K-Music Festival 2016: National Gugak Centre

Korean Sounds: East Meet West returns this October as part of London's festival of Korean music, K-Music 2016. The bi-monthly concert series present a rare opportunity to hear traditional Korean and classical music in one place. The main focus of this concert lies in the contrast between Korean and Western wind instruments.

For the first half of the concert, a series of traditional Korean folk songs will be presented by Korea's National Gugak Centre. The Centre previously played at Sadler's Wells in 2015 when they brought the K-Music Festival to a close. They return to London with a more intimate acoustic performance, which focuses on the wind music of Korea.The two main instruments will be the piri (double-reed oboe) and daegeum (bamboo transverse flute). They will play sanjo - a folk-based form of music that allows space to improvise throughout the piece.

The second part of the concert will present 3 pieces for the clarinet. The first piece, 'Soldier's Tale' by Igor Stravinsky, will show the clarinet's ability as a storyteller, as well as Stravinsky's neo-classicism. The second sonata by Francois Devienne will explore the instrument's ability in almost pure classicism. The last piece from this first part, 'Contrasts for clarinet, violin and piano' by Bela Bartok, finally magnifies the instrument's versatility for both solo and chamber music.