The Strad issues swift apology for offensive article

The View from America says:

Reading the article, it’s interesting how so much “opinion” is presented as “settled law” — when in fact it is merely a “point of view.” This happens far too often in journalism today. It was right for The Strad to take the article down.

Jehi Bahk says:

As most of the online viewers here didn’t read and probably will not pay to read the full article, here the epilogue of the article which very well reflects the author’s deep admiration for Korea and its people:

“Of course, at the heart of Korean life is the essential sadness of a people divided –into a communist north and a capitalist south. Coming as I do from formerly divided Germany, I well understand the psyche of a country split in two. In Korea the birds ‘cry’ rather than ‘sing’ – and art’s origin is always derived from suffering. I have listened to Korean music such as p’ansori (traditional song for solo voice and drum, a kind of one-person opera) and been so touched that I nearly cried. This melancholy exists throughout a country that is on the surface modern and outward looking – the Samsung and K-pop nation – and to my mind continues to influence art and performance in all areas.

This capacity for deep emotion is combined with a colourful understanding of Western classical music, which Koreans often see through metaphor and fantasy. Once I asked a student what Hindemith might have envisioned during a forte passage in his Violin Sonata in C major. The answer was, ‘an elephant fighting against a dragon’. I wished Hindemith could have been there to hear his musical language described ‘Korean style’ – filled with oriental mythology, where dragons symbolically represent power.

There is so much richness and depth in Korean cultural life and it stands to reason that this is helping to inform the country’s tradition of string playing. These are a people of imaginative and emotional sophistication, who speak a language as logically structured as Latin which prioritises beauty of phrasing, and who value a collaborative approach to learning. When examining the current explosion in young talent there is perhaps a case to be made for old and new ways coming together in just the right way at the right time.

Young Korean students continue to respect their teachers and parents and to work hard at all aspects of musical learning; they value success and strive for perfection; but in recent years those same young people have developed a new sense of creativity and selfdetermination. As such, they are making a significant impact on the classical world stage – and are here to stay.”