Seidener Faden - Silken Thread is Wergo's second portrait of Younghi Pagh-Paan, arriving 26 years after the first. Six chamber works join Western modernism with elements of traditional Korean music, such as microtonal inflection in place of chromatic motion. All are first recordings, prepared by the E-MEX Ensemble in close collaboration with the composer.
Pagh-Paan was born in 1945 in Cheongju, South Korea, into a working-class family. She studied in Seoul from 1965 to 1972 and came to Germany on a scholarship in 1974. One of her composition teachers was Klaus Huber, whom she later married. In 1994 she became professor of composition at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen, the first woman in Germany to hold such a post, and she has been an influential teacher for a younger generation. Among her recent awards is the Berlin Art Prize of 2020. The ensemble is conducted by Christoph Maria Wagner. The album is a co-production with Deutschlandradio, with the support of the Kunststiftung NRW and E-MEX e.V.
The three older works are rooted in the rituals and instrumental traditions of Korean folk music. BIDAN-SIL (Silken Thread), which gives the album its title, is written for solo oboe with flute, oboe d'amore, clarinet, bassoon, strings and percussion. Of the two TA-RYONG pieces, TA-RYONG VI for flute, clarinet, string trio and percussion opens the programme, and TA-RYONG III - TSI-SHIN is a duo for two percussionists. The newer pieces arose around her chamber opera Mondschatten, staged in Stuttgart in 2006, and deal with human existence, mortality and religious experience. They are Silbersaiten (Silver Strings) for piano trio, Wundgeträumt (Dreamsore) for winds and string trio, and Io for nine players including accordion and brass.
Her works have been played at the main international festivals and have a strong individual identity. This recording was nominated for the OPUS Klassik 2021, and it offers a clear view of a composer for whom the meeting of two musical cultures is the substance of the work.
CD, Wergo WER 7397 2, released in 2020, first recordings, total time 68'15".
