Schuster Hall | Photo by Arden Reimer | The Wright State Guardian
On Tuesday, Oct. 25, over 50 musicians from around the world and the Dayton community converged at the Creative Arts Center to give the first symphonic concert of the academic year.
Artists behind the music
Concertmaster and violinist Haejin Kim was one of 14 violins to play Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures of an Exhibition” and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor Op. 18.”
All of the musicians have been preparing for this fall concert every Monday since the beginning of the semester. Kim evaluated the performance.
“I think [the concert] went the best. I went to every rehearsal, and it’s always better when you have the actual audience because the chemistry between the introduction of the audience and the musicians is what makes it exciting for us to play,” Kim said.
A visiting pianist, Rajung Yang, was also part of the concert. The importance of this accompaniment is listed in the official concert program.
“[Pianist Rajung Yang is] praised as one of the most versatile pianists of her generation,” the program states.
A graduate of Seoul National University and the University of Michigan in piano, Yang travels across the United States and Europe as an international award-winning pianist.
Yang now lives in Waco, Texas working as a collaborative pianist and teaching piano at Baylor University. Yang attended the symphony concert at the invitation of Dr. In-Hong Cha, the conductor of the symphonic concert.
“[The concert] was really great, I was amazed by the majority of orchestra members,” Yang said. “It was touching to know that they love so much making music together. This piece is hard to put together in a quick time, and usually, if I’m a soloist with the orchestra, we usually rehearse two or three times for sure, but the one and only rehearsal was last night.”
Despite the short rehearsal time, both Yang and Cha agreed the concert was a success.
Cha, a Professor of Music at Wright State University for over 20 years, teaches applied violin and serves as the director and conductor of the University Symphony Orchestra.
The conductor learned how to play violin in South Korea, where Cha found a passion for music that still persists today.
Cha now holds degrees in violin performance from Brooklyn College, the City University of New York and College-Conservatory of Music and the University of Cincinnati. Cha also holds a doctorate of orchestral conducting from the University of South Carolina.
Internationally renowned, Cha plays throughout the United States and countries such as Mexico, Italy, Indonesia, China and more. Cha’s award-winning career also includes serving as a conductor to many professional Korean orchestras, such as the Amabile Chamber Orchestra of Korea and the Gangnam Symphony Orchestra.
Cha described the importance of honoring the musicians who created the pieces the orchestra plays.
“Already, as a musician, before we play their music live, we respect their life,” Cha said. “I would say those stories, their background, their music is what influenced me.”
Pictures of Russia
The performed pieces, both being by Russian composers, evoked the spirit of Russia.
The first piece, “Pictures of an Exhibition,” was the longest but also the most varied work in the concert. The composer, Modest Mussorgsky, put the emotion of the death of a close friend into this work, which imitated looking at ten different pictures as one walks through a gallery.
These ten pictures elicit mental images of a gnome running, a troubadour singing before a medieval castle, Paris gardens, a Polish ox-cart, a ballet, a portrait of two Polish Jews, a French market, Roman tombs and Russian folklore.
The second piece, “Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor Op. 18,” focused heavily on the interaction of sound between Yang and the orchestra.
