hankyoreh

On Wednesday night, the lobby of Salle Pleyel, a classical concert performance venue in Paris, was packed and buzzing. A line started at the box office an hour before the performance‘s starting time. The organizers announced that all 1,900 seats had quickly sold out.

The first collaboration by conductor Chung Myung-whun and the Unhasu Orchestra, made up of North Koreans in their 20s, lived up to expectations. Wednesday’s joint performance by the Unhasu Orchestra and the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra received thunderous applause at its conclusion.

Competition among media to attend the concert was fierce. Reporters from broadcasters and magazines such as Radio France and ARTE flocked to the venue, while crews from both South and North Korea busily captured scenes in and outside the venue. Just before the concert, French culture minister Frederic Mitterand appeared on the stage and offered words of congratulation to the venue that had, he said, been united by music. He appeared moved by the creation of an occasion for both halves of Korea, the only divided nation on earth, to meet through music.

The first half of the concert featured a performance by the Unhasu Orchestra. The skill and unity of the 70-odd members of the orchestra, most of whom have studied outside North Korea, was perfect. The performance was full of strength, its melody and rhythm free from redundancy. The first number, Jeolmeun Gogye Agassi (“The young circus girl”) was based on traditional Korean folk rhythms. The splendid sound of wind and percussion instruments created the perfect festival atmosphere. For the second number, Du Gae-ui Jeontong Akgi-wa Okeseuteura (“Two traditional instruments and an orchestra”), a gayageum player and a haegeum player, dressed in Korean traditional clothing grabbed the audience‘s attention. The atmosphere, tinged with lyrical rhythms and simplicity brought forth by the technical skill of the performers, drew exclamations from the audience.

The music they played showed that it is possible to preserve the spirit of Korean culture even through classical music. There was little sign of the awkwardness that combinations of Western and Korean traditional music sometimes produce. It was music that could only have been produced by Koreans and, even when seen from the perspective of Western classical music, possessed a symmetrical beauty that could not be faulted. The last number of the performance’s first half was of Saint-Sans‘ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso for Violin and Orchestra, with North Korean violinist Mun Kyong-jin on violin. Mun set the hearts of the audience racing by giving a solo performance on a theme of the Korean melody Arirang after the Saint-Sans piece. The reaction from local audience members in the interval after the first half was one of unanimous praise, with some commenting that North Korean music, which they were hearing for the first time, was highly sensual, yet dramatic.

The second half was the epitome of grandeur. Chung and French Orchestra took to the stage and played Brahms’ Symphony No. 1. Brahms‘ characteristic solemn, weighty tones and tension-filled crescendo were followed by a scene of tranquility and lamentation. The peaceful, lyrical dance-like rhythms seemed to soothe the closed, scarred hearts of South and North Koreans. They seemed to give a clear glimpse of the strength for the long journey of overcoming the unhappy past and still unresolved tensions between South and North Korea, washing away all the unease and conflict with sacred humanism and moving on to a hopeful future. The audience sat transfixed by the performance that gave a message that could never be entirely expressed in words, greeting the end of each movement with passionate applause.

Brahms’ symphony was followed by four curtain calls, whereupon Chung took the microphone. South and North Korea were two countries in terms of politics, he said, but one from a humanist perspective. As an encore, the orchestra played an arrangement of Arirang---described by Chung as a melody that all Koreans know---and a march by Rossini.

Music is a great force that can transcend ideology. On Wednesday, we witnessed scenes of historic emotion.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]