Teen composer Hanurij Lee reimagines Korean rhythm
Eighteen-year-old composer Hanurij Lee is set to unveil his most ambitious work yet: a 40-minute composition, more than twice the length of his previous longest piece, which ran 16 minutes.
But it's not just the duration that marks new territory. This time, Lee, winner of the 2024 Bartok World Composition Competition, steps into the unfamiliar terrain of writing for a Korean traditional orchestra.
'I started wanting to try writing for a Korean traditional orchestra after hearing works by schoolmates around me who specialize in that field. I found the sounds really fascinating,' Lee said in an interview earlier this month.
'It's very different, but I also felt that I might be able to approach it in my own way,' he added. 'And that opportunity came sooner than I expected.'
The opportunity came at the suggestion of Seoul Metropolitan Traditional Orchestra conductor Choi Soo-yeoul. Choi had said that 'To me, Korean traditional orchestra is a branch of contemporary music. It's a very special genre in that it allows us to express the present through ancient instruments.'
When commissioning the work from Lee, Choi encouraged him to approach it freely, precisely because he hadn't studied Korean traditional music.
The result is "Reframing Project: Part II — Rediscovering Jangdan." This SMTO series reexamines and reinterprets the uniqueness of Korean traditional orchestra through creative ideas and perspectives that reorganize, expand, or combine it in new forms.
The program poses a conceptual question: What if jangdan, the traditional Korean rhythmic cycle, was reimagined as a language of flow, time and sensation?
Lee's work, 'Unselected Ambient Loops 25-26,' was placed alongside Kim Hee-jo's Ensemble No. 3, a landmark composition by a pioneer of Korean orchestral music that explores the vitality and beauty of traditional rhythmic forms. According to Lee Seung-hweon, artistic director of the Seoul Metropolitan Traditional Orchestra, the pairing was intended to create a stark contrast and offer audiences a wide spectrum of choices and perspectives.
In writing this piece, Hanurij Lee maintained the same mindset he had since his early days.
'When I first started composing in elementary school, my teacher would always say, 'Write your music as if the best performer in the world will be playing it.' I think that's when my pieces started to become more difficult,' the composer said.
To the members of the SMTO, this new work was unfamiliar and included many challenging techniques.
'It's natural for performers to complain about composers because of how difficult we make the music. But if you think about it another way, what may seem like a composer's overambition can actually push the boundaries of a performer's limits, and lead to new discoveries,' the artistic director said.
Lee began his musical journey as a violinist at the age of 4. But his aspirations shifted dramatically in third grade after hearing the second movement of Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 3. "I want to write music like that," he thought.
In 2016, he enrolled in the Seoul Arts Center's Academy for the Gifted, marking his first formal step toward composition, and has remained immersed in classical music ever since. He currently studies at the Korea National University of Arts, also known as K-Arts.
Lee's compositions have already begun to make their mark both in competitions and on the concert stage. His five-minute piece "...Round and velvety-smooth blend...," commissioned by celebrated pianist Lim Yunchan, served as the opening work for Lim's Goldberg Variations recital tour. Next month, Lim and his teacher Sohn Min-soo will perform a special two-piano arrangement of Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier Suite, adapted by Lee.
Lee said he draws his greatest inspiration from other works, no matter the genre.
'Until 2023, I honestly had no interest in any other genres,' he admitted. 'But as I started working on these kinds of projects, I found that flashes of inspiration often came from outside classical music. I'd hear something and think, 'They're doing this so naturally,' and that really intrigued me. So I began listening widely, and those sounds have become a big source of ideas for me. Not in any structured way — it's more like they just appear, somehow.'
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