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MUSIC

Mozart’s violin meets Korean prodigy

A violin that belonged to musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been preserved inside a glass case at a museum in Mozart's hometown of Salzburg, Austria up until recently, when it was removed from its nest for the first time and brought to Korea.

Published: 27 October 2014 08:32 CET
Mozart's violin meets Korean prodigy
Ko So-hyun, 8-year-old prodigy. Photo: Korean Times

At the Westin Chosun Hotel in Seoul, Oct. 20, Austria's tourism board revealed Mozart's violin, manufactured in 1735 by Andreas Ferdinand Mayer, a lute and violinmaker from Salzburg. 

Ko So-hyun, an 8-year-old violinist and child prodigy, astounded the audience with her ease and sophisticated playing on Mozart's violin. With piano accompaniment, Ko played "The Magic Flute" and some of Mozart's violin sonatas that he composed when he was just Ko's age. 

She commented, "I was worried whether an instrument from more than a hundred years ago would make any sound, but I was amazed to hear upon playing at the sound's vibration and cleanliness." 

Mozart's violin has been presented as part of an effort to introduce the beautiful city of Salzburg, Austria's fourth-largest city. 

In the 1965 film "The Sound of Music," Julie Andrews sings "Doe, a deer, a female deer. Ray, a drop of golden sun. Me, a name I call myself…" while dancing, biking and running through lush green grass and baroque-style gardens and fountains, with the Alps in the backdrop, glazed with ice. 

Many scenes of the film were shot in Salzburg, which was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. Perhaps the movie best captures what the city is like, even today. The city has managed to preserve its agriculture, while also adapting to the changing economy and industrialization. The board mentioned that there are around 10,000 farmers in Salzburg, but these farmers have second jobs in big corporations, mainly in the tourism industry. 

Salzburg welcomes 6,500,000 tourists every year, as the city boasts of ski slopes, winter sports, cheese and milk factories and cultural venues. 

The Salzburg Festival, the world's biggest opera and music festival, is held every summer for 6 weeks. Hundreds of thousands of people, including renowned musicians, visit. Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the movie "The Sound of Music" and the 200th anniversary since the Christmas carol "Silent Night, Holy Night" was composed in Salzburg. Playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal's play "Jedermann" will also be performed. 

The display of Mozart's violin is just a preview of what to expect from a city that gave birth to the great composer.

by Lee Yeon-Joo / Courtesy Korean Times

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CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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