Isang Yun - Cello Concerto, Sonata for Oboe, Harp and Viola

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Isang Yun - Cello Concerto, Sonata for Oboe, Harp and Viola

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The Cello Concerto, written in 1975/6 for Siegried Palm who plays it here, is a powerful, angry work, with vehement utterances from the cello interrupted or underpinned by violent orchestral outbursts, with some poetic, bird-like woodwind trilling - a typical Yun gesture - buried deep in the texture. The Concerto does go through more appeased moments, although always an underlying tension and sense of pent-up menace. Other typical gestures of Yun are the quarter tone string glissandos you can hear between 4 and 7:00, or the delicately tinkering bells over high-pitch string tremolos at 11:40 announcing a new outburst, or again the ghostly tapestry of string glissandos at 23:30.
The Sonata for oboe, harp and viola from 1979 was also written for the performers who play it here, Heinz and Ursula Holliger (joined by violist Hirofumi Fukai), in a vivid recording made in 1980, less than a year after the premiere. It is a very typical Yun composition in that the three instruments are associated with characters and the piece conveys a loose underlying story. Here, the oboe, symbolizing the "male Yang-principle", wooing the harp-female-Yin; we are not told what the viola is supposed to be, but playing by ear he certainly sounds like the second suitor. Not that the "story" really matters, but still, as in and perhaps even more even than in Images, you can hear that the instruments are the actors of that ballet and that their melodic lines are their actions and trajectories, and those chamber pieces of Yun can really be called instrumental theatre. The music is very busy and full of ear-catching events, glissandos, trills, pizzicati, quarter-tone slides, harmonics, col legno, flutter tonguing; there is even, at one point in the middle movement, a change from oboe to the sweeter oboe d'amore while the harpist weaves a silk shawl between the strings to make the tone harder - but frankly, even having read about it, I couldn't hear the difference (I think it happens at 17:59, but I wouldn't stake my hand on it). Yet, despite some moments in the slow movement that are quite sensuous and even pretty at times, the music isn't as seductive as in Images. There may be too much theatre and conflict, and not enough of those uniquely mesmerizing melodies and sonic inventions of Yun that are so much in evidence in the other piece. The Sonata is in three movements, none are cued here, tentatively I think the slow movement starts at 9:44 and the finale at 24:22.

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