The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
‘When did the English become so disrespectful?’
Kyung Wha Chung, one of the world’s greatest violinists, is as dainty as a lily and as commanding as a general. After entering the London hotel chosen for our interview, she mutters something to her assistant who returns swiftly with a cushion to stop her 4ft 10in frame being swallowed whole by the plump armchair on which she sits. Although her feet now dangle a few inches from the floor, like a small child’s, she nevertheless retains an imperious air. “I am sorry but I had a beer and a double espresso after lunch,” she says. “I am now ready for a fight.”
There’s nothing new there. In 2014, Chung created a fuss while playing in Britain for the first time in nine years. An injury to her index finger (and subsequent surgery) had prevented her from performing. It was reported that, between movements of Mozart’s Sonata in G at the Royal Festival Hall, she had upbraided the parents of a coughing child in the audience, telling them to bring her back when she was older. Today, she doesn’t so much defend her actions as question the need to defend them at all. In any case, she says, the child wasn’t coughing but whimpering.
“Why should I have to put up with that? In classical music you have to concentrate, it is a high art form, if you can’t sit still you should not be there,” she says. “Honestly, I had no idea how noisy English audiences had become. When I first started performing here in 1970, your audiences were so respectful.”
I can’t help wondering what she makes of the growing trend for so-called “relaxed performances”, which cater for those who may struggle to sit still through formal events in the theatre or concert hall. Chung wriggles in her chair as if to express her indignation.
“Relaxed!” she exclaims. “That is utterly ridiculous. You can’t let someone wander around and fart or chew gum. It’s not like you’re passing through.”
She leans forward. “When my sons were at school in New Jersey, they were doing something called ‘inventive spelling’. They were spelling ‘end’ – e-n-d-e – or however they liked. Can you imagine? They weren’t being disciplined.”
Discipline is something that Chung, 69, has in abundance. She was one of seven children, born in Seoul two years before the start of the Korean War. She began playing the piano at the age of four, but lacked co-ordination and moved on to the violin. By the time she was nine, she was playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and, encouraged by her mother, touring the country with her siblings as part of an ensemble.
“My mother’s view was to enhance our lives by making us realise our potential and then contribute to society – making Korea proud of us,” she says. “There were 30 tutors going in and out of our house at one time and she was never late with her payments.”
It sounds like a hothouse. “We were not hothoused,” she insists. “Every week, me and my siblings went on picnics and we played games. We had no toys. We used our imaginations.”
Chung’s mother may have worked hard to give her children a normal life, but she was certainly ambitious. Recognising that Korea was too small and in too perilous a position politically to foster their international careers, she moved them to the United States.
“We were war children – because Korea was ravaged by destruction we had no identity and so my family was active in reaching out internationally. I think they were among the first.”
At 13, Chung followed her flautist sister, Myung-Soh, to the Juilliard School in New York where, she says now, she found
When the Korean violinist Kyung Wha Chung last played in Britain, she told off a child in the audience. Now she’s back – and ‘ready for a fight’, finds Ben Lawrence ‘Classical music is a high art form; if you can’t sit still, you should not be there’