Fifty years ago, a wave of brilliant Eastern European Jews poured into America and galvanized our cultural life. Supervirtuosos such as Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Nathan Milstein and others proved that Americans were eager to venerate giants of another culture.
Today, that process is happening all over again-but this time, the visitors are from much farther away.
”It`s certainly an explosion-an incredible boom in the world of music,” says pianist/conductor Myung-Whun Chung, whose fast-rising career epitomizes the triumph of Asian musicians in Western classical music.
What`s remarkable is not simply that Korean-born Chung became associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at age 25 (serving from 1978-81) and now guest-conducts the world`s greatest ensembles, but that his two sisters are every bit as successful as he.
Kyung-Wha Chung, 40, reigns as one of the high divas of the violin, a rare performer whose ample technique is matched by unusually probing musicianship. And cellist Myung-Wha Chung, 44, has won glowing accolades from critics around the world.
”Why has it happened? It`s not so difficult to explain,” says Myung-Whun Chung, who will play chamber music with the other two members of the Chung dynasty Saturday evening at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall in Evanston.
”For one, there`s the simple fact that until 30 years ago or so, much of Asia wasn`t fully exposed to classical music. Once the music started creeping in through various contacts with the West-such as records and TV-good musicians started turning up.
”Western music, you see, is an art form that`s learnable-it`s simply a language. One is not born with a talent for Western music or Eastern music. One is born with a sensitivity for music in general, and then it`s a question of what you do with it.”
And that`s precisely where the Chung family-as well as many of its Eastern peers-stands apart from the rest. For many Asians who have taken up classical music in recent years, the art is not pursued lightly.
”I think Oriental children have the drive to excel very early-they work with tremendous discipline,” says Kyung-Wha Chung. ”Maybe it`s because Korean society is still based on teachings and philosophies of Confucius, which stress the beauty of living up to the expectations of your elders and your society.
”Success and achievement are embedded in young Koreans, and learning an instrument takes a tremendous amount of self-discipline and devotion.”
How that drive is instilled in musicians obviously varies from one family to the next. Yet the way the Chungs were reared is instructive.
”Basically, I think we were successful because we always had 100 percent support from our parents,” says Myung-Whun Chung. ”But I don`t mean by
`support` that our parents told us that everything we did was OK. Not at all.
”What I mean is that our parents gave us the freedom to choose what we wanted to do with our lives from a very young age. Yet that was a way of putting more responsibility on us, because then it was all in our own hands-we couldn`t blame anybody but ourselves for what happened.
”So we learned very early on that once we decided what we wanted to do, we had better work very hard to do it. I suppose it`s a way of psychologically turning the tables-instead of forcing your children to do something, you get them to force themselves.”
In other words, the Chungs` parents nudged their kids forward with a strong hand but a velvet touch.
”I remember the first time I entered a violin competition, when I was about 8 years old,” says Kyung-Wah Chung. ”I wasn`t really ready for the competition, so I didn`t so much as make it through the preliminary round.
”I came home completely depressed, thinking, `I can`t face the world, I`m just too ashamed.`
”And I was afraid to face my parents. But my Mom came into my room, and she didn`t mention one thing about the contest.
”She simply said, `You know, there`s something called a Young People`s Concert, and to get in it you must play a concerto in a competition. And if you win, you get to play the concerto with an orchestra in front of an audience. How would you like to do that? You`ll have six months to prepare for this one.`
”And I immediately jumped out of my chair and started practicing my concerto right away, and, yes, I won that competition.”
Granted, the Chungs are not the first family to have produced more than one musical star.
But the Chungs remain unique in at least one startling aspect of their careers-each triumphed in major international competitions, which launched each of their careers.
”I think maybe we were just lucky,” laughs Kyung-Wha Chung, who took first prize in the prestigious Leventritt International Competition in 1967.
”Frankly, I don`t know why I was given the gift in music or why people have been willing to acknowledge it. It`s unexplainable.”
Myung-Whun Chung agrees. ”It`s probably an accident that we all won,”
says Chung, who took the silver medal in the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in 1974, and was able to succeed as a conductor, as well. ”I`ll tell you one thing, though: We all feel that competitions are a real evil, although, unfortunately, a necessary one.
”None of us had a great deal of money or connections, so contests were our only hope.”
For the Chungs, the musical journey began early, with all seven of the Chung siblings taking music lessons before they were old enough to go school. All eventually moved to the United States in their mid-teens, but only the current three were determined to become musicians.
”I think we all felt we owed it to our parents to succeed,” says Kyung- Wha Chung. ”Our father had studied law, but when he finished law school and got married, the situation in Korea was such that he couldn`t make enough money as a lawyer-especially with so many kids to support.
”So my father and mother went into business together to be able to educate us in the way that they wanted-in other words, to get the best for us. For a while they were in the restaurant business, then the import-export business.
”It costs a lot of money to buy all those instruments and pay all those music teachers, you know.”
Ironically, the successes of the Chungs` individual careers has prevented them from playing together very often, as they did throughout their childhood. Over the last couple of years, however, ”We realized that we missed it,”
says Myung-Whun Chung. ”We missed the simple joy of playing together, and that`s why we`ve decided to take two or three weeks out of each year to perform and record together.”
Naturally, when three siblings sit down to make music, there`s bound to be an occasional discordant note.
”Sure we have disagreements,” says Myung-Wha Chung, the cellist.
”But when it is going well, it`s the sweetest thing in music. Our instruments sing to each other, and we are somehow spiritually linked. I could never give this up.”
Nor will she have to, since all parties plan to nourish their collaboration for as long as they are playing their instruments.
Still, one can`t help but wonder what exquisite music the Chung family might have made if all seven of the kids became musicians (instead of pursuing the fields of business, teaching, construction and medicine).
”That wouldn`t be so good,” says Myung-Wha Chung. ”You see, whenever one of my children gets sick, I always call my brother, the doctor.
”If he was a musician, who would I call?”
