Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra Perform at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 14 November 2025 14:54

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Fadi Kheir

At the excellent Stern Auditorium, on the night of Monday, October 27th, I had the privilege to attend a fabulous concert—presented by Carnegie Hall—featuring the superior Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, admirably led by its Music Director and Conductor, Jaap van Zweden.

The event started brilliantly with the US premiere of Inferno by Jung Jae-il, who is known for his score for Bong Joon Ho’s extraordinary 2019 film, Parasite. The composer has commented on the work as follows:

This is the very last section of Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities. Marco Polo says this to Kublai Khan:

“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”

This piece began with that passage.

As I reflect on the countless deaths, suffering, and farewells caused by wars, plagues, and natural disasters occurring around the world, I realize that their scale is far beyond what I could ever fathom.

In the face of darkness and flames, where not even an inch ahead is visible, I tried to think about how we are to go on living.

Though I am a composer without formal classical training, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Maestro Jaap, who encouraged me from our very first meeting and gave me the courage to take on the challenge of composition.

Inferno opens forcefully and dissonantly but soon acquires a more meditative and elegiac cast; this section is succeeded by more exciting music, with a driving rhythm, and then a dulcet, more affirmative interlude arrested by dramatic measures. The composition concludes quietly but beautifully with another solemn episode. Jung was present to receive the audience’s acclaim. 

An amazing soloist, Bomsori Kim—she wore a gorgeous, bright yellow gown—then entered the stage for a terrific performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s marvelous, Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, which underwent its final revision in 1845–in the period after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and before Samuel Barber and the modernists, Mendelssohn’s concerto’s only peers may be those of Ludwig Van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Jean Sibelius. The initial, Allegro molto appassionato movement begins lyrically and emotionally with some urgency but there are exquisite, reflective moments amidst the bewitching virtuosity; the music builds to a thrilling climax. The ensuing Andante is introspective but song-like too, an uninterrupted flow of irresistible melodies; it becomes more serious in inflection, ending softly. In the finale, a brief, pensive, Allegretto non troppo introduction is followed by an Allegro molto vivace main body that is propulsive and joyous; it closes exhilaratingly. Enthusiastic applause elicited an enjoyable encore from the soloist: Fritz Kreisler’s “Schön Rosmarin” from his Old Viennese Dances.

The second half of the evening was maybe even more memorable: a sumptuous account of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s magnificent Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 27, completed in 1907. The composition starts somewhat lugubriously with an extended Largo introduction; the movement’s Allegro moderato main body is livelier, although an undercurrent of sadness is discernible throughout—there are moments that recall the Sibelius of his Second and Fifth symphonies. Towards the end of the movement, the music accelerates, but it finishes abruptly. The succeeding Allegro molto is even more spirited—it has some playful qualities but it also expresses the longing that is a hallmark of Rachmaninoff’s creative personality. A central episode has an unusual intensity and turbulence; after another agitated section, it concludes quietly. 

The Adagio is the most sheerly lovely of the movements, an outpouring of pure Romanticism; the music is much sunnier and more serene towards the close, ending pacifically. The finale, marked Allegro vivace, is largely exuberant, with a more consistently positive valence, although it is not entirely free from disquiet; it concludes triumphantly. A deserved, standing ovation was rewarded with another splendid, indeed exultant, encore: Antonín Dvořák’s delightful Presto from the Slavonic Dance in G Minor, Op. 46, No. 8.

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