By Do Je-hae
What will be the definitive legacy of conductor Chung Myung-whun with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO) after his renewed three-year term ends in 2015?
The 58-year-old conductor and Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon agreed to a new contract last Friday, extending his current term which concludes at the end of the month. Despite causing a public stir for being paid an “excessive” salary, Park reportedly asked Chung to stay with the SPO.
“I respect the passion he has given to the orchestra,” Park said after the meeting. “Under Chung’s leadership, I hope that the SPO will reach a level that the citizens can be proud of.”
Chung expressed his hope to contribute to improving the level of the local classical music community. “It has been six years since I joined the SPO. Making a global orchestra is an extremely difficult task. We need cooperation from all sides,” Chung said.
Chung’s new three-year tenure will be finalized during an SPO board meeting later this week.
Because the Europe-based Chung is entering his prime years as a conductor, there was some speculation that Chung would leave the Seoul post to focus on his engagements in Europe and North America. In June, he became the guest conductor for Germany’s Dresden Staatskapelle and concurrently leads the Paris-based “Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.”
Some U.S. music commentators like Norman Lebrecht have mentioned the pianist-turned-conductor as one of the possibilities to succeed James Levine at the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), which has been searching for a new music director after the ailing American maestro withdrew from the BSO in April. Chung conducted the BSO for the first time in 15 years in November.
As Chung enters his third term with the SPO, there are concerns about whether the accomplishments from his leadership can have a lasting impact on its quest — or Korea’s quest — for a global orchestra.
In 2005, President Lee Myung-bak (who was then serving as Seoul mayor) invited Chung to lead the SPO, with the aim of making, for the first time, a Korean orchestra of international renown. The consensus then and now is that Chung is just about the only Korean conductor with the musical capacity and global networking to undertake the difficult challenge.
The SPO was founded in 1948, but it was re-launched as an incorporated foundation on June 1, 2005, appointing Chung as its music director.
Since then, Chung has done things his predecessors at the SPO have not been able to do, namely a recording contract with the prestigious German classical label Deutsche Grammophon (DG). With two recordings of French music and a Mahler symphony behind them, the SPO is the only Asian orchestra to release albums for DG. Under Chung’s leadership, the orchestra has successfully toured in Europe.
Many credit the SPO with bringing new depth to the symphonic concerts, particularly through immensely taxing projects like the Mahler symphony cycle, which will end this Thursday with a rare performance of the “Symphony of a Thousand.”
One of the problems with Chung’s SPO, however, is that the orchestra is too dependent on its music director.
The SPO has adopted a more refined sound and has added explosiveness to its brass and percussion that wasn’t there before Chung arrived.
However, some of the key players of the orchestra concurrently serve as concertmaster or principal at Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra or Chung’s French orchestra, and are not solely devoted to the SPO. Chung himself only spends about two months with the SPO.
“The mayor asked the maestro to exert all efforts to prepare the SPO members for the post-Chung era,” a Seoul city official said after the Chung-Park meeting Friday.
Some have described his rule as overly authoritarian, including Kim Sang-soo, a renowned theatrical producer and self-proclaimed fan of orchestra. Kim recently published a series of newspaper contributions on Chung’s salary and the future direction of the SPO.
“In our times, orchestra leaders cannot rule with absolute power,” Kim wrote for Media Today, urging the SPO to adopt a more democratic manner of operation, such as how the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra does, where the members vote on their music director and fellow musicians.
Kim also suggested that rather than relying on a single music director, the SPO adopt a system of rotating musical leadership among a pool of several young and seasoned conductors of global stature. This would be good training for the SPO members, while giving the audience a varied concert experience, Kim said.
Another future task of the SPO is stepping up online initiatives to spread its music. The SPO web site still feels more or less like the mundane website of a government organization. Many top orchestras in the world, such as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) or the New York Philharmonic, run their own YouTube channels. The BPO’s “Digital Concert Hall project” is now one of is trademarks.
After Chung’s salary recently became a controversy, he has yet to make any public statement about the privileges that were apparently not a part of his contract — like first-class plane tickets for his family members.
Following the meeting with the mayor, the SPO released a short statement about the details of Chung’s salary for his new term. But Chung has remained silent about what many netizens call a “misuse of public funds.” The SPO is dependent on the Seoul City administration for around 80 percent of its budget.
jhdo@koreatimes.co.kr