'East Meets West', Hee-Jo Kim, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky: Mi-Sun Gwon (sanjo gayageum), Marialena Fernandes (piano), Thames Philharmonia, Byung-Yun Yu (conductor)  St John’s, Smith Square, 11.03.2007  (JPr)

The ‘East meets West’ programme presented by Thames Philharmonia did not venture too far East with the musical fare on offer. Beethoven and Tchaikovsky are the epitome of ‘Western’ music so it was left to Mi-Sun Gwon (pictured here) and her sanjo gayageum (Korean zither) to provide the Eastern sounds.

Little information on the www is available about the gayageum or kayageum (transliterated from kayagŭm) but it is described is a 12-string half-tube plucked zither supported by 12 movable bridges. An expert in Korean music, Dr Keith Howard, describes it as follows ‘Strings run from pegs beneath the top end of the instrument, over a low fixed bridge curved to match the body, across individual movable bridges made from hard wood, to looped cords. Reserve string is held in coils behind each cord loop and the cords themselves are anchored to the horns.’ There are apparently two types of kayugŭm: popkum (‘law zither’) and sanjo (‘scattered melodies’) kayagŭm. The sanjo kayagŭm is the smaller one of the two (approx 142x23x10cm) and is associated with folk music genres and may have evolved in the nineteenth century with the emergence of sanjo (improvisational solo instrumental music). It has the soundboard of paulownia (‘princess tree’) wood and has a harder wood such as chestnut for the sides and the back.

The performer, Jocelyn Clark, suggests the closer spacing of the strings and the shorter length of the sanjo kayagŭm facilitates the technique required for the faster passages of sanjo. The performer, sitting in a cross-legged position, puts the head of the kayagŭm on his or her right knee. He or she plucks and flicks the strings with the index and middle fingers, and the thumb of the right hand, and presses down the strings to the left of the movable bridges with the left hand. No pick is used and the wide vibrato and pitch-bending characteristics of kayagŭm are achieved by pressing and pulling the string with the bare fingers. The various pluckings, pressings and pullings produce nonghyon (‘vibrating strings’), the microtonal shading and subtle vibrato, and yo-um (‘remaining sound’), the ‘after-tone’ that are deemed the key aesthetics of Korean music. They make it sound audibly different to ‘Western’ solo instruments and were all clearly in evidence though Mi-Sun Gwon’s admirable playing. However the rhythmic sound world of this fascinating instrument took some getting used to in the conductor, Byung-Yun Yu’s arrangement of Hee-Jo Kim’s short Concerto in A minor pitted as it was against a typically ‘classical’ orchestral accompaniment.

Next in line to Mozart, Beethoven composed five piano concertos and one violin concerto that redefined the relationship that existed between the solo instrument and the accompanying orchestra. They went a long way to differentiate them clearly and allow the instrumentalist some sort of individual expression. The soloist was from the East, Marialena Fernandes. who was born in Mumbai but has made her second homeland in Vienna where she has been a professor at the University of Music since 2005. She uses this as a base for a career performing both the music of the classical romantic period, as well as embracing the contemporary and experimental. With Ranko Markovic, Fernandes is involved in a cycle of ‘Four Hands at One Piano’ events in association with the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Mahler Society (review) that will see them perform Mahler 7 later this year.

Fernandes eschewed throughout any over-weaning pomposity and used a clarity and lyrical simplicity that was very affecting and suited this most Mozartian of the five Beethoven piano concertos. She has an impressive technique with a warm tone, very strong left hand and excellent phrasing. Her tight rhythmic control opened up and prolonged the dialogue between the piano and the orchestra that was supported by Byung-Yun Yu’s unfussy direction of his Thames Philharmonia that he established in 1998. This was particularly true with the strings and piano in the second movement (apparently representing Orpheus taming the Furies at the gates of Hades) and also when the solo cello underscores the piano's initial statement of the opening theme from the Finale. Fernandes’s keen ear for the orchestra and the conductor’s for his soloist maintained an appropriate balance that delivered Beethoven’s intentions especially when distilled though Fernandes’s engaging personality.

After the interval there was a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.5 in E minor, Op.64. This was music composed some eighty years after the Beethoven, during a period of supposed happiness for the composer but as it is believed to be a meditation on the way in which Fate seems to control life, it may have a subtext in the composer’s closeted homosexuality. His notebooks contained the following fragment of a ‘programme’ for this symphony: ‘Introduction. Complete resignation before Fate or, which is the same, before the inscrutable predestination of Providence. Allegro. (I) Murmurs, doubts, plains, reproaches against XXX . . . (II) Shall I throw myself in the embrace of faith?’

The first movement begins sombrely. The opening theme in E minor, played by two clarinets, becomes a recurring motif for each of the subsequent movements, concluding by beginning the Finale in a triumphant E Major.

It was the end of a long evening for the orchestra of (as their website suggests) ‘keen amateurs’, string tone began to suffer and the ensemble slackened just a touch. However in the last two movements, and in the Finale, particularly, there was some impressive orchestral playing. Towards the end as the mood of the music swings from portentousness to distinct optimism and picks up pace, Byung-Yun Yu drove his musicians on full-throttle to quite a glorious finish that thoroughly deserved the warm applause from another tiny St. John’s, Smith Square, audience.


Jim Pritchard