Philip Peters wrote:

>I would like to recommend Kyung Wha Chung, IMO one of the most
>accomplished players of our day

Some may find this anecdote novel- others may know more of the specifics
than I do.  When Ms. Chung was of competition age, she and Pinchas
Zuckerman, both recently minted from Juilliard, entered some well-known
competition which escapes me.  The judges could not decide between Chung
and Zuckerman for first place.  So they asked the two to perform again,
which they obligingly did.  The judges mulled over their respective
performances, and couldn't decide.  So they asked the pair to play a third
time, after which the judges went off to consider matters.  When again they
could not decide, they awarded two first prizes!  Has such a thing ever
occured elsewhere in high level musical competition?

Fans of Ms. Chung may be interested to know that several years ago there
was a video made of the Chung family in which Kyung Wha and her brother
Myung Hoon are prominently featured.  The video is, to the best of my
knowledge, only available in Korea (it may not even be still available),
and almost all the speech is in Korean, so few roundeyes will fully
appreciate it.  Among other things, it shows Kyung Wha being greeted by
Prince Charles and shows her teaching a master class in Seoul.  It also
shows Kyung Wha returning to the modest public school in New York that she
attended when she moved to the USA.

A fine fiddler of my acquaintance attended Julliard at along with Chung
and Zuckerman, and he said competing with that pair made him work all the
harder to extend himself.  That man, by the way, received the last lesson
that the famed Ivan Galamian taught in this world, as Galamian was fatally
stricked moments after concluding a lesson with my acquaintance.  I believe
Jamie Laredo concurred with someone else's assessment that Galamian was
responsible for raising the level of violin playing throughout the world.

Larry
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