GREGORY KIM Multimedia Concerto No. 20, "Sangju Arirang" • Gregory Kim, cond; Hyojin Lee (vc); Seonghee Kim (ten); Baekhyeon Jeong (computer); Multimedia Ens ARS • HYOJIN LEE no catalog number (Streaming video: 16:42) available on YouTube

This is a video of the world premiere of a piece for cello, ensemble, computer, and real-time video: Gregory Kim’s Multimedia Concerto No. 20 (2010). This is a perfect example of how the Occident and the Orient can collide with hugely successful results. The use of Western instruments (not least the solo cello) juxtaposed against traditional Korean folk music (the folk song of the work’s subtitle) is not unique, but it is brilliantly realized here by Kim. And, to add on yet another layer, there is a video projection: Lee manipulates a computer camera with her hands and arms. The result is a computer-generated visual experience. Lee not only makes sounds via the traditional method of her cello; she also makes movements in the air which are captured by the computer. So it is that old meets new: An ancient folksong rubs against cutting-edge technology.

Not all combinations of this ilk are successful, but part of the reason this one is stems perhaps from Kim’s education: He lists as one mentor Jonty Harrison, a massively respected composer and teacher at Birmingham; his electronics tutor was Erik Ona. This is a high pedigree indeed. Kim’s sequence of Integrative Multimedia Concertos reflects his concentration on this art form since 2001.

The percussion-only opening could be from any one of a million late 20th-century and early 21st-century pieces. An ethereal wind blows, primal but somehow “placing” us in the Orient. The solo cello seems to find itself—again a known and familiar trope—but held in this liminal Occident-Orient space, somehow the technique itself is rebirthed. The movement of the cello’s bow in the air seems not only to generate wispy sound, and a “shadow” on-screen, but also at one point to direct the ensemble into a tutti simultaneity. Then, moving from high modernism to ceremonial music, comes a full-ensemble outburst, and suddenly we are in the world of ancient Korean ritual. I may well be wildly wrong, but Kim’s sound world at this point reminded me of a Berlin Festival performance of the ancient Jongmyo Jeryeak from the Joseon dynasty (1302–1910) that I heard at the Philharmonie in September 2022 by members of the National Gugak Center, a performance of a ritual preserved for some 600 years in its original format. Meanwhile, the video morphs from a line drawing a representation of Lee to more abstract colors, enhancing but subsidiary to the ritualistic feel of the music itself. It is fascinating to experience the video representation of the glorious cacophony: At one point the lines seem to form a DNA strand. While that is almost certainly pareidolia on my part, it does perhaps give a clue as to how the visual/sonic nexus can operate.

The ensuing contrast is massive: whispers, enigmatic percussion strikes, more modernist cacophonies, all heard with a male voice (the excellent tenor Seonghee Kim). A percussion outburst seems reminiscent of Japanese Taiko drumming; how great the contrast is here to a beautiful, lyrical cello solo, performed with utmost sensitivity and emotion by Hyojin Lee. It is worth pondering the technical demands made on the soloist here. They are massive, indeed extraordinary. Lee is a contemporary music specialist, and how it shows. There is a natural musicality that players immersed in the cutting-edge music of our time bring to scores of this ilk like no others, and Lee has this ability in spades. She can bring muscularity to her playing when required: Take, for example, some fantastically articulated strong stopping in the long cadenza near the piece’s close, prior to the return of the ritualistic singing, and with what can only be described as a light show in the background. A gong strike concludes the work, resonating on into infinity.

This is an incredibly powerful experience, and one I would recommend without hesitation. Colin Clarke