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Concert in Commemoration of the 30th Anniversary of Isang Yun’s Death

Joseph Joachim Hall, UdK Berlin, 3 November 2025, 7:30 pm

The Sixties: Reaction – Awakening

György Ligeti: Ramifications for twelve solo strings (1968/69)
Krzysztof Penderecki: Capriccio for oboe and strings (1965)
Isang Yun: Colloïdes sonores for ten solo strings (1961)
Xilin Wang / Ying Wang: Reaktion – Aufbruch / Reaction – Awakening (2025) – world premiere, commissioned works for IYG

Viola Wilmsen (oboe), 13 strings, Holger Groschopp (cond.)

The situation of the avant-garde around and after 1960 is to be sensually experienced in a concert with works by Ligeti, Penderecki and Yun. Complemented by two new, contrasting compositions for string ensemble by Xilin Wang (‘Reaction’) and Ying Wang (‘Awakening’): Composers from China in Berlin, father and daughter, representing different generations and showing divergent stylistic orientations. Both Xilin Wang and Isang Yun are victims of dictatorships. Ligeti also experienced fascism and Stalinism. Ying Wang stands for an open, optimistic attitude, for the future. For further details, we kindly ask you to write an e-mail to IYG.

Recently posted on YouTube:
Diversity in Harmony. Yun House Concerts 2024. A Short Film. – 22:41
Diversity in Harmony. Yun House Concerts 2024. A Short Compilation. – 4:48

Yun House Concerts.
Entrance free, donations wellcome

‘East West Listening’:
Concerts at the Yun House Berlin 2025

3  Yun-House Berlin, Sakrower Kirchweg 47
Sunday, 1 June 2025, 5 p.m. – Also as Yun House Live-Stream XXVI

A Journey to the Stars

Gabriel Iranyi: Quartet for Flute, Violin, Violoncello and Piano (2009)
Olga Rayeva: A Journey to the Stars for flute, violin, cello and piano (2024) – world premiere
Isang Yun: Quartet with Intermezzo for flute, violin, violoncello and piano (1988)

modern art quartet
Klaus Schöpp (flute), Theodor Flindell (violin), Adele Bitter (violoncello), Yoriko Ikeya (piano)

Three musical languages, three works by migrants of different generations in Berlin: Gabriel Iranyi, born in 1946 and in Berlin since 1988, is of Romanian-Hungarian origin; Olga Rayeva was born in Moscow in 1971, Isang Yun in southern Korea in 1917. – With the support of the GVL Foundation and the Spandau Cultural Office, Decentralized Cultural Work Fund.

Exhibitions in the small “Chinese Room”
Scores: exhibition on Yun’s “Riul” (1968) & Piano Trio (1972/75)
Art: exhibition Günter Ris, paintings (chalk on paper, since 1996)

3a  Yun-House Berlin, Sakrower Kirchweg 47
Sunday, 15 June 2025, 5 p.m.

Bach – Reger, Yun – Holliger

Johann Sebastian Bach: Prelude in B minor, BWV 923
Isang Yun: Shao Yang Yin (1966)
Heinz Holliger: Lebenslinien [Lifelines] (2021)
Max Reger: Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Bach in B minor, Op. 81 (1904/08)

Tomoki Park (piano)

The opening of the aria “To fathom His omnipotence” from J. S. Bach’s Cantata 128 “On Ascension Day alone” became the starting point for Max Reger in 1904 for a monumental cycle of 14 variations plus a fugue. The Prelude in B minor, with which Tomoki Park introduces his recital, is a fully composed improvisation with a fantastically sweeping character. Tomoki Park juxtaposes Yun’s Shao Yang Yin (1968), composed for the Basel musician and patron Antoinette Vischer, with Heinz Holliger’s Lebenslinien (2021), which is inspired not only by the biography of the great musician Clara Haskil.

With the creation of our video channel, we intend to gradually make accessible to the visitors of our website the most exemplary recordings of Isang Yun’s compositions (see the video clips in the catalogue of works), as well as introductions to his works, and our concerts at the Yun-Haus Berlin.
If you have the impression that your rights are being violated, please let us know.

In notation and sound, here is a recording of String Quartet VI, which took place in April 1992 after a rehearsal of the Amati Quartet in Berlin with and in the presence of Isang Yun. We put this online so that those interested can study the performance of the dynamic indications and other specifications of the notation. See also: Images (live from 5 Nov. 1997), Contemplation for two violas, as well as the then spectacular Symphony I with all four movements (1982/(83), etc.

Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer
“Isang Yun: His Life and Work in Pictures” (German, Korean, English)

Isang Yun: His Life and Work in Pictures
윤이상. 사진으로보는인생과예술
Isang Yun. Leben und Werk im Bild

Hardcover, 304 Seiten, dreisprachig (deutsch, koreanisch, englisch), 24 x 32 cm, 48 Euro
Erstveröffentlichung: März 2020
Verlag: wolke, Wickerer Weg 19, 65719 Hofheim am Taunus,
ISBN 978-3-95593-117-9 (Buchhandel)
ISMN 979-0-2025-8103-2 (Musikalienhandel)

This book is the first pictorial monograph about the Korean-German composer Isang Yun, who was born in southern Korea in 1917 and died in Berlin in 1995. It was first in Germany, with influence from what around 1960 was then the avant-garde that he developed an individual musical language of his own. A little later Yun was drawn into the field of tension between political advocacy motivated by humanitarian, societal concerns and responding to ideological incitement, between imprisonment, torture, and reparation. It was in his compositional work that he found a place of refuge. His music proceeds from the primacy of melody and the sustained tone, which he found preformed in the traditional music of his native Korea and then succeeded in developing heterophonically and spatially. The resultant works were characterized by unusual intensity and rich tone colors.

1917년한반도남쪽에서태어나 1995년베를린에서눈을감은한국과독일의 작곡가윤이상에대한첫번째사진집. 1960년대무렵, 그는당시독일에서 유행하던아방가르드사조의영향아래에자신만의독특한음악언어를 개발했다. 얼마뒤에그는인도주의적·사회적동기에서우러난정치적참여와 그에따른이데올로기적선동이라는비판, 그리고투옥과고문및이로부터의 회복사이의긴장관계속에휘말려들어갔다. 그러나그는작곡작업에서 안식처를찾았다. 그는일찍이고국의전통음악에서발견했던선적이고길게 끄는음들에서더나아가헤테로포닉한방법으로그것을확장및 발전시킴으로써전통을계승했다. 그결과물로서비범한고밀도의찬란한 음향을담은걸작들이탄생했다.

Die erste Bild-Monografie über den koreanisch-deutschen Komponisten Isang Yun, der 1917 im Süden Koreas geboren wurde und 1995 in Berlin gestorben ist. Erst in Deutschland fand er unter dem Einfluss der damaligen Avantgarde um 1960 zu seiner eigenen, individuellen Musiksprache. Wenig später wurde Yun in das Spannungsfeld hineingezogen zwischen politischer Parteinahme aus humanitären, gesellschaftlichen Motiven und ideologischer Verhetzung, zwischen Haft, Folter und Wiedergutmachung. In der kompositorischen Arbeit fand er einen Zufluchtsort. Seine Musik geht aus vom Primat des Melodischen und des lang gezogenen Tons, den er in der traditionellen Musik seiner Heimat vorgefunden hatte und den er heterophon zu vervielfältigen und zu verräumlichen verstand. Entstanden sind Werke von ungewöhnlicher Intensität und klangfarblichem Reichtum.

Reviews:
von Rüdiger Albrecht
von Gerhard R. Koch
von Michael Roeder
von Ute Grundmann
von Stefan Drees

Yun’s Cello Concerto with Matt Haimovitz

Matt Haimovitz, who will come to the Yun House on 10 December, has also played Yun’s Cello Concerto: “Isang Yun has greatly impacted my life. I consider his brilliant cello concerto as the most significant work in the pantheon of compositions over the past 100 years.” (Matt Haimovitz, 2018).
CD: Matt Haimovitz spielt das Cellokonzert von Isang Yun (with the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and Dennis Russell Davies)

Spätwerk

The Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä has produced three late works on CD, among them two first releases: the orchestral piece Silla and Yun’s Violin Concerto III, both from 1992. Soloist of the Violin Concerto is Sueye Park. These catalogue novelties are complemented by Yun’s Chamber Symphony I (1987). Yun’s partly appellative late style compels (like all of Yun’s works due to their event density) intensive following and has not been received without controversy.

New recording of the Cello Concerto 

We owe Luigi Piovano (violoncello) and Aldo Orvieto (piano) – virtuosos from Rome and Venice – a sonically opulent CD, which was released in early 2022 on the Viennese label Kairos. The new recording of the Cello Concerto was made in Tokyo in 2018 with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Tatsuya Shimono. Espace I (1992) and Nore (1964) for violoncello and piano, Interludium A (1982) and the Five Pieces for Piano (1958) also have a particular artistic radiance.

Organ Works by Pagh-Paan and Yun

Dominik Sustek has recorded an extraordinarily colorful CD with works by Younghi Pagh-Paan and Isang Yun at the organ of the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Cologne. This is the first new recording after years of the Tuyaux sonores (1967) composed for Gerd Zacher and the Fragment (1975), which was also written for Zacher, but dedicated to Pastor Martin Hoberg and the Gemeinde of Hamburg-Wellingsbüttel, whose children had supported the liberation of Isang Yun with paintings and letters. Available from the Are-Verlag Cologne, info[et]are-verlag.de

Isang Yun und das Cello

Collected Works for Violoncello and Piano (Adele Bitter, Holger Groschopp) – Isang Yun talking (Salzburg Lectures, 1993, in conversation with Luise Rinser, 1976). Cybele KiG 011 (4 SACD)

Fascinated by a Single Tone: Yun – Scelsi (flute music)

Chamber Music of Isang Yun – Capriccio CD C5364

(Violin Sonata, original version)