String Quartet No. I

For Isang Yun, String Quartet No. 3 from 1959 marked the beginning of his European creative phase and of his official canon of works. Now it is possible to encounter Yun's early works from his Korean period in the form of his String Quartet No. 1 (1955). Three important 10-minute movements containing references not only to Asia but also to Ravel, Bartók and Eastern European folk music and having an idiosyncratic structure: "Yun lines up forms and figures, makes them emerge from each other in a contrasting manner and assembles them into a mosaic-like whole, seeking for integration, laying down his material in layer upon layer and ending the movements with a rhythmic unison. […] Even then, he probably regarded a work of art as an energetic stream of sounds and as a reflection of a world whose diverging parts weave into a harmonic whole." (Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer)