outbursts. This procedure of "thematic" associations is not limited to the violin concerto, however. As in the elegy of the second movement, it also refers to earlier works, to the mourning of the orchestral piece "Exemplum" from 1980, whose darkened low brass sounds are recalled here in the violin concerto.
—Martin Zenck
Description adapted from Yun Jeong Kim's "Isang Yun’s Violin Concerto No.1 (1981): A Fusion of Eastern and Western Styles, and the Influence of Taoism"
How I make my videos: github.com/CMajSeven/WorkflowTemplate
Program I develop for this channel: github.com/edwardx999/ScoreProcessor
