Koreana Chamber Music Society Moves Across Four Sound Worlds in ‘Gradation of Music’

Poster for Koreana Chamber Music Society’s 92nd concert, Gradation of Music. Photo courtesy of G-Clef.

[News Culture] Koreana Chamber Music Society will span American jazz-inflected writing, British modernism, a new Korean work and Czech Romanticism in its 92nd subscription concert, Gradation of Music, on Oct. 11 at the Seoul Arts Center Recital Hall.

Founded in 1998, the ensemble brings together orchestral musicians and university faculty under music director Hyunmi Kim and representative Changhyung Lee. The program is organized around contrasts in compositional language and instrumental color rather than a single period or national tradition.

The concert opens with a chamber arrangement of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for clarinet, violin, cello and piano. Hyunjo Byun on clarinet, Jiyoung Lee on violin, Noeul Park on cello and Suhyun Cho on piano will recast the work’s jazz-derived gestures and rhythmic profile within the reduced sonority of a quartet.

Frank Bridge’s Lament for Two Violas follows, performed by Sumin Seo and Sumin Lee. Written for the unusually dark combination of two violas, the piece shifts the program away from Gershwin’s extroverted rhythmic language toward a more concentrated, inward mode of expression.

At the center of the concert is the premiere of Kyungjin Han’s GREY in DARK GREY for Clarinet and 4 Strings (2026). The new work will be performed by Hyunjo Byun on clarinet, Hyunmi Kim on violin, Sumin Seo on viola, Kyungwon Lim on cello and Aram Kim on double bass. Its scoring sets the clarinet’s more penetrating upper register against the increasingly weighty spectrum of the string ensemble, placing instrumental color at the core of the composition.

Antonín Dvořák’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 87 closes the program. Composed in 1889, the four-movement work moves from the driving Allegro con fuoco through the expansive lyricism of the Lento and the poised Allegro moderato, grazioso to the concluding Allegro ma non troppo.

Suhyun Cho, violinist Seunghee Yang, violist Sumin Lee and cellist Noeul Park will perform the quartet. The work places Dvořák’s melodic writing within a tightly integrated chamber texture in which the piano and strings continually exchange thematic material rather than functioning as soloist and accompaniment.

Taken as a whole, Gradation of Music is structured around changes in musical language and ensemble color: Gershwin compresses jazz-inflected orchestral writing into chamber scale, Bridge turns to the dark resonance of paired violas, Han introduces a contemporary Korean sound world, and Dvořák closes the evening with the expansive architecture of the late-Romantic piano quartet.

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