Seoul Philharmonic to Present First "Chamber Classics" Chamber Concert with Commentary

February 28 at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts
Spotlighting 20th-Century American Music

The Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra announced on the 23rd that it will present the first performance of its new series, "Chamber Classics," at the Sejong Chamber Hall of the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts on the 28th.

"Chamber Classics" is a concert that adds commentary to the orchestra's existing chamber music program, the "Chamber Music Series." The commentary will begin 15 minutes before the performance. Producer Park Jonguk, a producer at Tomato Classic and operator of the YouTube channel "1-Minute Classic," which has 190,000 subscribers, will offer easy-to-follow and engaging explanations to help the audience better understand the works.

Debuting this year, "Chamber Classics" will be held six times in total and will feature music from around the world, including the United States, Germany, the Czech Republic, and the Republic of Korea.

The first performance on the 28th will have "the United States," which marks the 250th anniversary of its independence this year, as its theme. Members of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra will shed light on the diverse aspects of 20th-century American music. The program is organized to follow the development of American music from its formative period to its maturity, tracing how it broke away from a Europe-centered music history to establish its own independent musical language.

The concert will open with "Freedom" by David Sampson, a work that blends two trumpets with electronic music. This will be followed by "Romance" by Amy Beach, which recreates a quintessential European-style Romanticism, and then "Winter" and "Spring" from Astor Piazzolla's "The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires," in the version arranged for piano trio by Jose Bragato, which captures a contemporary, urban sense of rhythm and tango. Next, the ensemble will perform String Quartet No. 2, "Company," by Philip Glass, a leading composer of contemporary minimalism, and will conclude the program with a version of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," arranged by Rick DeJong, a work that broke down the barriers between jazz and classical music and became an icon of American music.

The Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra explained that the stage will be filled with a wide variety of chamber music works by American composers, whose distinctive musical languages are enriched with elements of jazz, folk music, and contemporary idioms.