Hún Qiáo

This evening we offer Hún Qiáo: A Concert of Remembrance and Reconciliation. Hún Qiáo, Chinese for "Bridge of Souls," expresses our wish to recall and heal the World War II-era wounds in Asia and beyond. Throughout the East, the word "Hún" refers to souls who are summoned, during mourning, to return rightfully home. This musical bridge–this Qiáo–speaks to the heartbreak, to the wandering souls, of World War II. It offers the dead a chance to come home, and grants the living a chance for acknowledgment, acceptance, and reconciliation.

Hún Qiáo brings together, for the first time, distinguished composers from all sides of the war in Asia–Michio Mamiya from Japan, Chen Yi from China, Hi-Kyung Kim from Korea, and Andrew Imbrie from the United States–with renowned musicians Yo-Yo Ma, Wu Man, Mutsumi Hatano, and Mark Russell Smith. Their appearance with our Society’s artists reflects our common trust in music’s transcendent power, its promise of peace and healing among all peoples.

Nearly a lifetime ago, the Imperialist Japanese Army marched through occupied Korea and into China. In the winter of 1937—1938, the army raped and murdered its way through the Chinese capital city of Nanjing, killing 300,000 people in six weeks. Anguish seized a city, and then claimed much of a continent. By war’s end, tens of millions were dead; millions more hearts were broken. Wounds were borne, then bound, in silence.

Tyranny has worn many faces before and since World War II. Asia’s heartbreak has been replicated in every corner of the Earth. Barbarism has had its day in Auschwitz and Armenia, in Cambodia and the Congo, in Selma and Soweto. Its victims have been Ukrainian and Kosovar, Gypsy and Slav, Bengali and Rwandan, Cherokee and Lakota. Yet the survivors of World War II in Asia certainly rank among the most silent of the world’s sufferers, and have remained silent too long. Silence has a way of sustaining sorrow not yet put to rest. When hurt is hidden, heartbreak endures and haunts.

This truth became clear to Minnesota’s Asian Americans–many war refugees and survivors among them–during the 50th anniversary of World War II’s end in 1995. Many war wounds were healed by that commemoration–but few of the wounds inflicted by the Yangtze and Han Rivers.

It is time to heal them. The balm for such wounds, we have learned, is expression. The answer lies in speech, and remembrance and ritual. But what is the way to heal a grief beyond words?

We imagine the way is found in music–the one language the whole world speaks. Music, after all, can perform miracles. It can utter the unutterable, call Heaven down to Earth, awaken the dead, unite the estranged. Music builds bridges from heartbreak to healing. It calls wounded and wandering souls back home.

Tonight’s musical gathering speaks not just about a single tragedy in a single time. It grieves not just for one catastrophe or one perpetrator. It seeks instead to speak of the ubiquity of human suffering, to loosen cruelty’s fierce and foolish grip on the human heart. It seeks to replace heartbreak with harmony. It builds a bridge to the land of the living, to a world at peace.

Throughout Asia, the lotus flower, with its transcendent beauty that rises unsullied from the dark depths of a murky pond, is revered as a symbol of rebirth and peace. Its bud, flower, and seedpod, which are often present on a single plant at the same time, simultaneously represent the past, the present, and the future. During the war, many lotus ponds in China became dumping grounds for dead bodies. They dried up, yielding few blooms the following spring.

In choosing a blooming lotus as the emblem of Hún Qiáo, we travel through our dark, tragic history. And, united in our common determination, we reach peace and understanding.

Dedication

The Hún Qiáo concert is solemnly dedicated to the commemoration of World War II in Asia. It was commissioned for the dual purpose of remembrance and reconciliation among all nations and between all people.

Program Notes

As a composer I always try to meet my listener halfway.

I invite you to do the same.

ANDREW IMBRIE

Review

Hi Kyung Kim

born March 15, 1954, Seoul, Korea

At the Edge of the Ocean

Hi Kyung Kim heard about Hún Qiáo long before Young-Nam Kim called to invite her to participate. The war had never been far from her psyche. During the long Japanese occupation of Korea (1909—1945), her maternal grandparents were active in the Korean underground resistance movement. Japanese forces frequently raided their family compound, and both her grandparents were wounded by Japanese gunfire. An uncle was captured and imprisoned. Her grandfather eventually died as a result of the injuries he had sustained.

Since immigrating to the U.S. to pursue graduate studies, Hi Kyung Kim has garnered an impressive list of awards including recognition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Tanglewood Music Center, MacDowell Colony, Charles Dodge Foundation, Meet The Composer, and the Koussevitzky Foundation. She serves on the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she heads the Pacific Rim Festival of Contemporary Music. Her works have been performed by the Alexander String Quartet, New Music Ensemble of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the California Ensemble Parallèle.

At the Edge of the Ocean, Kim’s one-movement work for Hún Qiáo, came to her as she gazed at the Pacific Ocean from the window of her San Francisco home. "The ocean is so vast, so beautiful and endless," she says. "All the Asian countries are on the other side of, and connected by, this gentle body of water. Bubbles that go out from here will reach all the countries over there. So why do we fight? Why can we not be like the ocean and be connected?"

Scored for violin, viola, cello, flute, clarinet, and percussion, At the Edge of the Ocean makes extensive use of the familiar Korean folk song Arirang, with all its characteristic variations from different regions of the country.

The piece opens with Arirang cast in a yearning mode. There is a legend that during the Japanese occupation, everyone sang this song to the following lyrics: "On the other side of this mountain there is hope, a better life, and a better time." As this theme develops, Kim touches on its variations from North Korea and three regions of South Korea: central, southwest and southeast. Eschewing a formal structure for these episodes, Kim intersperses shamanistic folk elements with ensemble and solo playing. The traditional role of the clapper, to signal each new section in Korean court music, is given to the temple blocks. As the piece progresses the mood, delineated by rhythms and tempi, changes from one of sad memories to one of buoyancy. Arirang comes back one last time, now in a spirit of optimism, full of bright hopes for the future. The Korean jing (gong), which opens the work and acts as the timekeeper throughout, returns at its close.

At the Edge of the Ocean is a Dayton Hudson Commission for Minnesota Audiences, and was commissioned by The Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, in collaboration with the Asian American communities of Minnesota, as part of the national series of works from Meet The Composer/ Arts Endowment Commissioning Music/USA. This commissioning program is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Helen F. Whitaker Fund, with additional support from The Catherine Filene Shouse Foundation and The Dayton Hudson Foundation.

Michio Mamiya

born July 1, 1929, Tokyo, Japan

Serenade No. 3, "Germ"

One of Japan’s most respected and performed composers, Michio Mamiya celebrated his 70th birthday in 1999 with a two-week festival devoted entirely to his works. The composer has lectured widely around the world, appearing frequently in Finland, the former Soviet Union, Canada, the United States, Hungary, and China. His explorations of folk music traditions are worldwide in scope and include those of African, Scandinavian, and numerous Asian countries in addition to his native Japan. Characteristic of his works, simple folk tunes exist side-by-side with sublime reflection.

Mamiya maintains a long-standing interest in the human voice. His opera, Narukami, won the "Grand Priz" awarded by the Salzburg TV Opera Prize in 1974. Combining his study of global folk culture with Japanese traditional music, he searches for new directions for the human voice, often in chamber ensembles and choruses.

Mamiya became involved in Hún Qiáo at the suggestion of Yo-Yo Ma, with whom he had collaborated on several occasions. When Young-Nam Kim invited him to participate in this concert of world premieres, Mamiya considered it his "solemn duty" to contribute to the unique international effort to remember the past and work together for peace in the future. In December 1998, Hún Qiáo chair Weiming Lu visited Mamiya in Tokyo. As they sipped tea amidst the warm glow of a newfound friendship, they discovered they shared a deep caring for humanity. They "resolved to work hard to achieve reconciliation among Asian countries at the most meaningful level: people-to-people."

Shortly thereafter, Mamiya traveled to the U.S. to tour with the Tokyo String Quartet for whom he had written his String Quartet No. 3, A Song of the White Wind. When Kim visited with the composer in New York City, he found in him a gentle soul mate. His admiration for Mamiya grew as the composition evolved. When it became apparent that Mamiya would like to have his frequent collaborator, Japanese mezzo-soprano Mutsumi Hatano, premiere the work, Kim immediately extended an invitation.

In Serenade No. 3, "Germ," Mamiya conveys his lifelong lament for war, using a two-cello string quintet. Accompanied by percussion, Hatano sings verses from poems by two famous poets, the American Walt Whitman (second movement), and the Japanese Hajime Kijima (sung in English and Japanese in the third movement). In setting their verses to song, Mamiya expresses his profound "fear that the selfishness of mankind and the environmental hormone will spoil the germ–the origin of life on Earth":

"Unseen buds, infinite, hidden well,

Under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square or cubic inch,

Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn,

Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping;

Billions of billions, and trillions of them waiting,

(On earth and in the seas–the universe–the stars there in the heavens,)

Urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless,

And waiting ever more, forever more behind."

WALT WHITMAN, Unseen Buds

"Let’s dream

What the fallen

Failed to sing upwards

Soul through soul"

HAJIME KIJIMA, After The Funeral

The composer also instructs all performers to read the following lines in silence at the beginning of the third movement:

"The hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly

wash again, and again, this soil’d world."

WALT WHITMAN, Reconciliation

Serenade No. 3, "Germ," is commissioned by The Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, in collaboration with the Asian American communities of Minnesota, with funding from Weiming and Caroline Lu, in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Yu-Tsun Lu; Young-Nam and Ellen Kim, in memory of Mr. Sang-Eul Kim; and Robert and Pearl Lam Bergad, in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Choi Chiu Lam.

Since its incorporation in 1992, CMSM has served as Minnesota's chief ambassador for chamber music. It is made up mainly of artists who are the principals in their sections at either the Minnesota Orchestra or the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. We have united them with renowned guest artists to perform extraordinary works before full houses. Our annual subscription series has attracted a loyal and often standing-room-only audience in a 350-seat concert hall. We have introduced audiences to the intimate artistry of the chamber ensemble and nurtured young musicians and listeners at the same time.

Under the leadership of Young-Nam Kim, CMSM has commissioned and premiered at least one new work every season and has nurtured a lively interest in new music in its audience in Minnesota and elsewhere. Our concerts, described as 'all too rare' by one critic and 'the best kept secret in town' by another, are regularly broadcast by Minnesota Public Radio. Our first compact disc recording - offering works by Schumann, Beethoven and Mahler - has been well received by critics and the public.

CMSM has always been committed to welcoming a diverse array of artists to perform with us. The presence of dancer Maria Cheng and actor Lou Bellamy, artistic director of the trailblazing Penumbra Theater, has helped to draw lovers of other art forms toward music.

From our first season onward, CMSM has coaxed world-class guest artists, such as Samuel Rhodes, Joel Krosnick, Timothy Eddy, David Schifrin, Fred Sherry, Joseph Silverstein, and Gilbert Kalish, to join resident artists for our annual subscription series at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul. These collaborations also reach beyond our state borders. In February 1998, Mr. Kalish and several other virtuosi joined us in the second of our two presentations at Harvard University. The Boston Globe, Boston Herald and New York Times enthusiastically reviewed this concert. In the upcoming season we will be travelling to both the Colorado Chamber Music Festival and the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Since our 1998-1999 season we have instituted an annual free community concert at the Ted Mann Concert Hall. In our first one on May16, 1999, we presented revered violinist and conductor Joseph Silverstein. In our second one on March 19, 2000, we presented the world premiere performance of the Piano Quartet by the distinguished composer Andrew Imbrie. A capacity audience of 1,000 attended both concerts. Mr. Silverstein will return to lead our third annual free community concert on October 22, 2000.

Noted by the New York Times for his "sparkling virtuosity, strong colors and intense lyricism," Korean born violinist Young-Nam Kim appears frequently in recitals and summer festivals in the United States and Europe. He has appeared with the Minnesota Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Lausanne (Switzerland) Chamber Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, Chicago New Arts Ensemble, and others.

Mr. Kim moved to the United States in 1962 and studied primarily with Louis Krasner. His other teachers include Felix Galimir and Zino Francescatti. He is recipient of numerous awards, including the International Violin Competition for American Music at Kennedy Center. Founder and Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, Mr. Kim is currently on the violin faculty of the University of Minnesota School of Music, where he is also the director of the New Music Ensemble and the conductor of the Concerto Grosso Ensemble, a string orchestra. For the past ten summers he also directed the contemporary ensemble and chamber music programs at the Festival at Sandpoint, Idaho.
Mr. Kim has premiered more than twenty five works by today's prominent composers, among whom are Gunther Schuller, Paul Schoenfield, Randall Davidson, Earl George, John Adams, Donald Erb, Karel Husa, Carlton Macy, George Perle, Elliot Schwartz, Lloyd Ultan, Burton Beerman, Nicholas Thorne, Donald Wilson and Geroge Crumb. He also champions and premieres works by promising young composers such as Maria Magdalinos, Matthew Ward, and Russell Platt.

Wu Man is hailed as the artist most responsible for bringing the Chinese pipa to the United States and Europe. A leading exponent of the "Pudong" school of pipa playing, she has inspired an entire repertory of contemporary works for the pipa by such composers as Terry Raily, Lou Harrison, and Tan Dun. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Bunting Fellowship at Harvard University and the City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protégé Prize. Always arresting and immensely moving, her playing combines breathtaking virtuosity with exquisite passion.

The many-faceted career of distinguished cellist Yo-Yo Ma is testament to his continual search for new ways to communicate with audiences, and to his own desire for artistic growth and renewal. He maintains a balance between his engagements as soloist with orchestras throughout the world and his recital and chamber music activities. He is strongly committed to educational programs, taking time whenever possible to conduct master classes as well as more informal programs for students–musicians and non-musicians alike. One of Ma’s long-standing goals is to demonstrate how music communicates in both Western and Eastern cultures. His commitment to Hún Qiáo is a natural extension of his interest in cultural exchanges and desire for understanding among peoples. Moved by Hún Qiáo’s dual goals of remembrance and reconciliation, he has worked closely with the Hún Qiáo Committee both in developing the artistic plan for the concert and in selecting the composers representing the four cultures involved.


The Hún Qiáo Project has received strong endorsement from many Asian organizations - including the Chinese Senior Citizens Society, the Organization for Chinese Americans, Minnesota Chinese Cultural Services Center, Cantonese Cultural Center, Chinese American Dance Theater, Chinese American Association of Minnesota Dance Theater, Minhua Chinese Student and Scholar Chorus, Asian Media Access, Chinese American Academic and Professional Association of Minnesota, International Friendship Through the Performing Arts, Mothers Association for Korean Americans, Korea American Tomorrow Center, and Korean Association of Minnesota. All these organizations have pledged their assistance in working on the logistics of the premiere. In addition, we have received warm support from key members of The Committee of 100, a national leadership organization of prominent Chinese Americans. Mayor Norman Coleman of St. Paul, and United States Congressman Bruce Vento have also expressed strong support for this project. Several dedicated members of our international community, headed by Yo-Yo Ma and our composers, already have donated cash and/or time, worth a total of $400,000.00, to this project. Their generosity has enabled us to complete the planning and composing phases and to proceed toward the premiere. An estimate of the cost of the premiere performance, including copying costs, travel for artists and composers, rehearsals, public relations, hall rental, printing of programs, and office administration, indicates that we require an additional $180,000.00. Recently we have received funding from Meet The Composer, Ecolab Foundation, St. Paul Companies, 3M Corporation, and Wells Fargo Bank Minnesota toward that goal, and are now seeking additional contributions at all donation categories. With your generous support, we can realize this historic project of international and lasting significance. Please send your donations to Chamber Music Society of Minnesota/Hún Qiáo Fund, 3737 Multifoods Tower, 33 South Sixth Street, Minneapolis, MN 55402.

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Hún Qiáo (Bridge of Souls)

world premiere concert
of remembrance & reconciliation

Hún Qiáo (Bridge of Souls)

world premiere concert of remembrance & reconciliation

world premiere concert
of remembrance & reconciliation