Arirang Nori: Works by Contemporary Korean Women Composers
Eun-Kyoung KANG (b. 1968)
Arirang Spirit for cello and piano [10:39]
Namlim LEE (b. 1959)
Sanjo for cello solo [12:13]
Sue Hye KIM (b. 1971)
Rendez-vous III for cello and daegeum [9:58]
Kyungshin IM (b. 1969)
Arirang Nori II for cello solo [8:30]
Ji-Hyun KIM (b. 1972)
Touch for cello and piano [9:06]
Jae Eun JUNG (b. 1975)
Emotional Contagion for cello and piano [7:57]
Jonghee KANG (b. 1976)
In a world of binary perspectives for cello solo [12:04]
Hee-Young Lim (cello)
Gyuhwan Kim (daegeum)
Eunji Lee, Sung Ho Yoo
(piano)
rec. August 2021, Seoul, South Korea
SONY 19439965622 [70:43]
This fascinating and enterprising release is Korean cellist Hee-Young Lim’s fifth disc in five years. The brilliant young performer introduces us to the newest music of her seven compatriots, experienced women composers, and she is doing them and all of us us a great favour. All these pieces have been written in the difficult year 2021. Hee-Young Lim says that she has increasingly been working with contemporary composers, and that this disc is a happy outcome of a recital in August 2021.
Let us look at the composers’ biographies. Sue Hye Kim and Kyungshin Im studied at the Conservatoire National in Lyon; Ji-Hyun Kim in Cologne; Namlim Lee in Hamburg; Jae Eun Jung, Eun-Kyoung Kang and Jonghee Kang in America. They all have also studied and worked in Seoul.
The booklet notes tell us that “Arirang” is a “quintessential Korean folk song”. Two pieces here bear this name. Eun-Kyoung Kang’s Arirang Spirit has a ternary form structure with energetic and gritty outer sections, a quiet middle one, and a still, atmospheric coda. There also exists a song about the difficult crossing of a mountain pass called “Arirang”; this has come to represent Korean women, their feeling of suppression and their fight against imperial Japanese rule. It is also hoped that the spirit of the music will “provide comfort and encouragement during the current global pandemic”. In a sense, this is what much of the album is all about.
To form a further idea of the nature of “Arirang”, listen to Kyungshin Im’s beautiful Arirang Nori for solo cello. She takes tunes from “differing local regions”, juxtaposes their contrasting rhythms and melodic contours, and so creates a feeling of two cellos conversing. It is quite ingenious.
Rendez-Vous III for cello and degeum, a large bamboo flute, also conveys a coming together and a dialogue. For me, this is the pick of the disc. It has what I think is a real Korean soundscape and accent, created by a rare combination of instruments. Composer Sue Hye Kim says: “I tried to capture the spirit of ‘Arirang’ […with…] unique melodies and tones”.
Namlim Lee sums up her piece Sanjo as “composed for cello, a western string instrument, expressing various human emotions, joys and sorrows, in a Korean-style Sanjo”. It contrasts harsh pizzicatti with ethereal stratospheric tremolos, deliberate use of a wide vibrato and drooping melodies. It is all quite attention-grabbing. (I asked a Korean musician and old girl friend how she interprets ‘sanjo’. After a long pause, she told me that it was more like an improvisation around a “variety of scattered ideas which need to be developed and brought together”. I hope, she said, that it is helpful. On listening to this work, I certainly think it is.)
There is a similar concept behind Ji-Hyun Kim’s Touch for cello and piano. At first, the ideas are stated almost randomly, pointillisitically on each instrument. Later on, they play “similar sound patterns, sometimes exchanging a single phrase”. There is eventually a coming together of this disparate musical material, in other words, a touching.
Jae Eun Jung is represented by a work alarmingly entitled Emotional Contagion. It concerns the “rate of transmission and the ripple effect” caused by extreme emotional states and “the unpredictable variants [heard] through the voices of cello and piano”. It begins with an aggressive and exciting moto perpetuo, but the ideas gradually calm, and there often is a more lyrical atmosphere. I must admit that I cannot work out how the title and the composer’s intent match the final result.
Jonghee Kang writes about her In a world of binary perspectives for solo cello that it was built around “ two concepts […] ideas divided into two categories creating boundaries but which connect and assimilate at some point”. She does not say what these concepts are. I surmise that she is alluding to sound, as in an unpitched noise that one hears, for example, at the very beginning, and the long, lyrical, expressive lines found in most of the remainder of this engrossing work. It all creates an intangibly gripping atmosphere.
Hee-Young Lim shows a total understanding of the many technical and musical requirements of the music. She would certainly have worked alongside the composers to get the most authentic performances. The seven composers were chosen by Seoul’s Cultural Foundation’s Artistic Creation Support. Each work is dedicated to Hee-Young Lim.
Gary Higginson
