Chung Kyung-wha’s ‘Beau Soir’
Last month, the violin virtuoso Chung Kyung-wha released her 33rd recording titled “Beau Soir” (beautiful night), inspired by a song by the French composer Debussy. It is certainly a fitting title for an artist who seems to be having the time of her life in the twilight of her career.
Chung has taken on a flurry of new projects as a performing and recording artist, teacher and artistic director since her 2012 comeback to the stage after a career-threatening finger injury. Many fans who were heartbroken when her illustrious career was halted in 2005 could not have foreseen her phenomenal resurgence today.
These days, it is easy to find young Korean women violinists sweeping international competitions. But that was not the case when Chung won the Leventritt Award, the top U.S. violin prize, in 1967 at only 19 years of age, paving the way for her international stardom. In the 1960s and 70s, there were few women star instrumentalists, not to mention Asian ones.
The pioneering musician was also one of the first female violinists to become a recording sensation. Chung has recorded by top classical labels such as Decca, EMI and Deutsche Grammophon, but many who remember her heyday associate her primarily with Decca.
The British label was hugely excited about signing her, according to Ray Minshull, director of artists and repertoire for the Decca Classics from 1967 to 1994. “I had no doubt whatsoever that at last we had found the person who would fill to perfection one of the most glaring vacancies in our artists’ list — that of an outstanding solo violinist,” Minshull wrote in a tribute essay for the re-issue of her 1972 Bruch recording in 1998. “She is able to draw from the lower three strings of the instrument a range of emotions which I have heard from no other.”
As an exclusive Decca artist, she recorded some of her most acclaimed recordings, including the Tchaikovsky/Mendelssohn concerti with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal under Charles Dutoit and the Tchaikovsky/Sibelius concerti with Andre Previn’s London Symphony.
Chung remained highly actively on the recording scene until the late 1990s but her albums became more sporadic in the early 2000s. When she stopped giving concerts to nurse a finger injury she suffered in 2005, many fans had given up hope to ever hear a new recording by Chung again.
Since her comeback, though, she has focused on doing things that she did not do so much in her younger years, like playing more Mozart and Bach and performing more chamber music.
Her latest album, a collection of sonatas and encore pieces by French composers, is a rare addition to her lengthy discography, which has been filled mostly with violin concertos.
In her Decca years, her discography was missing a crucial repertoire for violinists, particularly Bach’s works for solo violin. She had recorded a few for Decca, but never the entire set of partitas and sonatas, which she has called the “unending quest of my musical journey.” She finally recorded them for Warner Classics in 2016.
That she was able to fulfill the hugely ambitious project to record all of Bach’s solo works for violin after a break of more than a decade in the studio shows Chung is still in top form musically and technically.
During a recent press conference to promote the “Beau Soir” album, Chung shunned terms such as “living legend” often used to describe her career. At 70, she said that she still found every recording to be a taxing experience even after so many recordings. She underlined her love for the audience, saying she wanted to “give them everything she had” while on stage and heal them through music.
It is inspirational to see an artist of her stature still trying new things and aiming for new goals. Chung is showing that true passion is timeless.