Anna Jiwon Park has been covering the politics at The Korea Times since the summer of 2024, when she joined the press pool for the Office of the President in Korea. Prior to that, she spent about five years reporting extensively on financial markets, regulatory authorities and the financial industry. She joined The Korea Times in 2019 after spending eight years as a broadcast journalist at Arirang TV, Korea’s leading global broadcaster, covering politics, defense and culture.
30 years on, Orchestra Festival fascinates music aficionados
The 2019 Orchestra Festival, which has been underway since last Tuesday and will continue until April 21, attracts classical music lovers to the Concert Hall of Seoul Arts Center in the southern part of the capital. Courtesy photo of Hanwha Group
By Anna J. Park
By Anna J. Park
Every April, Korea's major orchestras showcase their carefully-chosen repertoires and soloists for audiences at the annual Orchestra Festival at the Seoul Arts Center.
It is a venue where regional orchestras across the nation get the chance to show off their music prowess. Celebrating its 30th anniversary, this year's installment, which began on April 2 and will be continued until April 21, has been featuring 18 orchestras across the nation under the theme of “Generation” in its three-week-long program. Each orchestra has chosen young Korean stars in the international classical music scene as their soloists.
To name just a few, acclaimed Korean violinist Lee Ji-yoon, who made the youngest lifetime-tenure concertmaster at Staatskapelle Berlin will perform Korngold's Violin Concerto with the Incheon Philharmonic Orchestra Wednesday; internationally-emerging oboist Ham Kyeong, who was the second oboe at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and now with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra will perform Martinu's Oboe Concerto with the Bucheon Philharmonic next Friday.
Award-winning pianist William Youn, who has a globe-trotting schedule, will perform Schumann's Piano concerto with the Busan Philharmonic next Thursday. The Busan Philharmonic's Artistic Director and Chief Conductor Choi Soo-yeol said that besides the performance with Youn, it will play Richard Strauss' “An Alpine Symphony.”
“It is a masterpiece created by the orchestral genius to express the beauty of great nature. I hope the festival provides audience members time for repose with the power of music,” Choi told The Korea Times.
“2019 Orchestra Festival” is currently underway at the Concert Hall of Seoul Arts Center until April 21. Courtesy photo of Hanwha Group
The annual festival dates back to 1989. The Seoul Arts Center organized the nation's very first Orchestra Festival, marking the first anniversary of the opening of the center the year earlier. As the arts center, located in Seoul's southern Seocho district, has become one of the key venues for culture lovers, the Orchestra Festival has also firmly rooted as one of the nation's representative classical music events over the last three decades.
For the past 30 years, the annual festival has provided the audiences opportunities to listen to quality symphony concerts as they discover rather unfamiliar regional orchestras like hidden gems there. For the part of participating orchestras, the annual symphonic festival has been a main arena of invisible, yet fierce competition among orchestras, from the selection of repertoires to soloists.
Han Jung-ho, classical music critic and managing director at Etoileclassic, explains that the annual festival has triggered the overall growth of the nation's orchestras throughout the country.
“When the festival first kicked off 30 years ago, it was hard to even arrange participation by orchestras across the nation, because some refused to take the stage due to a rivalry with other orchestras. Some tried to take on ambitious repertoires by inviting many guest members. However, now we see that orchestras around the country have all grown to a certain level, whether from Seoul or from other regions, that they naturally showcase their representative repertoires at the festival,” Han told The Korea Times.
Paik Soo-hyun, head of PR & marketing at the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, also believes the festival has contributed to fostering healthy competition among orchestras, which has led to maturity of their musicality. She also said the annual festival has solidified audience members' attachment to orchestras.
“I am glad to see the festival serving its role in strengthening relations between regional communities and symphonic orchestras,” she added.
Since the beginning of the festival back in 1989, it is estimated that some 450,000 audience members attended more than 500 symphonic concerts during the festival. The Korean Symphony Orchestra, the Suwon Philharmonic, and the Bucheon Philharmonic jointly topped the list in the number of concerts over the last three decades, which all appeared at the festival almost every year.
In terms of conductors, renowned conductor Lim Hun-jong performed 22 times, out of the festival's 30-year-history. Lim has also led the nation's Mahler symphony fever, since he and the Bucheon Philharmonic successfully performed the Mahler Symphony No.4 in the late 1990s.
The festival's rather cheap admission tickets have also contributed the success of the annual event. The festival still offers very reasonable price tags for admission ― ranging from 10,000 ($8) to 40,000 won ($35). Prices made possible with conglomerate financial support.
Since 2000, Hanwha Group has been solely sponsoring the annual festival for the last two decades, in an effort to expand the nation's classical music market and to spur balanced growth of regional orchestras.
“It now has become an exemplary case, where a concert hall, orchestras and businesses have achieved a mutual win-win relationship,” Kim Hyun, Deputy Manager at Hanwha Communication Committee, told The Korea Times.
More information about the 2019 Orchestra Festival, as well as ticket reservations, visit the Seoul Arts center website:
. The festival runs until April 21 at the concert hall of Seoul Arts Center.
Pianist Lee Jin-sang performs with the Jeju Philharmonic Orchestra at Seoul Arts Center on April 2. Courtesy photo of Hanwha Group