Sarah Chang holds Korea recital tour

For a long time, violinist Sarah Chang has been the “golden girl” to Koreans. At the tender age of 8, the Korean-American was playing with Zubin Mehta and Riccardo Muti and studying with Dorothy DeLay.

It seems that Chang still has the world under her spell: She has performed with nearly all acclaimed orchestras and musicians around the world and has a 20-volume CD set honoring her 20 year-contract with EMI classics. She received the Avery Fisher Prize in 1999, was selected as one of the 20 female leaders of the world by Newsweek magazine in 2006, has a chair dedicated to her at the Sprague Hall in Yale University, and is a U.S. cultural ambassador.

And now her Korean fans will be able to enjoy Chang’s vibrant and powerful style in eight different cities in the country that started with Gwangju on Saturday. She plays at the Seoul Arts Center in southern Seoul on Dec. 16 at 7 p.m.

She will be performing Vitali’s “Chaconne”; Bach’s “Air on the G String”; Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No.2; and Bernstein’s “Westside Story.” 

“The pieces that I will present are the ones that I really like. I haven’t done many recitals ― this will be my third in 13 years in Korea. It’s because I enjoyed concerts and it wasn’t easy to find a good partner. But when I hold recitals I try to pick what suits me the best instead of setting up a specific theme. And here they are!” Chang said at the press conference held on Thursday ahead of the tour.

The virtuoso explained that Chaconne was always among her favorites, her Prokofiev sonata had received good response and that she had played the Bach piece at her grandmother’s funeral.

David Newman, a noted composer mostly known for his film scores, was asked to rearrange the Westside Story score for violin. She said the audience would not be disappointed.

“Newman has kept calling me day and night, discussing the revisions he had made. It was a new experience for me. Instead of playing pieces by deceased people, I was building up a score and was discussing every little detail. It was fun,” she said.

The celebrated violinist seemed as merry and confident as any great musician would but touched on the downsides of her globe-trotting lifestyle.

“When I was 16, I needed to take some time off badly. I told my manager that I needed a month away from work, and he said, ‘Yeah, you’re scheduled up for the next three years. You can take a month off when you are 18.’ I took a month off then, and it was great. I slept the whole way through!” she said.

She also said being a violinist, playing music all day long and pleasing the audience was a big joy but there were things people needed to be reminded of.

“To like music is not enough. You need to be ready to control the air and play in front of 10,000 people and sometimes 50,000. I think sometimes, you have to be born with it,” she said.

“And you must understand that it involves business, which means that from time to time you won’t be just playing the violin but will have to deal with documents, contracts all day long. I wish someone had told me that before,” she said.

But in the end Chang expressed her endless love for music.

“It has been about 10 years since I found that music is so important in my life. In every concert, I am responsible for what I produce. There’s no time to be personal or sentimental. Every day I play the violin wishing that it would be better than yesterday. I move on,” she said.

By Bae Ji-sook (baejisook@heraldcorp.com)