Isang Yun Competition
| Isang Yun Competition | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Classical music |
| Location(s) | Tongyeong, South Korea |
| Years active | 2003-present |
| Website | |
| Official website | |
The ISANGYUN Competition is an international music competition, held annually in Tongyeong, South Korea. It commemorates Isang Yun (1917–1995), a Korean composer who was born in Tongyeong and later settled in Germany. The competition was established in 2003 as the Gyeongnam International Music Competition, and renamed to ISANGYUN Competition in 2008. It consists of a three-year "cycle", where each year, or "edition", consists of a different instrument in the rotation: cello, piano, and violin.
The competition has been organized by local governments and media companies in South Korea: Gyeongnam Province, the City of Tongyeong and MBC Gyeongnam. To remember Isang Yun, in 2003, the Governor of Gyeongnam Province requested the Tongyeong International Music Festival (통영국제음악제) Foundation to plan and organize an international competition. The foundation, initially chaired by Seong-Yawng Park, created a general prospectus of an annual instrumental competition to nurture international young players between 15 and 29 years old. The event would be held in the city where Yun was born, which was Tongyeong, and the competition dates would be scheduled to include November 3, the date of Yun's death in 1995. However, there were exceptions in the schedule for the years 2003, 2004, and 2009.
The first Gyeongnam International Music Competition was held in 2003. The organizers originally wanted different instrument disciplines. The first discipline selected was cello, since Yun was a famed cellist, and he had composed his first concerto for cello in 1975–76. The organizers then selected violin and piano, because those were the top two disciplines to present the highest quantity of international competitions, and because Yun wrote many works involving those two instruments. They also found that after one cycle of three editions, the winners had an opportunity to collaborate and play in piano trios.
In order to attract an international audience, the organizers wanted the Gyeongnam International Music Competition to be recognized by the World Federation of International Music Competitions (WFIMC). In accordance with WFIMC statutes, the event had to show two editions of success, which it did in 2003 and 2004. The next year, the foundation submitted an application to the WFIMC. In 2006, following a vote held by the federation's general assembly in Geneva, the WFIMC accepted the Gyeongnam International Music Competition as a member competition, which made it the first music competition in South Korea to receive such an honor.
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