Great Mountains Music Festival & School seeks to reinvent itself

Great Mountains Music Festival & School -- originally envisioned to promote the PyeongChang Olympics -- has set out to go beyond just outliving the Olympic Games.

Festival artistic director and pianist Son Yeol-eum and Gangwon Art & Culture Foundation Chairman Kim Sung-hwan announced the summer festival’s program, as well as future plans at a press conference in Seoul on Tuesday.

The music festival will continue to hold winter concerts, while keeping the 15-year tradition of the summer music festival. Through the two annual editions, the music festival is expected to concentrate on introducing classical music.

For this year’s summer edition, GMMFS has increased the number of “outreach concerts” from eight to 11. These small concerts will be held at venues across Gangwon Province, including Woljeongsa Temple and Museum San.

“If the music festival previously focused on making Gangwon Province global -- largely due to the PyeongChang Olympics -- the music festival will now become more localized,” said the foundation’s Chairman Kim.

“The festival will aim to feature our classical music in now-global PyeongChang,” Son added.

While introducing future plans, Son said that the festival might be getting a new name, “Music in Pyeongchang” or MPyC.

“The festival currently plans to gradually change its name to MPyC,” Son confirmed to The Korea Herald.

Under the title of “Curiosity,” the summer music festival will start on July 25 with its “Chamber Music Series” concert at Alpensia Concert Hall, kicking off its two-week musical journey.

All 28 classical music works to be performed in the first week have never been performed at GMMFS. Of the 24 pieces to be played in the second week, 18 pieces will be performed at the festival for the first time.

“The music festival will continue to find and introduce new works that we have not introduced so far,” said Son.

This year’s music festival has expanded its previous chamber-music-focused program to include a variety of classical music performances.

“It’s diversity,” said Son, when asked what sets this year’s music festival apart from previous ones. “Previous music festivals focused on featuring chamber music. I still agree that chamber music is the most important genre (in classical music). But the festival decided to feature more kinds classical music after considering what the music festival could offer,” Son added.

In line with such change, GMMFS this year has formed a 70-member project orchestra, bringing overseas-based musicians home. Artists who are part of the orchestra include violinists Clara-Jumi Kang, Lee Jik-mu and Sul Min-kyung, oboist Ham Kyung, horn player Kim Hong-park and clarinetists Cho Inn-hyuck and Cho Sung-ho.

The orchestra will perform on July 28 and Aug. 4 at the Music Tent, led by conductors Dmitrij Kitajenko and Chi-Yong Chung, respectively.

Conductor Chung will highlight the finale of the music festival with Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” and Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade (after Plato’s ‘Symposium’),” among others.

The music festival’s concerto competition winner will take part in the final concert.

There will also be special solo recitals. Pianist Lim Ju-hee will hold her first solo recital here under the title of “Soli deo Gloria” on July 29 at Alpensia Concert Hall, featuring Egon Petri’s arrangement of Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze.” Artistic director Son performed the same piece at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Pianist Park Jong-hai will have all-improvisation recital on July 28 at Alpensia Concert Hall.

For more information, visit www.mpyc.kr

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)