Announcement
Whan Ri-Ahn Receives
Prix Fondation Salabert 2023
Whan Ri-Ahn has been announced as the recipient of the Musical Composition Prize 2023 of the Fondation Francis et Mica Salabert.
© Fondation Francis et Mica Salabert
The New York Times :
Hear the Sound of a New Generation of South Korean Musicians
Zachary Woolfe
...I knew I wanted to commission these young composers, who are both around 30. Both have great careers in Europe at the moment, and both are going back to South Korea for their military service. Sunghyun Lee’s style is quite contemporary, but it isn’t dogmatic.
He has lots of freedom to use any tools, any musical languages. His music is always full of fantasy. Whan Ri-Ahn is currently studying with George Benjamin in London; before that,
he also composed in a very contemporary style, but he’s learning different musical styles, trying to find his own voice...
Le Monde :
Unsuk Chin, compositrice : « Mes goûts musicaux me rapprochent de la France »
Pierre Gervasoni
...The taste for adventure could therefore lead to going to attend (the 12th) the creation of Whan Ri-Ahn's piece, L'Oiseau dans le temps II. And perhaps also the fact that he is of Korean origin, like seven other composers of Presences 2023...
Res Musica :
Présences weekend, when adventure is adventure!
...Another questioning about our perception of temporality with Seong-Hwan Lee in L'Oiseau dans le Temps II (2022), where electronics is this invisible bird that stretches the instant produced by acoustic instruments into the sky ( violin, cello, piano, percussion)...
San Francisco Classical Voice : With the Seoul Festival, the LA Phil Celebrates Korean Creativity
Tom Jacobs
...Composer Whan Ri-Ahn, who’s slated to hear the world premiere of his orchestral work Spring Will Come Again on the festival’s June 7 and 8 concerts, has a story to similar to Rhie’s. He moved to the U.S. at age 14, attending the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. He subsequently moved to Europe and currently lives in France.
He traces the genesis of his new piece back a decade, to his fascination with a painting of a baby in London’s National Portrait Gallery. The vivid image led him to contemplate life, death, and the passage of time — thoughts that returned last year when his grandmother died...
Hémisphère Son :
Korean presence: Unsuk Chin in the spotlight
Michèle Tosi
...This reciprocity can also be heard in the piece by the young Korean Seong-Hwan Lee (still a student at the CNSM in Paris in the classes of Frédéric Durieux and Yan Maresz) who entrusts the instrumentalists with metal percussion instruments (plates and meta-triangles) serving as an interface between the two worlds....L'oiseau dans le temps II given in world premiere shows a great technical mastery and a richness of the sound components within a writing where the electronics model the space and draw the dramaturgy...
VieilleCarne :
“MAISON DE LA RADIO AND MUSIC”: Festival Présences 2023 – Unsuk Chin – END –
Stéphane Loison
...In a sandwich, what's best is what's in the middle! It is the same in this kind of festival. Around the tribute to UNSUK CHIN it is the guest composers who offered us great moments, good surprises. This is how Bastien David, Gérard Grisey, York Höller, Akira Nishimura, Isang Yun, Florent Caron Darras, Yann Robin, Martin Smolka, Seong-Hwan Lee, Francesco Filidei inspired us...