The Korean Cultural Society of Boston and the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Boston will commemorate the 80th anniversary of Korean independence after 35 years of Japanese colonial rule on Friday October 3rd at 7:30pm in Jordan Hall. HaeSun Paik, the New York Classical Players, and four important Korean singers will be participating. Comprising Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Piano Concerto No. 5, as well as the world premiere of Texu Kim’s The Grass Still Grows (들풀): A Cantata for Memory, Community, and Hope the concert’s three works speak to themes of freedom and war. Tickets and more information HERE.
Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture for the 1804 eponymous play by Heinrich von Collin (1771-1881) depicts former Roman hero Coriolanus, who is waging a war or revenge against Rome after having been exiled from the city. The overture’s thematic material moves between Coriolanus’s desire for revenge and his mother’s earnest pleas to stop the violence; the continual back-and-forth between these two voices reveals Coriolanus’s own internal conflict about inciting war. Beethoven wrote the Fifth Piano Concerto two years after the Coriolan Overture, as he was sheltering in a cellar during Napoleon’s invasion of Vienna. The majestic and triumphant concerto, which at times treats the piano as more symphonic texture than virtuosic soloist, testifies to Beethoven’s own resilience in the face of both war and his increasing deafness.
New York Classical Players, a dynamic chamber orchestra led by Dongmin Kim since its founding in 2010, will play in the first half as HaeSun Paik, co-chair of the NEC piano department and prize-winner at the Queen Elisabeth and Tchaikovsky International Piano competitions, takes on the “heroic” soloist role in the Fifth Piano Concerto.
The concert concludes with the world premiere of Texu Kim’s cantata, The Grass Still Grows, which he writes was “inspired by the church’s foundation during Japanese colonization, serving both as a spiritual home and a center for the community’s pursuit of freedom. That legacy became a central theme for this cantata.” The cantata combines both Korean and American musical idioms, as well as Biblical and liturgical texts to honor and remind us that, like wild grass, the Korean people “collectively survives against all odds: fragile, ordinary, yet endlessly persistent.”
An Associate Professor of Music Composition and Theory at San Diego State University, Kim has had works performed by the New York Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, and San Francisco Symphony, among others. Prominent Korean vocalists—Haeran Hong (soprano), Hyona Kim (mezzo-soprano), Won Whi Choi (tenor), Kidon Choi (baritone)—who have all performed on some of the most renowned opera stages in the world—will perform the four-part a cappella work.