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| Violinist Kang Dong-suk, artistic director of Seoul Spring Festival of Chamber Music / Courtesy of Choi Choong-sik |
By Park Ji-won
Amid cancellations and delays of classical music concerts due to the spread of COVID-19, the 15th Seoul Spring Festival of Chamber Music (SSF) has also been hit hard. The festival had to be delayed from May to October and replace many of its foreign acts due to the difficulties of coming to Seoul. But the artistic director of the festival stressed instead that the 15-year-old event will be something "unique" and still "skilled" because of the difficulties.
"I had to adjust the programs according to the current realities and make the best out of what we have available. We have a festival for the first time with only Korean musicians. Fortunately, unlike old days, we now have many wonderful Korean musicians who are capable of maintaining the high standard which has become the trademark for SSF," Kang Dong-suk, artistic director of SSF, said in an email interview.
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| Poster for Seoul Spring Festival of Chamber Music |
The chamber festival, which was introduced in 2006 to become the representative festival in Seoul, has been one of the main chamber concerts in Korea, trying to introduce various repertoires and musicians from abroad in unique fringe places in and near Seoul.
Opening up the festival with Haydn's "Flute Quartet No.5 in D Major, Op.5," artists will play various repertoires this year including that of Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach, Dvorak, Debussy, and Gershwin in various places such as Seoul Arts Center and the old house of former President Yun Po-sun.
Instead of singling out one performance as the highlight of the program, he said every performance is poised to fill the gap of the missing times for music and concerts created by the pandemic.
"I think this year's festival will be a very emotional one as we are all eager to find the great music and concerts again which have been missing since the beginning of this year. The audiences will be able to rediscover the all-time favorite works which were programmed in the last 14 years."
Kang, an award-winning violinist and music professor of Yonsei University who has been the artistic director of the festival since 2006, had to spend two months under lockdown in Paris and face a series of cancellations of almost all his musical activities this year. He is currently putting himself in self-isolation for two weeks for SSF. He stressed that the musicians' duty is to show the magic of live performances to audiences despite the difficulties.
"As musicians, it is our duty to share the magic of the live performance with others. We are all eager to find some kind of normality with the concerts. We hope many of you will come to the concerts, despite the difficulties, and experience the emotion, joy and enthusiasm which SSF live concerts can offer."
For more information, visit seoulspring.org or ticket.interpark.com or call 02-712-4879.
