Jun-Su Kim and Ahn Sook-Sun review, Southbank Centre: Captivating with cumulative emotional power

Pansori idols delivered a virtuous performance as part of London's big festival of Korean music

Ten years ago, traditional music from other cultures was to be heard all over London, fuelled by the “world music” boom; the moribund CD market and the spiralling costs of bringing in musicians from distant places have seen to it that this side of the musical scene has almost come to a halt. So it was heartening to get two solid hours of Korean pansori in a packed Purcell Room, delivered by the most distinguished exponents of this fascinating genre.

Politics have ensured that we in the West know virtually nothing about Korean culture, and even among Koreans pansori is pretty recherché. Dating back to the 17th century, it’s a folk art form in which the singer is accompanied by a drum, with the drummer also providing the feed when the material is comic, which is much of the time. The vocal style has something in common with Japanese Noh, and also with the Kyrgyz recitation of the Manas epic: performance demands virtuosity, as the singer must also be a skilled narrator and a clown. It’s a bit of a stretch to call it opera, but in Korea it’s the nearest thing to that art form.

First came the youthful Jun-Su Kim, who has the status of a pansori idol back home, and whose voice and gestures have a luminous intensity. Earlier this year he played a cross-dressed Helen of Troy in Euripides’s play, and one can sense his protean potential in every move he makes. Then came Ahn Sook-Sun, at 69 Korea’s leading pansori singer and a revered “national treasure”. She at first cut a frail-looking, doll-like figure, and it took a few minutes for her artistry to come through, but when it did it was captivating. Her emotional power is cumulative, and her timing was smart as a whip as she improvised jokes and wicked asides. In conversation with me afterwards she explains that what draws her to her picaresque village tale is that below the swashbuckling surface lies a well of suffering. And that, she says, takes a lifetime of study to convey. It was a privilege to encounter it – full marks to the K-Music festival for making this possible.