Tongyeong Festival Orchestra / Heinz Holliger

Yun grew up in Korea during the Japanese occupation of the country, and became a political composer at an early age. In 1967, scholarship holder Yun was kidnapped from his West Berlin apartment: the South Korean military dictatorship convicted him of treason because of his contacts with North Korea, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. German weekly paper DIE ZEIT asked at the time »Is Isang Yun, whom experts believe to be the most important living composer, the victim of an anti-Communist plot hatched by the South Korean government and the German secret service?«.

He was released two years later in response to international pressure, and settled in exile in West Berlin. Hitherto, Yun saw his music as an »appeal for more humanity«. It combines elements of Asian and European tradition and philosophy – a composition technique now represented by composers like Toshio Hosokawa or Unsuk Chin. In 1966, when Yun had his international breakthrough at the Donaueschingen Music Festival, this was nothing short of revolutionary.

As long as he lived, Isang Yun hoped to use his music to build a bridge between North and South Korea. And he even managed to do so in part: there isn’t much that the two enemy states with their opposing social systems can agree on, but both the North and the South claim Yun as one of their own, with festivals, musical institutes and ensembles named after him.

At the concert given to mark the 100th anniversary of Isang Yun’s birth, the rostrum is occupied by composer and conductor Heinz Holliger, a prominent companion of Yun’s. Yun once wrote works for the oboist Holliger. Holliger conducts the Tongyeong Festival Orchestra, a group of young cultural ambassadors from the town where Yun was born.