August 3, 2017
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Since it is my fourth visit, I feel now fairly familiar with Pyongchang Alpensia. This year is already the 14th event of Daegwallyeong International Music Festival this year (July 26-August 6, 2017). Since last year, they changed its official title by adding “Pyongchang” (Pyongchang Music Festival & School) with intention to advertise Pyongchang Winter Olympics in the coming year.
As it was over 35 degrees Celsius in Seoul, I packed only sleeveless clothes and I cannot stop exclaiming how cold it is up here. It is around 19 degree Celsius in Pyongchang and Yongpyong in the morning and evening these days. Where the air is fresh and a tint of green is permeated everywhere, there stands the Alpensia Concert Hall and a white dome-style music tent.
A Smetana Duo Piano performance by Yeoleum Son, Dasol Kim, Norman Krieger, and Soojung Shin, announced the opening of the festival on July 26. It was followed by the matured clarinet playing of Han Kim, who recently had a solo recital at Son Hoyeon and Lee Sushine's House of Poets. Shostakovich's string quartet by Borodin Quartet and Cello Trio by the music director Myungwha Chung, Lluís Claret, and Laurence Lesser were also beautiful and peaceful.
In the evening of the 28th it was regrettable that the tickets for another music director Kyunwha Chung's violin performance were all sold out and I could not enjoy that unique music.
This year's festival chose Russia as a theme country and the subtitle of it is Great Russian Masters. Russia has produced a countless amount of great classical composers. The scale of Russian music, just as that of its land, spans in significant width and depth.
The performance of the Russian Mariinsky Orchestra on the 29th and the 30th was excellent. I had just read about its successful performance in Baden-Baden, Germany, I only expected an abridged performance. However, a full-sized orchestra, fourteen top-level opera singers and the Korean National Chorus filled up the whole stage.
The opera, The Love for Three Oranges, conducted in its Korean premiere was composed by a Russian composer Prokofiev based on an old fairy tale. The story—clarified by the subtitles at the back screen—was comical, entertaining, and unfolded speedily. All the singers had amazingly powerful and rich voices.
Even though it was performed at a small space with the orchestra at the back of the same stage and it had no background stage setting, the singers did not fail to act naturally and, above all, without an exception, they all successfully proved their fantastic vocal skills. It made me realize that what matters in art, regardless of its field, is one's talent after all.
The powerful and magnificent volume and skill by the Mariinsky Orchestra was also beyond my expectation. Introduced as Gergiev's Mariinsky in the newspaper, I looked forward to his conduct, but it was young Zaurbek Gugkaev who showed up as a conductor that evening. He studied under his uncle Gergiev and has a tremendous enthusiasm for music.
I expected to meet Gergiev again, after our first meeting at the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg in July, 2010. At the modern building of the Mariinsky Theatre Opera and Concert Hall built in 2007, the Mariinsky Orchestra played Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony (No. 6). Surprised by ten-year-old pianist Juhee Lim's performance, whom I had never even heard of in Korea, I had to visit the back stage. While Lim was surrounded by everybody praising her, “how could you play it so well with such small hands,” and so on, I noticed Gergiev standing alone at one corner. Having approached him and exchanged greetings with him, I suddenly realized that such a great worldly figure who is called “the Karayan of the 21st century” and “the tsar of music” could also have such a lonely moment.
Having just completed this year's St. Petersburg Festival, the very famous Mariinsky flew a long way to Pyongchang in Asia and performed. It is indeed a small world.
On the 30th, a few of Mariinsky's singers stayed and sang arias, but it was such a pity that there were no subtitles provided on the back screen. During the entire performance, I could not stop thinking, ‘There has to be lyrics for a song to be composed and poetry is the origin and base of all kinds of arts. What are the contents of the poems that are sung in such a melodies, so rich and full or so sorrowfully, and how come they result in such a sound?’
I feel proud and admiring of Juhee Lim who was ten years old back then and has now grown to seventeen years old and played the first movement of Chopin's concerto as well as Han Kim who has grown so tall and played his clarinet with cheerful motions. While we were busy with our daily lives, they must have worked hard without a break to improve their skills and must have gone through birth pains for more perfected music, contemplating on the intention of the old musicians who composed such music a long time ago.
Pyongchang Music Festival is also a meeting place. During the twelve-day festival period, one can meet cellist, violists, and violinists not only in the lobby after the performance but also at the nearby restaurants during mealtime.
Pianist Yeoleum Son told me who makes his great outfit every year and that he speaks more English than German in Hannover. I remember reading his essay once mentioning the loneliness of a musician.
I also met the Japanese Ambassador Nagamine and his wife again. Last time, I accompanied the previous ambassador Bessho who stayed for four days during the previous festival. I was wondering why Ngamine stayed only for one performance. I learned only later from the local news that North Korea has launched a missile over night. As soon as he came from the Netherlands to Korea as an ambassdor, he was summoned back to Japan because of the issue of the comfort women statue in Busan. Since North Korea would not stop their nuclear experiments, he probably does not have time even to enjoy musical performances.
I had a pleasant conversation after the show with Margarita Ivanova who played Princess Ninetta, the heroin of The Love for Three Oranges. Emphasizing on the fact that all the singers are from St. Petersburg, she would not stop speaking highly of her home town's music, art, canal, and so on. It brought up my memory of the white nights at the canal city.
Even though missiles are stirring up the world, this music festival at a cool location in the middle of summer is still dreamy and it is a priceless experience to encounter arts and meet citizens of the world through arts.
Before and after watching should be different
That sound, that poetic line, that gesture, Ah! that esprit
